Need a new PC. Current one is ancient and has developed some horrible faults. Once upon a time I was totally up to speed with the PC world (browsing AnandTech and Tom's Hardware for fun, etc...) but I've been distracted (by actually having a life) for a few years and EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED ON ME!
Can someone tell me: DDR2 is only for intel chips, is this right? Is DDR2 a meaningful improvement on DDR? DDR still needs RAM divided between two seperate sticks to work optimally, yes? Does SATA2 offer any noticable improvement on SATA? Is it worth worrying about whether the mobo supports it? If I'm going AMD (which I am, if only because my last was Intel and I feel like a change), is it worth worrying whether the mobo is ready for a dual core chip upgrade?
For AMD, how does a 3700 San Diego core chip compare with a 3800 Venice core chip? SD has more cache, yes?
Does 64-bit architecture give any improvement if you aren't running the 64-bit version of XP?
And why is the successor to AGP called PCI-express and not, say, 'super AGP'? Is it in some sense a return to PCI architecture? Was there something wrong with AGP? Or is it just stupid terminology?
and finally...
is it a good idea to pay extra for a quality PSU instead of sticking with the generic POS that comes with the case? I have a strong suspicion that this is why my last two PCs eventually blew up with multiple componant failure.
