Athlon XP 1700+ vs. Celeron D 2.4GHz

[Shawn]

Is there a significant difference between the two? My sister has an old Athlon XP system and I was going to replace it with a Celeron D 2.4GHz system I had because I thought it would be significantly faster. However I was looking at some benchmarks and it appears the Athlon XP is actually very fast.

I was going to switch over anyway but I keep getting blue screens saying IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL when both sticks of ram from the Athlon system were installed. But when each stick was in individually it worked fine. 😕 (The only thing I can think of is the old mobo didn't support dual channel memory, but this one does)

If the Celeron isn't much faster or not faster at all then I'll just let her keep the Athlon system.

 

[dguy6789]

A Celeron D 2.4 should be a good bit faster than the XP 1700+. Some motherboards are picky with regards to having memory on both sides of the stick and or certain combinations of memory with different layouts. Maybe that could be the issue?

 

[Shawn]

Hmm, one stick has memory on both sides and the other doesn't. I just set "DRAM Multiple Page Mode" to OFF in the bios which I am guessing is dual channel memory. Hopefully that'll fix it.

 

[Blain]

The DIMMs are different configurations.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Blain
The DIMMs are different configurations.

Well how to I make everything work together nicely?

 

[Shawn]

Disabling dual channel memory fixed the BSODs, but is there anyway I can get the 2 sticks to work together in dual channel? I have all the other memort settings in the BIOS set to Auto.

 

[heyheybooboo]

I think you will get a better performance boost from bumping the FSB as opposed to worrying about your RAMs in dual channel.

 

[0roo0roo]

oy...those are both slow. i doubt theres much difference between the two to be honest.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
I think you will get a better performance boost from bumping the FSB as opposed to worrying about your RAMs in dual channel.

The processor, the ram, or both?

The ram is only 2 sticks of 256MB DDR 266. I had 2 512MB of DDR 400 in this computer before but I took them out to upgrade my dad's computer.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: Shawn
The processor, the ram, or both?

Yes.

Um, you just doing this to save a few bucks or what? Cause for not much cash (<$100) you can get quite a fast set of innards these days...

EDIT: Ok, so it's $105 after rebate... *shrug*
X2 5000+ $50
Foxconn A74MX-K $40AR
Crucial 2x1GB $15