I'd advise an Athlon64 Socket 939 system. You can upgrade it to a dual-core Athlon64 when they are released (scheduled in September 2005). Or wait a few months and buy an Athlon64 dual-core system. PCI Express. AGP is "old" technology by now, PCI Express is the way to go. Right now, PCI Express graphics cards are the same price as their AGP counterparts, or even cheaper. And PCI Express mainboards have become mainstream. Look at the nVidia Quadra based graphics cards. They are designed for graphics workstations and have excellent OpenGL support. Pricey, though. But much better than the mainstream game cards, at least for 3D apps. Lots of RAM. Start with at least 2 GB. Win64 is about to arrive, I expect that especially RAM and CPU intensive apps will be the first to make the move to 64bit. Use 1 GB modules, so you can expand to 4 GB. Multiple harddisks. I'd advise two small and very fast drives (Western Digital Raptor, 10,000 RPM) though they're expensive, and at least one large regular 7200 RPM disk for mass storage and archiving.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

My gallery   My freestuff