After browsing a few of my favorite forums, I've noticed something: My computer's a bit dated. So it's time to start savnig my pennies and get ready for a round of upgrades.

Here's what I've got so far:

Soyo SY-K7VTA Motherboard
-1GHz AND Athlon CPU
-512 mb generic PC133 RAM
-3 40GB hard drives (2 Maxtor, 1 Western Digtal)
-Generic Sould Blaster sound card
-GeForce4 MX420 video card, PCI, 64MB
-48X DVD-ROM
-4x4x24x CD-RW

Here's what I want:
- DFI LanParty NFII Ultra motherboard
-CRUCIAL MICRON 512MB 64x64 PC 2700 DDR RAM
-AMD Athlon XP 2600+ CPU
-Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card
-GeForce FX 5200 AGP video card
-Plextor 52x24x52x CD-RW drive (black)

Granted, this will cost me a pretty penny, but I'm more concerned with how long this rig will be able to keep up with the software (read: games).

Anyone see any Gentoo-related problems with this setup? Any suggestions?

You think you need to upgrade when you have 1ghz Athlon.. ?? My fastest machine out of 6 of them is 900mhz Celeron.. and I'm not even going to upgrade for a while.. I'm still using my Voodoo 3000 AGP for my video card...

But I don't necessarily see any Gentoo problems, that I know of.. or at least Linux compatible problems that is.

You obviously haven't seen the Doom3 or Half-Life 2 screenshots then.

I'd also like a faster processor to speed up DiVX encodings. Right now, from start to finish, it takes my 18 hours to encode a DVD into divx. That's just too damn long! and I want to start tinkering with video editing and whatnot, so a faster rig will be necessary.

I don't play games on the computer.. but I can see a faster rig helps that out...

What are you using to encode or rip DVD's then... I can rip one on my 400mhz Celeron in about 3 hours using acidrip..

dvdrip.

acidrip always spat out garbled files for me, no matter what I did.

18 hours though.. thats like a lifetime..

You should post your errors here with acidrip, with the actual creator here, I'm sure we could get it working..

who?? here???

As I just posted in the intro section just a minute ago...
Nothing more satisfying that putting together a solid rig from spare/free/cheap parts (I'm not a PC Gamer either)

Two exceptions - Monitor and Videocard
I've been putting linux on alot of computers lately - for friends and at work - and it's really shocking the crappy monitors people put up with.

I mean, you gotta have a crisp image. And some of the flatpanels that they are selling - I was in staples lookin for blank CD's and I went see what they were charging - man - what God-awful pictures! Not crisp, lousey color, fonts looked terrible. It may be a space hog, but I'm sticking with my flat screen CRT for a while.

Tricky -

how long does it take you to rip a cd to mp3's on that 400Mhz box?

Last time I think took me about 20 to 30 mins tops.. depending on how many songs it had, etc.

Yeah, I've been averaging about 1/2 an hour with Grip wrapping for CDparanoia and lame, most of the time being in the rip not the encode... 700Mhz classic athlon

The Athlon T-bird 1.2 goes a bit faster, but mostly due to cdrom.

Cheers,

Finegan

I've been waiting to upgrade for 2 years. call me crazy, but I will build a system to spec for doom3. Yeah, I know...it's a game. And I don't even play games, but I played them long ago, doom and doom2. I've been waiting on this one forever, and since my system is suitable for my everyday activities(admin, surfing, etc.) I figured why bother?

i've got a bunch of cdrom drives, but i recently got a
lite-on 52x32x52x cdrw that does cdparanoia digital
audio extraction really fast. with most drives i have,
i'm lucky to get 6x extraction with cdparanoia, but that
drives is a little more than twice as fast. most drives
are really fast with cdda2wav, but who cares, unless you're
ripping for somebody else.
i can do a cd of lame vbr's with cdparanoia cd's in about
8 minutes. with gogo and cdda2wav, about 4.
i've got a 1466mhz athlonxp ( 1700+?)can't remember,
running at 2000mhz(2400+ or so?). It's a good stepping.
i had to rig the motherboard by putting little wires in
the socket to change the multiplier.
anyway, the average 2 hour movie, in 2 pass mode,
in Videodvdrip with Xvid takes just under 4 hours.