Hmm... You seem to be in the same position I was 6 months ago when I
bought my Pentium system on a college students' budget. Here is my advice...
If you want 24bit color (16.7 million colors) st a resolution of
800x600 you will want a 64bit PCI video card with at least 2MB of VRAM
(better/expensive) or DRAM (not as good/less expensive). 3DR acceleration
is a different matter. For this you will need a 3D acceleration card that
will support 3DR (more difficult because Intel recently killed it). The
Matrox Millenium is the most affordable 3D acceleration card I have seen
(around $500). Most other 3D cards I looked at ranged from 1 to 4 grand.
I'm not sure what the speed increase is with EDO. You pobably want
it, and most 120Mhz Pentium systems come with it anyway. Make sure you get
at least 16MB of RAM! In fact buy as much RAM as you can afford, this will
have the biggest impact on speed. I have heard it said that doubling your
RAM is better than doubling your clock speed as far as speed is concerned.
17" monitors are very nice and very expensive, though not as
expensive as they used to be. 15" is fine and does the job nicely. I was
told the difference between a 15" and a 17" is about $700 (that settled it
for me!). You probably want a flat screen monitor a minimum of .28mm dot
pitch (lower is better).
I ended up getting a 120Mhz Pentium w/ 16MB EDO RAM, a 64-bit PCI
Graphics Accelerator w/ 2MB DRAM, a 15" Flat Screen .28mm DPMS monitor, a
1.2GB IDE HD, a 4X CD-ROM, and a 28.8K fax/modem. I purchased it from a
local dealer and it ran about $3000.
VRML runs very fast with WebFX, almost too fast, but you can never
esally have a computer that runs too fast ;) I hope this info helped you
and I hope you find what you are looking for at the price you want.
*************************************************************
** Bryant Reif, Telecommunication, Michigan State Univ. **
** ----------------------------------------------------- **
** Phone: (517) 332-1236 E-mail: reifbrya@pilot.msu.edu **
** Work: (517) 432-2191 E-mail2: reif@tc.msu.edu **
** Fax: (517) 432-2529 **
** WWW: http://aiesec.msu.edu/~bryant **
*************************************************************
"If you keep your money in your shoe, then people
will know which bills are yours." D. Byrne