Hi
Well, contrary to what you might have expected this wasn't a 'hit and run'-user
I've just been extremely busy, and hence I stalled buying a new box. As my wife's box is going down very quickly I now need to buy a new box for her fast, in addition to the one I planned to buy for myself. My wife will be using her box on XP, mainly because of legacy accounting software she needs, and access to corporate software, and she will play some games. So my plan is:
A. Buy a new box for her, designed to meet both FBSD and XP (games) specs;
B. Install FBSD on it to see if everything works;
C. If B is the case, install XP on that box for her and order an exactly similar box for myself on which I will install XP exclusively.
So, on reading back this thread (keeping in mind I am an absolute noob when it comes to hardware), I am facing difficulties in deciding about the mainboard/chipset on the one hand, and the videocard on the other hand.
Mainboard/chipset
The thing is, some people say 'take Q35', others say 'don't take it'. Now, this mainboard, Asus P5Q-E:
http://www.informatique.nl/123175
has been described 'rather high class board' in some test I've read some time ago, but it has P45, not Q35. What should I do?
Videocard-1
On rereading this thread it seems a lot of people are favoring ATI for multiple reasons. I have no problems switching to ATI, but there isn't a native ATI-driver? Googling I found out that xorg should have support for ATI, but then my confusion starts:
1. Xorg also seems to have support for Nvidia, so why is there a separate, native driver for Nvidia? (Or, phrased the other way: why isn't it important that there isn't a separate driver for ATI?)
2. Whereas the Nvidia driver doesn't support X64, does the Xorg-driver for ATI support X64 then? Or can ATI also only be used in X32?
3. The black window problem of Nvidia, doesn't that occur on ATI?
Videocard-2
Some people say I shouldn't use passive cooling, others say I should use passive cooling.
CPU
So I decided for E8xxxx instead of Quad core, but now, two months later, Quadcore is even cheaper than dual core. Still take dual core?
I must seem very ignorant to you all, and I apologize for that, but it's hard when at birth they decided to leave out the part of my brain that understands hardware ins and outs
Again I appreciate your help in guiding me through this wood I can't seem to find my path in by myself. Thank you for that help
