ORIGINAL: marky
i didnt understand how to read it lol
Sigh. Pricewatch is an online price guide. It compares computer component prices from a variety of sources on the net. In other words, it price shops for you. You can use pricewatch to help you build your system. First, look at a motherboard. For ease, I am going to look at motherboard/processor/fan combos. The second column, second row is titled "motherboard combos". Click on it.
A large list comes up, giving speed/type of the processor next to the lowest price on the web for that combo. I currently see a price of around $76 for an Athlon 2400 motherboard with CPU and Fan. Click on the link that says "Athlon XP 2400 with cpu, fan". A list of combos that fit that description will come up.
The rightmost column has a column about the online vendor that has the item for sale. The very first piece of information is "pcboost.com Feedback - 90 % positive (125 Feedbacks)" Pay attention to this line, because it gives you an idea of how much volume the dealer does, and how happy people have been in dealing with them.
Next, look at the second column. You will see something like this: "House Brand - ONLINE ORDER ONLY - - KT266 MBoard With CPU ATHLON XP 2400 Complete Combo Kit Details: -with cpu - PCI - USB - 266MHz BUS - USB - DDR W/HEATSINK & FAN" This is what the item is.
- The very first entry is the brandname of the motherboard, in this case, it is a house brand. I generally do not use house brands, so I would tend to steer away from this particular item.
- "KT266" refers to the chipset used on the board.
- "Athlon XP 2400" tells you what the processor is.
- "DDR" refers to the type of memory the board takes,
- "USB" tells you the motherboard has "USB" onboard,
- "PCI" tells you that it has PCI slots on the motherboard for expansion,
- "266 MHz BUS" tells you how both the processors the motherboard can accomodate and the top end performance you can expect. 266 MHz is a low end board.
Let's take another one. On page 2, there is an entry for the following: "ECS - ONLINE ORDER ONLY - - L7S7A2 SiS 746 North Bridge Socket A 266/333 MHz DDR 400 6 USB2.0 5PCI 1AGP ATX Audio Details: -with cpu - ATHLON XP 2400+,1.93GHz 266FSB With Heatsink & Fan Complete Combo Kit."
- ECS is the manufacturer of the motherboard in this combo and the specific model of the motherboard is the L7S7A2. You can go to the ECS website and look it up to find out more about this motherboard, if you want to, but the entry gives you some information about it anyway.
- "SiS 746 Norht bridge A" is the chip set on the motherboard. Look at Tom's hardware if you are interested in the different chipsets and what their impact is on performance.
- "266/333 MHz" which indicates that you can select between two bus speeds. Basically, you could upgrade this later with a slightly faster processor.
- DDR 400 tells you that this motherboard takes DDR 400 memory. DDR memory with a smaller number won't work. In some cases, DDR with a larger number will.
- "6 USB2.0" tells you that this board has 6 USB ports - *probably* 4 that will be on the back of the motherboard and two which would go into ports on the front of the case (if you have them).
- "5 PCI" means that it has 5 PCI slots for expansion.
- "1AGP" tells you this motherboard has an AGP slot for faster graphics cards. AGP comes in several varieties, 1x , 2x, 4,x 8x where 8x is better than 1x. Since it does not specify, you would have to check the manufacturer's website to be sure.
- "ATX" is the board size, or "form factor". ATX is pretty standard and it means that this board will fit in a case that is an ATX case.
- "Audio" means that this board has on board audio, so you do not have to have an audio card, though you could get one if you want a higher end one.
You can do the same with other components. Whether you are building or buying a computer, I recommend you go read up at Tom's hardware. It also has lots of reviews comparing different motherboards, processor, etc. Reading it for a while will give you a much better idea of what the codes all mean and give you an idea of the tradeoffs between various maufacturers.