I suggest that you look at Shuttle boxes that support Core 2 Duo or AMD
Athlon 64 X2 processors.
There is certainly work for the "extra" core to do considering the software
that many users run in the background.
Take a look at the following for an idea on video cards
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/...for_the_money/
Price up system and the decide on dual core CPU you can afford.
Do you intend to run Vista?
=========================
"NickD" <> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
>I posted this elsewhere, but got fairly negative replies on the whole
> SFF system front.
>
> Anyway, I've been running a Shuttle with FN41v2 mobo (Athlon XP2100+,
> Radeon 9700Pro one CDRW drive etc etc) for some time and loved it. I
> mainly use it for gaming and web-surfing, and it performs admirably.
> However, I think it's getting time to replace or upgrade it to the next
> step up.
>
> I'm not fussed about CPU particularly, as long as its fairly cheap and
> performs better than the XP2100+. I'm aiming for 1GB of RAM, 1 optical
> drive, 1 hard drive, plus an AGP or PCI-E graphics card.
>
> What's the best way to go about this, given a limited budget?
>
> Cheers
> Nick
>