Asus P3V4X pimpin' out advice needed

[cobison]

I need some advice on what to put on my dated, but rock-solid, machine based on an Asus P3V4X mobo. In particular, I want to upgrade the following:
1) PIII 533 MHz CPU
-I want to put in the fastest possible CPU that this board will accept. Is this perhaps the 1.0 GHz SECC2? I read something about a possible daughter-board that could be used too.

2) TNT2 Ultra video card
-Mobo supports 4x AGP. I really could use some suggestions here. Obviously I don't want to buy more video card than my system can utilize.

3) 384 MB RAM (133 MHz)
-Mobo can support up to 2 GB and I want to max this out with a couple of 1 GB PC133 sticks. Any good values out there?

I got a nice new laptop recently but I still use the old one, mostly for email, office apps, and the occasionaly game of Quake, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Madden, etc. I am certainly not ruling out buying something used. I appreciate the help.

Here's a link to the product manual:
http://www.asus.com/pub/asus/m...3a/p3v4x/p3v4x-102.pdf

Thanks much,
coBison

 

[joelslaw]

1) asus has a cpu support list for all their mobos. I looked at the one for your board and 1gh P3 is indeed the fastest it supports. As for secc2 not really sure (P3 was just a bit before my time ) You can examine the list yourself here:
http://www.asus.com/support/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx

2) Not too sure if it's a good match for your rig but I had a Radeon 9000 on my old 1.3gh Athlon system. I used to play Battlefield 1942 (800x600, view distance: 100%, everything else on the lowest settings) and it played really smooth (that's with my norton system works running in the background) So it would think it probably handel the games you mentioned pretty well. Hope that info is usefull to you

3)That is A LOT of ram for this system!!! You may want to consider 2 512 chips instead. The performance difference is negligable, but the price difference is deffinately not! The cheapest 1g 133 chip I could find was $113! As opposed to this $30 512:
http://www.smksuperstore.com/catalog/memory.asp?ID=282
I found this at pricewatch.com, it's a great place to find older components!

Hope this helps, and I hope your " rig pimpin' " goes well Keep rockin' it old skool cobison!

 

[cobison]

Thanks for the help joelslaw. I appreciate the tip on using only a gig of RAM-I do want to do this economically. I was checking out pricewatch (built most of my system off vendors found on that site) and haven't kept myself up-to-date on the quality of various brands of memory. I'll definitely look into video card suggestion. :thumbsup:

Yeah, my PIII machine is a bit old, in fact, the last time I posted on this forum was when I built it five years ago (turns out my account got deleted since then). However, besides the CPU, I bought good quailty hardware and it has done me good. I intended on building a new system a couple of years ago and again late in '04 and had everything spec'd out. I just can't suck it up to spend the cash on a new system when a new laptop I got can run Doom 3 at an acceptable speed for me, but on low resolution .

Thanks,
cobison

 

[Kogan]

About the processor, if you want the absolute fastest you can get in that board, you may want a tualatin socket converter like this: http://www.hardwarecooling.com...619af682427b3f3fbd29d1

With that, you can use the celeron tualatin 1.0 to 1.4 ghz, I believe. You can pick up a 1.1ghz for $34 on pricewatch and they easily overclock up to 1.4+ if you're interested in doing that.

As for video, A Geforce 3 or 4 will be a good upgrade that can be had for under $60. Get one with 128mb ram if you plan on playing games and want it to last the longest. Check ebay and the forsale forum for these.

Between 512 -1gb ram will be fine for just about anything. I currently still use a p3-933 system with 512m ram and a geforce3(64mb) that plays the latest games with not much problems (doom3 is another story of course).

Good luck!

Edit: it looks like that tualatin adapter is a little cheap after reading the reviews on the same page. It seems like it works great with your board, but I'd check around before buying one. But then again, $5 isn't much

 

[joelslaw]

you play doom3 on your laptop, holy crap! What's in that thing? I hope it's got a quality lcd, cause that game is hard enough to see on a crt! And God knows the last thing you need is demons sneeking up behind you from a corner you didn't even see. :laugh:

If you're looking to play newer games, Kogan's suggestion (geforce 4) is probably a better call. In the past, Nvidia's tended to have better performance than same class ATI's. Untill the x800 came along and punched the 6800 in the face! (I'm an ati fan, can you tell?)

As far as the socket converter ...... I dunno. Seems a bit scary. Plus from Pentium to Celeron is deffinately not an upgrade. Pentiums out performs Celerons by quite a bit, even if the Celeron has quite a bit faster clock. You could check benchmarks but I'd be willing to bet a 1ghz Pentium would either match or out perform a 1.3 Celeron. I could be wrong on this, but in my experience Celerons and Durons (haven't used one yet, but probably Semprons too) perform like crap! Weigh that decision carefully.

 

[joelslaw]

this is waht I'm talking about:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20011003/duel-03.html
This is actually a Duron vs Celeron review, but all the benchmarks include a P3 for reference. I couldn't find a review with as big of difference between the clocks as Kogan was talking about (400mhz) so ultimately he maybe right, but as I said, I can't find proof either way. I will say though 400mhz is quite a difference, so the Celeron might push ahead. However if you go the overclock route, don't forget you could also o/c the Pentium. Don't know how well they o/c though.

Edit: I think this chart answers that question, but I'm not sure I'm reading it right. If it says what I think it says: the average P3 copermine o/c's to 1.4. You can take a look yourself.
http://www.sysopt.com/overc/intelcpustats.html

 

[lifeguard1999]

I have a pv24x running a Tualatin 1.1 GHz overclocked to 1.4 GHz. It runs just fine, even if the BIOS has no idea what is going on (it reports it as a Pentium II ). I use a 9800 Pro and have played Quake III, Serious Sam I/II, and Far Cry on it.

 

[cobison]

Thanks for the info on the tualatin socket converter Kogan . Will this work with my Slot 1 mobo?. (I am a bit skeptical about putting a Celeron in there, but the performance is the bttom line.) If not, are there adapters that allow a Socket 370 CPU to work with my Slot 1 mobo? Also, thanks for the info on the video adapter.

Thanks for the info on the overclocking joelslaw. I have my current system?s voltage bumped up a bit without ever a problem and have no aversion to doing the same with another CPU (although my P3 533 EB I believe is a very un-overclokable CPU).

Since you were asking, I?ve got a Dell Precision M60. It has a 1.8 GHz Pentium M CPU and 1.0 GB RAM running Windows XP Professional. The graphics are powered by an NVIDIA Quadro FX Go1000 (128 MB of memory and 9.4 GB/sec bandwidth). It has a 15? viewable screen but I connect my ViewSonic PS790 (19?) to it when I play games at home. Rest assured, I have the display on the lowest quality setting in Doom 3, but it is quite playable (I do turn up the brightness to about 50%, though). I wish the laptop had a digital audio output so I could send it to my digital surround receiver that I have connected to my PC.

Thanks,
coBison

 

[cobison]

I was taking a look at GeForce 3 & 4 cards. The GeForce cards support 8x AGP while the '3' is only 4x. Since my P3V4X only supports 4x, would I see much benefit in gettin a GeForce4 card? Does more horsepower on the GeForce 4 cards become irelevant by the 'bottleneck' of the 4x AGP mobo?

Thanks,
coBison

 

[cobison]

I think I found the answer to my CPU question as I can get an ASUS S370-133 CPU Card for Socket 370 CPUs. Thanks for pointing me toward 512 MB RAM sticks joelslaw. Turns out that my mobo won't accept anything higher than 512 in each slot, so I'll probably grab two of them (mabey four if I can get a really good deal, for no other reason than to say I have it maxed out )

coBison

 

[joelslaw]

Originally posted by: cobison
Since you were asking, I?ve got a Dell Precision M60. It has a 1.8 GHz Pentium M CPU and 1.0 GB RAM running Windows XP Professional. The graphics are powered by an NVIDIA Quadro FX Go1000 (128 MB of memory and 9.4 GB/sec bandwidth). It has a 15? viewable screen but I connect my ViewSonic PS790 (19?) to it when I play games at home. Rest assured, I have the display on the lowest quality setting in Doom 3, but it is quite playable (I do turn up the brightness to about 50%, though). I wish the laptop had a digital audio output so I could send it to my digital surround receiver that I have connected to my PC.

running doom3 on a 1.8 ...... you're my hero

Originally posted by: cobison
(mabey four if I can get a really good deal, for no other reason than to say I have it maxed out)

bragging rights, gotta love 'em!

Well cobison, I wish you the best! Now I think I can officially say: (inthe words of exhibit) you've been pimped Oh and next time, don't wait 5 years to come see us!

 

[cobison]

I'm suprised a 1.8GHz CPU runs it as well but I probably just have lower standards for the framerates than most others aftter being stuck on my same machine for five years.

Thanks for the help! :thumbsup:

-coBison

 

[JonathanYoung]

Originally posted by: cobison
I was taking a look at GeForce 3 & 4 cards. The GeForce cards support 8x AGP while the '3' is only 4x. Since my P3V4X only supports 4x, would I see much benefit in gettin a GeForce4 card? Does more horsepower on the GeForce 4 cards become irelevant by the 'bottleneck' of the 4x AGP mobo?

Thanks,
coBison

GF4 cards were originally AGP 4X, but when the 8X slots came out, they GF4s were updated to 8X, mostly as a marketing thing. You'll definitely see much benefit from using a GF4.

 

[stevty2889]

Keep in mind a 1.8ghz Pentium-M is probably close to a 3ghz to 3.2ghz Pentium 4 in comparison, so it's really not that suprising. A geforce 4 ti 4200 would probably be a good card to use with that motherboard and a nice tualitan cpu. Remember, even 8x agp card will run in a 4x slot, they are backwards compatible and don't exactly use the full bandwidth of an 8x agp lost anyway.

 

[joelslaw]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
Keep in mind a 1.8ghz Pentium-M is probably close to a 3ghz to 3.2ghz Pentium 4 in comparison, so it's really not that suprising.

Intel's naming system is so screwy! Is there a chat or something where you can see them listed by actual performance?

 

[cobison]

I didn't know that about the GeForce 4 cards (advertised as 8x for marketing purposes), JonathanYoung.

Why is a 1.8 GHz M chip close to a 3 Ghz P4 guys? I thought the performance was basically the same as a P4 of the same speed but with lower current draw.

I agree about the tualitan stevty2889I, Kogan suggested that before and I plan on doing that. I just need to find an Asus S370-133so that I can install it into my Slot 1 board.

Thanks guys.

-coBison

 

[Hami]

Originally posted by: lifeguard1999
I have a pv24x running a Tualatin 1.1 GHz overclocked to 1.4 GHz. It runs just fine, even if the BIOS has no idea what is going on (it reports it as a Pentium II ). I use a 9800 Pro and have played Quake III, Serious Sam I/II, and Far Cry on it.

I tried e-mailing you about your setup but it was retruned, hopefully you see this.

I have the P3V4X also and am runnin a PIII 1ghz Slot 1 processor & currently a Radeon 7500, I just bought a Sapphire Radeon 9800 pro but have been unable to get it to work. The mobo just beeps video card not found and won't post, the card is good tested it on another system. Just wondering if you had any trouble getting that card to work on your mobo? I e-mailed ASUS tech and they said don't even try the new AGP cards on this mobo, it doesn't supply enough power to the AGP slot. In my searching for help on this I found out that there is an undocumented jumper on the mobo that increases the I/O voltage up to 3.6v could this be what was needed to make this work?

lifeguard1999 I could really use your help on this, I wanted to upgrade the card not wanting to build a new system right now.

Cobison if you don't want use an adapter then just pick up a 1ghz slot 1 proc like I did, got it off ebay. Although I havn't been succesful at OC'ing it yet, it's been a great setup, just finished playing HL2 all the way through with a little choppyness. Not bad for a DX7 vid card, mindyou I had alot of the graphics set to low and med, hehe.

 

[Trente]

Hami, I think your Radeon 9800 Pro should be supplied with 1.5V! The P3V4X is too old to support it. It fits in the slot, but doesn't meet the power requirments.

 

[Hami]

That's why I wanna know how the heck lifeguard got it to work!

 

[Hami]

So cobison what's the fastest vid card you've figured you could run on this mobo? I don't know hardly anything about models of G-force's I've always been a ATI guy, but it looks like I might need to look at nvidia.