[TattooingSC]

I now have a gateway dinosaur. (450mhz p2, 13G HD)
I have collected a few parts, here's what I have so far: a WD40G HD, Turtle Beach Sound card, 500w power supply,ethernet card, nVidia Gforce2, firestorm, 512 (2x256) PC133, CDRW, LS-120.
I need to upgrade, as I'm beginning to get into working with graphics programs, and the highest resolution I can scan at now is 300dpi if I want to work on it today. I'm somewhat of a beginner when it comes to working on computers, except basically adding plug and play devices.
For the most part, all I need is a CPU. What should I be looking for that is compatible with what I have and will be fast enough to scan high res pictures in? I dont need state-of-the-art. I also want to stay with Win98. I know, it's a stone-age OS, but I know it inside out.
Dont laugh too hard. Thanks in advance.

[trebor]

Ok, not sure what motherboard you are looking to use with your rig. Lets us know so we know what kind of chip to recommend. cheers

[Apokalipse]

i like the P4P800 motherboard, the P4 3GHZ (not 3.2) and the Radeon 9600 Pro (not 9800)

[tufreeh]

i wud say the amd 2500+ barton is a good bang for the buck .. add to that a decent motherboard by asus or gigabyte and u shud be well off ..

[tylertherobot]

I don't think he's looking to spend a bunch of money, he could probably get by with an Athlon 2000+ or Intel 2.0 and a Radeon 9000....

[spfd]

gethe asus series x motherboard with via chipset, it comes with integrated sound and lan 4x usb 2.0 motherboards under 100
then buy a barton 2500 for around 135

keep in mind this is canadian so if ur american, ur gonna be paying cheaper.,

also sticks of ram, get a 256 if u plan to just surf net and do office work
if its gaming, get 512
512: 112 CAD
256:65 CAD

aswell if your going to buy a new motherboard, you neeed a new towerr or power supply because your gateway tower has a different power supply

[tech4hire]

TattooingSC, I know you say you like win 98 but Win xp can easily be configured to look like 98 (classic view) and it is honestly the first product from microsoft that is worth a dam. It does run faster and is twice the OS that 98 is. I do reckomend that you upgrade when you can. If money is a problem, then in reckomend AMD cpus. I say take your budget and spend it all on a good motherboard and use whats left to get a cheap chip, then when prices drop consider upgrading. Coming from what system you have even a high speed duron will amaze you in speed. I would also advise you get new ram when you get the mobo and cpu, PC133 (SDRam) is not used a whole lot, i would say get a mobo with ddr or atleast ddr and sdram, so you can upgrade in the future.

[TattooingSC]

Thanks to all for the input! Lots of sound advice here. I'm not extremely budget oriented, I simply know NOTHING about motherboards or CPUs, and I'm not going to put my lack of knowledge into the hands of the local computer superstore who will try to sell me what I dont need for what I dont want to pay.

About the 98/XP, from what I've found in my limited use of XP, it seems very user-unfriendly, and frankly I think XP was designed to insult our intelligence. Editing the registry results in numerous "are you sure" popups, and just try to make sense of the Windows filing system. Prefetch? WTF? Also, do I really want my computer to offer to send a report to Microsoft for everything I do? Hmmmm, maybe DOS wasn't so bad, afterall.

[Apokalipse]

Ive got XP and I never get "are you sure" popups in the registry (with XP) and I never use prefetch, prefetch is just a way to load programs faster (in my opinion doesn't work well)
all in all, XP is a lot easier to use than 98, it is especially better in things like drivers or stability.
If you really don't like XP, then it is up to you to stay with 98, but I do reccomend XP

first, how much are you willing to spend on the mobo/CPU?
if you go with my mobo/CPU suggestion, you shouldn't pay more than $650/$700 AUS, or about $350 US
if you want a good video card but without a big price, the Radeon 9200 would be plenty good enough. if you are a gamer, then with the 9600 Pro you can play high end games like HL2 or Doom 3 with ease. don't bother getting the 9800 Pro, it's too expensive

you know what computer shops can be like: a lot of them will try and sell you a new CD burner if your monitor screws up, or a new Motherboard and CPU if your hard drive dies on you, or something completely irrelevant to what you want or need.
If he tells you what we said is completely wrong, and/or that you should buy all the most expensive or useless stuff, start running!