Hello,
I am thinking a lot about upgrading my PC, trying to choose the best components I run into some trouble.
The price is really important to me, so my goal is find ideal price-performance ratio. As I am upgrading, I am looking just for these components: CPU, motherboard and graphic card.

My main requirements are:

• i want silent machine
• as I am running Gentoo I need some compiling power:P, so good CPU
• smooth run of compositing wm(beryl)

At first I was thinking about Intel Core 2 duo CPU(E4300), but finally I`ve decided for AMD X2 4800+. For motherboard I`ve chose ASUS M2N-E. Have you got any advice?

Now my main problem is with choosing a proper graphic card. I want to run Beryl smoothly in high resolutions, which is not possible with my current GeForce FX 5600XT. With many windows on desktop I am suffering from lags. I dont know what criterium is the most important for beryl(number of pipelines, GPU frequency, memory freq. of memory size). I have nominated these cards:

1. GAINWARD GeForce 7300GT GLH DDR3 256MB - less pipelines, fast memory, active cooling
2. GIGABYTE GeForce 7600GS 256MB - slower ddr2 memory, passive cooling
3. GIGABYTE GeForce 7600GT 128MB - less memory, passive cooling, GT model
4. GAINWARD GeForce 8217 7600GS GLH 256MB - fast memory, active cooling

Have any of you some experiences with these cards? Which one would you choose? And what about Ati, I thing that their drivers are not very optimized for Linux.

Thanks.

I suggest XFX GeForce 7600GT (PVT73GU1D4). It is passive cooling from its heat pipe heatsink. Its core and memory speeds should do well in OpenGL applications. Here in the US it costs about 160 US dollars. I suggest either XFX or BGF video cards because they make the fastest. I suggest stay away from ATI cards. They may be fast in DirectX, but they are slow in OpenGL.

Beryl is experimental, so do not expect that it will run smoothly. It is ok to use it to report bugs, but you are going to have trouble during normal use.

I suggest motherboards from Abit or Gigabyte. Though do your homework to find out if the motherboard does not come with Marvell NIC chip because they do not work well in Linux. Stay away from JMicron SATA controllers. ASUS uses these brands on several of their motherboards, so installing Linux is harder and they include confusing SATA settings in the BIOS.

I suggest buy ECC memory because it does make it more reliable when compiling for a few days and when using multiple processors although people disagree. Also spend the money on a power supply. I suggest power supplies from Eneramax, Power & Cooling, and Seasonic. I have a Seasonic power supply that is quiet, efficient, and handles wide voltage ranges instead of being fixed voltage like several other power supply brands.

Thank for reply, but there is one problem with graphic card you suggested. It is unreachable in my country, so I must look for something else.

I also find out that ASUS motheboard I choosed contains Marvel NIC so I looked to the similiar model from Gigabyte, and it also has Marvel based NIC. So what do you exactly mean with it doesnt work well? Are there some serious problems? Or lower performance?

How strong power supply do you suggest? 420W could be enough?