Whadda ya think of this?

[tu2thepoo]

if you want a cheap DX8 card, you should look at the R9000, or the PNY GF3-ti200; apparently there's a $40 rebate on it (may still be offered). With shipping it knocks the price down to maybe 70-80 bucks. in any case an avg gf3-ti200 would knock you back at least 100 bucks.

(however, the store that's offering the rebate is atacom.com, and i've heard terrible things about them; i don't know if the rebate is direct from PNY - if it is i'd just buy it from somewhere else and get the rebate).

if you want an athlonxp motherboard cheaper than 50 bucks you'll either have to look at integrated motherboards (good like finding one with an AGP slot ), or refurbished stuff.

if you're looking to get a video card on the cheap, i'd get the Visiontek GF2-GTS-V from newegg - few of the OEM radeons are a significantly better value than the visiontek (unless you can find a rad7500 for maybe 60-70 bucks, in which case you might as well spring for the GF3-ti200). my dorm roommate got one and it worked quite well for him; he didn't even overclock it (he also had a Athlon XP 1600 system). i think it came out to about 40-50 bucks from newegg along with the rest of his system. with the money you save buy going with a DX7 system you could get a 300w Sparkle PSU (i think it's about 30-50 bucks) - or you could even get a cheapy 250w PSU and just run the two of them together (one powering your drives, fans, and other components, the other powering the motherboard and CPU. it'll be a hassle running the two without a relay system of some sort, but it'd be cheap and maybe doable).