Newbie

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I was wondering if there are Dev Kits that are less that 500$ that would suit my needs? I had looked at some from the http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/kit-dev_platforms.jsp site that were less that $500 but not certain if there had everything that I needed?

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There are definitely dev kits less than $500. The real question is whether they suit your needs.

If you need floating-point performance, then I think you'll need a high-end kit.

A few of the cheaper kits; DE0-nano, DE0, DE1, etc do not have ethernet.

A kit like the Arrow BeMicro-SDK does have ethernet, but its got low-power DDR memory, which you cannot use without a time-limited license from a third party.

The Cyclone IV GX starter kit looks pretty nice for the money ($400). It is a PCIe card with ethernet. However, its got a relatively small FPGA on it 14k logic elements, contrast that to the DE115 with 115k LEs, and the DE4 with 230K LEs or 530K LEs.

Before you buy a kit, you need to place-and-route a design that represents what you plan on implementing. That will tell you how many logic cells you are really going to need.

I know, its a chicken-and-egg problem; you need to know the board before you start your design. However, I've just told you the boards, so you can now start a design - you don't actually need to buy a board until you've confirmed you can fit a design into one.

Cheers,

Dave