Hi guys, my younger brother wants to buy some hardware and i could use your help to decide what i should recommend him.
1) the budget is not big, it's approx. $320 at most.
2) he currently has Celeron D325J (2.53GHz), Asus X300 gfx card (AX300SE-X/TD 128MB, PCI-E IIRC), 80GB HDD, 512MB DDR400 and some other not important junk
3) he wants to buy a sound card and some other component - that most probably being GFX/CPU - now he doesn't need any special sound card, so i was thinking about Audigy2 Value (which i could buy for him). But his local store doesn't have this one, it only has Audigy2 ZS bulk and higher. Is there any real-world difference between these two? (price diff. here being approx. $30).
4) the other component - when i subtract the price of Audigy2 Value/Audigy2 ZS, i'm left with $270/240. What would benefit him the most? In this price range, i could buy regular P4 520 (2.8GHz) for $210 or nice GF6600GT, which range from $190 to $250 (depends on brand, 128/256 RAM etc) here. In case of 6600GT, which of these brands would u recommend (or doesn't it matter?) - Microstar, GigaByte, Asus, Leadtek, Inno3D? I'm personally thinking 6600GT will be more noticable than the CPU, but will the Celeron be able to benefit from it?
Thanks for any suggestions
PS: If you'd like to bash me for not doing my research on the web, save it and don't reply at all, thanks All i'm asking for are your opinions.
1) the budget is not big, it's approx. $320 at most.
2) he currently has Celeron D325J (2.53GHz), Asus X300 gfx card (AX300SE-X/TD 128MB, PCI-E IIRC), 80GB HDD, 512MB DDR400 and some other not important junk
3) he wants to buy a sound card and some other component - that most probably being GFX/CPU - now he doesn't need any special sound card, so i was thinking about Audigy2 Value (which i could buy for him). But his local store doesn't have this one, it only has Audigy2 ZS bulk and higher. Is there any real-world difference between these two? (price diff. here being approx. $30).
4) the other component - when i subtract the price of Audigy2 Value/Audigy2 ZS, i'm left with $270/240. What would benefit him the most? In this price range, i could buy regular P4 520 (2.8GHz) for $210 or nice GF6600GT, which range from $190 to $250 (depends on brand, 128/256 RAM etc) here. In case of 6600GT, which of these brands would u recommend (or doesn't it matter?) - Microstar, GigaByte, Asus, Leadtek, Inno3D? I'm personally thinking 6600GT will be more noticable than the CPU, but will the Celeron be able to benefit from it?
Thanks for any suggestions
PS: If you'd like to bash me for not doing my research on the web, save it and don't reply at all, thanks All i'm asking for are your opinions.