Am I alone in thinking that if you have at least a KT266A or better theres no need to upgrade soon? Till next AMD chip?

[snidy]

I'm thinking about upgrading to the Asus Nforce2 with an XP2800, do you guys think it's worth it? I'm an extreme gamer.

 

[Killrose]

I want to see a working Barton core in a motherboard before I buy anything else. Right now if I wanted more speed, I would go the video card route first.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: snidy
I'm thinking about upgrading to the Asus Nforce2 with an XP2800, do you guys think it's worth it? I'm an extreme gamer.

With a Geforce4 Ti 4600 you will see a boost with that upgrade. But as I mentioned earlier, you could actually spend less money on a Radeon 9700 and get alot more gaming performance.

 

[pukemon]

I still have my trusty KT133 based board happily running a Duron 1.1. It's not my main machine, it sits there quietly doing its server stuff. My main machine uses the KT266A, and it's rock solid. The main upgrade limitation is that it can only take up to an XP2000+. I'm using an XP1800+ on and really don't find anything to be particularly slow. Office apps? Nah. Warcraft3? Nah. DivX encoding? How the heck would I know its an overnight operation So I'm a happy camper.

 

[TimNiceBut]

Sensible advice.

Can I pick your brains?

I will be giving my son my ECS K7S5A plus Duron 1000 with PC100 ram and buying a new motherboard and case with an XP processor and 256mb DDR. I already have a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128mb (Leadtek).

I am also on a budget and was looking at the Nforce2 boards but they are quite expensive.

I may buy an XP1700 or XP 2000 depending on the amount of cash I have left over after buying the motherboard.

The question is, then, should I pay extra for the Nforce2 and cut back on the processor or get a cheaper KT333 board and go for the higher clocked processor, or even get another K7S5A ! (SIS 735)( dirt cheap).

I use my PC mainly for GP4 and BF1942, MOHAA etc at 1024x768 resolution. I'm quite happy with 50/60fps on these games and not at all anal about frame rates, as long as they run smoothly.

All comments and advice greatly appreciated.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I wouldnt remommend upgrading the whole system ... but I would recommend an Athlon XP if they have a 1ghz or less CPU. I would also recommend they upgrade their vid card if its less than a GF3 ti200

 

[mechBgon]

My problem is that I have a power-hungry application that can use all the processing/memory speed I can give it, so I always want to upgrade when I spot something better. Expensive hobby! For instance, the top picture here spent about six hours on the radiosity simulation to reach 97% completion (good enough for this situation) and another ~30 minutes to render a single frame. That's with a 1600+ overclocked to 2100+ levels.

For a typical user who doesn't do that stuff, the honest truth is that you're right. From KT266A onwards, the most significant improvement appears to be nForce2, and even then it can't flex its DASP muscles in all situations, so a person running Word, Excel, Outlook, etc would probably benefit more from 1) having adequate amounts of RAM and 2) investing in Win2000 or WinXP Pro if they don't have it (caches apps in RAM for quick re-launch, given enough RAM). And a gamer is probably going to get the best return on the money by buying a top-end video card.

(edit: I'm trying to hold out for Hammer, myself, but nForce2 sure is tempting!)

 

[rogue1979]

Nice work, it is stimulating to see someone that uses really uses their computer hardware.

 

[Wind]

I was in the same opinion. Ppl tht hv a KT266A chipset mobo (min) should hold off any upgrade on the mobo. Ppl w/ AMD XP 1600+ (at least) should not upgrade as well. If got $$, spend it on a good VGA card & u'll see the differences right away.

Generally, I believe most ppl use their system for gaming & other lighter works...so the above recommendation justified.

 

[Necrolezbeast]

I upgraded from a Epox 8K7A(AMD 761) to a MSI Kt3 Ultra 2 and it is a lot faster and more stable..mostly due to the 5v rail problem with the Epox board, but I have had no crashes that were not user error since I upgraded.

 

[Nomans]

Hi guys, I want to share my five cents with you. In my humble opinion, there is no need to upgrade any time soon if you have at least a KT266A working system. As long as you're doing fine with your computer, there is no reason to upgrade. Gamers would disagree because they need to upgrade their gaming machines every 6 months in order to squeeze the last performance out of their hardware, and to be able to play the new crop of games which require more and more graphics power, etc.. But for the normal John Doe like me, I don't have the need to upgrade my computers every 6 months or so. May be I'd need it in 4, 5 years by the time a 64-bit CPU is a must-have for everybody. Then you know... it's a different story.

 

[Nomans]

BTW, this is what I would do instead of thinking about upgrading my current KT266A computer (I have actually 2 running ABIT KR7A-RAID, one as Win2k server, the other one is my XP Pro workstation, with similar hardware): put all the money I would spend for upgrading from KT266A to KT400 or whatever into a saving box but keep using my current ones. Wait 6 months, then ask myself "Do I want to upgrade now?" wait another 6 months then ask again. If I could resist the upgrade desire for about 12 months or longer, I could use the money to build a NEW computer, with new mobo, new memory, new CPU, everything new. The point I'm making is if you really want top performance, you need to think about upgrading other components as well, not only memory. You'd need a top CPU (currently AMD XP 2800+, or P4 3.06), top video card (ATI Radeon 9700 PRO or GeForce FX in February 2003), 512MB Corsair PC3500 C2, top mobo, big HDD with 8MB cache, etc... By the time you get everthing together, it will set you back 2k-3k easily. Do we have that much of money to spend? well some people do, but most of us don't. So you go figure...

 

[kadajawi]

Originally posted by: BlueEyedBeezlebub
since my format, clean install of xp, hyperion drivers, latest nvidia drivers the system is rock solid.. 20+ hours uptime right now. I'm not shutting it down until it does it for me.

my new theory on drivers is dont touch anythign unless something gives a big performance increase becasue every time i start getting anal about driver updates my system gets very unstable.

Pah, thats nothing. My current uptime is 40 days, 23 hours and 24 minutes Oh... and if you wonder on my system... its a pretty bad maintained Win XP Pro... I think I installed XP when it first came out... so my installation is already somewhat old. Oh... and the system its running on... a Intel Celeron 366@458 (2.2V), a Gigabyte BX-C mobo (yeah... BX rules!) and a GF2MX... oh, and don't forget my IBM 120GXP HDD (ya ya, I know its dangerous and all ). Oh... and thanks to Folding@Home and D2OL my system is working at full load all the time.

Oh, and about the subject... no, I don't think upgrading is worth the money, unless you want to upgrade your CPU too and it simply doesn't work with that old board... or you need all those new features like USB 2.0, Firewire, SATA etc. But then again buying additional cards might work too (it all depends on the price).

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Yield

Originally posted by: yodayoda
dude, i've got a KT266a board and it is running great. i'm waiting for Hammer too.

Same here.. got a KT133A board running great too.
but then again, I also have an 845pe board too.

the KT266A is awesome. I'd still be using it if my board would take a TBred CPU.

Which KT266A? I'm running the venerable 8KHA+ with a Tbred, albeit a lower model (1700+ @ 1801mhz) rev. A, or were you talking about the Rev. B higher clocked ones?

Chiz

It's a Soltek SL-75DRV4 and the XP1700+ doesn't play nice with my BIOS.
everytime I reboot I have to clear the CMOS for it to come up again. put my Palomino back in there and it's fine like normal again.
I need a BIOS flash. but there haven't been any releases yet.

 

[PlatinumGold]

only reason i bought my asus nforce 2 board was cause my ecs board went bad and if i was gonna replace it i figured i'd get a good board this time.

course then i went and bought an xp 2700 cause it was such a good price on fs/ft.