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So its been over over 3 years since I built my last AMD machine with DDR Ram ...and I'm feeling a bit out of touch with tecnology. Having been redundant, skint and too busy to notice the PC market pass me buy The last graphics card I bought was a Radeon Saphire 9200SE 128mb which I have in my AMD XP 2000, 512 DDR machine. So times are a little better and I'm thinking of upgrading my XP machine and remembered a bundle I bought (but I ran out of money and did 'nout with) a while ago. Now don't laugh, but when the prices dropped (actually, quite a while back) I picked up an Abit NF7 v2.0 Motherboard, a stick of 256Mb Corsair PC2700 Ram and an AMD Barton XP2500 333fsb CPU - Now, I don't like waste... and I'm sure its gonna be fast enough for me to warrant building up now I have a few quid.... isn't it? .... Right! I know Socket A - so yesterday!!! but its the hand I delt myself in June 2004 according to the invoice that's still in the box... and I'm not even gonna consider playing with it until I've picked up some more RAM (which is cheap enough atm) - but the GFX cards have jumped miles... away from AGP 9200 I last bought. As I said I'm kind of out of touch - but need to build up this 333fsb bundle with an AGP card that will cut the mustard to game on - nothing tooo top heavy, at a resonable prices... but it seems pretty easy to out perform my PC package today with the GPU speeds I'm seeing!!!! I'm looking at a 256Mb Sapphire Radeon X1600Pro AGP4x/8x 800MHz DDR2, GPU 500MHz and wondering will it actually perform... as its much faster than the bus speed of my motherboard/Ram/CPU setup - is it a waste at £75.00 - I dare not (due to post xmas wife bashing) dream of going over £75.00 if my system will take the strain so I see myself looking at 256Mb Sapphire Radeon 9550 AGP4x/8x 400MHz DDR, GPU 250MHz and thinking at change from £40 this seems great... I know It will work... but how long before can't buy a top shelf game ... no matter how much I can afford it! What do you think?

Mr CCCDezynz beaming in! Nice to see a great, warm welcome here... you looked like a helpfull bunch when I went in search of a NEW host, after I realised the downfalls of Chrissy's (current money pit) hosting solution- so far you've not failed... and she is at last smiling, for the first time in a few days when I mention her web site! I did a bit of research on the web to find you - I'm the "tech brain" in the family that works out what is and isn't "on the money" and tracked Bravenets fail in the hotlink situation and lack of support for the problem but the creative mind behind the web site is all down to Chrissy - its a shame she has had to pull her 'graghics' section to prove hotlinking - (now at 19% after 15 hours instead of 100% at 12 hrs) - to prove it, you chaps have missed her latest and best creations! ...rest assured, as this becomes affordable - you've a new client - and a pair of prolific BB posters!