Time for a new computer, what hardware?

[ecskier]

It's about time for me to get a new computer, and just as I was about to order all the parts I thought to myself, "Once all this stuff gets to my house and I put it together, will nothing work on linux like the computer I'm on right now?"

So, my dillema, of course, is that I can't possibly test every component on a linux system to make sure it will work, so FROM YOUR OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES (Please ) on an AMD64 platform with an nforce4 chipset:

A. What features from the chipset/motherboard will be supported, and what features will need to be moved off of the motherboard? (e.g. SATA/SATA2 RAID arrays, gigabit ethernet, etc.... Probably NVRAID and a Sil 3114 for SATA/SATA2)

B. What graphics card is best? I always hear that nVidia's linux drivers are far superior, but then it always seems like the people with nvidia hardware are having as much trouble as the ATI people... (Personally I'm an ATI fanboy , but it soundss like ATI's drivers are even sketchier on their high-end hardware, and considering that it's pretty damn sketchy on a 9800XT, I'm willing to move over to nVidia. The options are probably either a Geforce 6800 ___ (maybe on an SLI motherboard?) or a radeon x800 ___)

C. Motherboard sound just won't do... What sound card would you recomend? (I'm thinking about a SB Audigy2 or something along those lines, but I haven't really done any research on sound cards + linux...)

D. TV-tuners... As far as I know, Gentoo + TV-tuners = *blank*, what should I be looking for?


Obviously, I don't expect any one person to answer all of my questions, and I expect at least some flaming, but I'd like to order all this stuff within the next couple of days, and I have way to much to do right now to go searching for hours on end, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

[platojones]

Well, under TV tuners, try a Haupaugge PVR-250 or PVR-350. They are well supported and with MythTV (and the ivtv driver), you've basically got a TiVo box. I'm holding off new hardware until I can see how Dual Core CPUs are going to impact things. Nevertheless, PCIExpress, memory and the new graphics cards are making for an interesting hardware environment these days.

[linuxpyro]

For a sound card, I have an M Audio Delta 44 that I do recording with. It works well with ALSA. You should check out some of M Audio's other cards.