Building a Shuttle SN45G/Athlon Based System

I am looking to build a "medium power" Shuttle-based system, mostly for
general computing (internet and light office and graphics work), Linux
and hobbiest programming purposes (my own programs are small, but I
would like some power for compiling some of the larger Linux open source
projects (e.g., Mozilla with certain options enabled)). I am not much
of a gamer (only non-free games I own are QII and Q3A). Looking at the
alternate.de ads in a recent c't Magazine, I priced out the following
system. I would appreciate any thoughts on whether I would be
overbuying or underbuying in any particular category, given my objective:

Shuttle SN45G 249 Eur
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton) Boxed 119 Eur
Corsair DDR400 1.0 GB RAM (Doublepack Dual Channel) 252 Eur
Video Card:
Club3D ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (TV Out, DVI) 159 Eur
or
Leadtek A360TD GeForce FX5700 (TV Out, DVI) 159 Eur
Maxtor 120 GB U-133 IDE 8MB cache/7200 RPM 94 Eur
Samsung CD-RW+DVD Player 74 Eur
Floppy 10 Eur

Total: 947 Eur

If I drop down to 512 MB RAM (140 Eur) and a Radeon 9200 or GeForce 5200
(89 Eur) I can get the total down to 775 Eur. I would use a spare CRT
monitor for now, but would hope later to get a 17" LCD screen with DVI,
which I guess will cost about 450 Eur.

Several particular questions:

1. Does DDR400 memory provide any benefits over DDR333, given that the
Athlon is 333MHz?

2. Memory is often designated as "233", "232", "222", etc., with the
lower-numbered memory being slightly more expensive. I assume this has
something to do with how the memory uses the clock cycle. What cycle
would be appropriate for the SN45G and the Athlon mentioned above?

3. Is the TV-out function of a graphics card "international"? That is,
will it work for both PAL and NTSC televisions?

4. Have people generally had good experience with alternate.de?

Thanks in advance.

xyzabc wrote:

 > I am looking to build a "medium power" Shuttle-based system, mostly for
 > general computing (internet and light office and graphics work), Linux
 > and hobbiest programming purposes (my own programs are small, but I
 > would like some power for compiling some of the larger Linux open source
 > projects (e.g., Mozilla with certain options enabled)). I am not much
 > of a gamer (only non-free games I own are QII and Q3A). Looking at the
 > alternate.de ads in a recent c't Magazine, I priced out the following
 > system. I would appreciate any thoughts on whether I would be
 > overbuying or underbuying in any particular category, given my objective:
 >
 > Shuttle SN45G 249 Eur
 > AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton) Boxed 119 Eur
 > Corsair DDR400 1.0 GB RAM (Doublepack Dual Channel) 252 Eur
 > Video Card:
 > Club3D ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (TV Out, DVI) 159 Eur
 > or
 > Leadtek A360TD GeForce FX5700 (TV Out, DVI) 159 Eur
 > Maxtor 120 GB U-133 IDE 8MB cache/7200 RPM 94 Eur
 > Samsung CD-RW+DVD Player 74 Eur
 > Floppy 10 Eur
 >
 > Total: 947 Eur
 >
 > If I drop down to 512 MB RAM (140 Eur) and a Radeon 9200 or GeForce 5200
 > (89 Eur) I can get the total down to 775 Eur. I would use a spare CRT
 > monitor for now, but would hope later to get a 17" LCD screen with DVI,
 > which I guess will cost about 450 Eur.
 >
 > Several particular questions:
 >
 > 1. Does DDR400 memory provide any benefits over DDR333, given that the
 > Athlon is 333MHz?
 >

Various benchmarks show that the DDR333 will be faster with that Athlon.

 > 2. Memory is often designated as "233", "232", "222", etc., with the
 > lower-numbered memory being slightly more expensive. I assume this has
 > something to do with how the memory uses the clock cycle. What cycle
 > would be appropriate for the SN45G and the Athlon mentioned above?
 >
 > 3. Is the TV-out function of a graphics card "international"? That is,
 > will it work for both PAL and NTSC televisions?
 >
 > 4. Have people generally had good experience with alternate.de?
 >
 > Thanks in advance.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->