A little help on an upgrade please =)

[PizzaDude]

I'll make this quick and to the point. Here's my current system:

Athlon XP 1500
ECS K7S5A
512 mb pc2100 RAM
geforce4 ti4200
Turtle beach santa cruz
40 gb barricuda
52x cdrw
56x cdrom

I want to upgrade the cpu but nothing else. My questions are:

Whats the fastest XP that I could get without having my current RAM slow me down? (ex. would getting a 2000+ be almost the same as a 2400+ just cause the RAM is the same speed?)

Does the K7S5A support higher end athlon XP chips? Would I have to flash/upgrade my bios?

Please don't reccomend to me to upgrade my mobo and memory and everything. I'm limitted on money here and only want to upgrade the cpu. Thanks a lot in advance guys!

 

[CraigRT]

I think the max you can go is a 266 FSB XP chip.. I haven't done any research but I'd say a 2400+ would work...

what would I personally do?

not upgrade the 1500+ and just put the money towards a new mobo/RAM/CPU for later on... a 1500+ is quite decent if you ask me.
but that's jusy my opinion...

perhaps you could list what you use the PC for and more people could try to give some advice..

thanks,

 

[shepherdofchaos]

Man, that's a good question. I wish I had the expertise to give you the answer. Maybe Anand (or some other guru) could give us a graph that shows (everything else being equal) where the sweet spot is with regards to cpu speed versus memory speed. The question is, for your particular system, are you better off upgrading the processor speed or upgrading the memory quality?

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: shepherdofchaos
Man, that's a good question. I wish I had the expertise to give you the answer. Maybe Anand (or some other guru) could give us a graph that shows (everything else being equal) where the sweet spot is with regards to cpu speed versus memory speed. The question is, for your particular system, are you better off upgrading the processor speed or upgrading the memory quality?

the PC2100 will run in spec with an XP2000 or XP2400+ CPU... there is really no need to run higher speed memory, as the ECS board does not allow use of high FSB's. definitely be better off upgrading the CPU. upgrading the memory will only prove more effective later on down the road when he gets a new system (or at least mobo/CPU)

 

[jacktesterson]

Athlon XP 2600+ is the max on that board right now I beleive...maybe its higher but thats what it was when I owned the board

 

[PrinceXizor]

I assume you mean the K7S5A v3.1 (not the Pro v5.0 or the + versions)

Most motherboard manufacturers have this information on their website.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/support/techcpu/athlonxp.htm

Seems like your highest CPU is the 2600+ with the BIOS 02/08/09

P-X

 

[PizzaDude]

Thanks a lot guys. My mobo is the 1st, basic k7s5a. As for the bios, I had a friend flash it a while ago(no I don't remember when) so I'm not sure how high of a chip my current bios will support. Is there a way to find out what bios version I have? Is it listed in there? I'll go take a look.