Athlon XP users....help needed

[TheMafioso]

Hi Guys,

I have an Athlon XP 2100+ CPU(tbred-b) on KM400 based motherboard with 1 GB RAM and geforce 6600gt AGP graphics card.
I use it to do light gaming, but new games don't run properly like for eg NFS MW runs a little jerky, lowering video settings dosen't help much eg even if i lower resolution from 1280x960 to 1024x768 and turn off AA, the little jerks don't go away.

A friend of mine adviced me to get nforce 2 motherboard, as he said its got a dual channel memory controller, and it would increase the system performance by quite a bit.

So i want to know, how much of a performance gain, i should expect from changing to this motherboard.

Regards

 

[Peter]

Dual channel memory does exactly nothing to an Athlon XP system - the CPU won't use the bandwidth.

Newer games are jerky because the CPU is way weak, the graphics card is lower midrange, and presumably the hard disk isn't exactly fast either.

 

[TheMafioso]

...But in some reviews of a7n8x(nforce 2) board, i've seen great increase in performance ov vi boards.
For eg. in Hard OCP Review fps in gaming benchmarks increase about 20fps

But there are also some reviews like Ocworkbench review in which gaming fps don't increase that much.
I'm really confused...

 

[cmrmrc]

going from KM400 to nforce2 will give you a pretty good boost in performance as in games...

I went from nforce2 to SIS741 which is pretty close to a KM400 or maybe worse...and i can tell you theres a big drop in performance in games that are really cpu dependant...for example cs:source...with nforce2 i could play with around 25 bots but with SIS741, i can't put more than 15bots or it lags way to much....

 

[iggybeans]

Actually, SIS has a faster IDE controller and VIA has one of the best single channel memory contollers. Personally I'd stick with a board based on one of those chipsets (I own KM400 and SIS748 based motherboards). Besides the ECS and the Asrock motherboards I own both have native SATA controllers.

The problem is probably the processor or a slow video card. Since he has an 8X AGP slot an upgrade should be fairly cheap. XP-M processors are cheap, plentiful, overclock REALLY well (like 2.4 GHz EASY), and are compatible with some socket A MB bios'. That would also make a good upgrade path.

Alternately, perhaps excess software, adware or a virus is slowing his machine down. That's definately worth looking into.

BTW - A64s clock cycle for clock cycle are much more powerful processors. Since I have purchased several S754 processors recently (at prices that make buying a new socket A system uneconomical) THIS is really the way to go.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: cmrmrc
going from KM400 to nforce2 will give you a pretty good boost in performance as in games...

I went from nforce2 to SIS741 which is pretty close to a KM400 or maybe worse...and i can tell you theres a big drop in performance in games that are really cpu dependant...for example cs:source...with nforce2 i could play with around 25 bots but with SIS741, i can't put more than 15bots or it lags way to much....

The KM400's memory controller is quite good, throughput delta to NF2 is about 3%, even when the latter runs dual channel. With the internal graphics disabled, there won't be any mentionable difference in real life performance.

The main bottleneck in the setup is the CPU - we're talking 1.6 GHz on 133 MHz bus here.

If you want to spend $80 to improve something, put a Sempron 2800 in it and it'll be substantially faster.

 

[tcsenter]

Actually, SIS has a faster IDE controller and VIA has one of the best single channel memory contollers. Personally I'd stick with a board based on one of those chipsets (I own KM400 and SIS748 based motherboards).

KT/KM400 memory controller was not as good as the KT600's. The disparity between NF2 and KT400 was measurably higher than KT600. I agree though that a CPU upgrade would net more improvement than swapping to NF2, maybe even a HDD upgrade if he is using a 5400RPM model or an older drive. Any KM400 board should support 333MHz FSB processors up to XP3000+ or Sempron 3000+.

 

[TheMafioso]

I'm using 7200 rpm HDD.
Thanx for the help guys...i think i'll wait for some more time and do a complete system overhaul with Dual Core CPU then

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: tcsenterKT/KM400 memory controller was not as good as the KT600's. The disparity between NF2 and KT400 was measurably higher than KT600. I agree though that a CPU upgrade would net more improvement than swapping to NF2, maybe even a HDD upgrade if he is using a 5400RPM model or an older drive. Any KM400 board should support 333MHz FSB processors up to XP3000+ or Sempron 3000+.

From KT/KM400 to NF2, you'll see little difference if you run them both at 133 or 166 MHz - which is the kind of CPU we're talking about here. Yes true, KT600 and ultimately KT880 had faster RAM controllers, however neither that nor an NF2 will do anything mentionable unless you also put a 200 MHz FSB processor in.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: TheMafioso
I'm using 7200 rpm HDD.
Thanx for the help guys...i think i'll wait for some more time and do a complete system overhaul with Dual Core CPU then

That, or look at those combo deals Fry's are regularly flogging - socket-754 boards with processors. That gives you a massive speed boost for much less than $100, even though it's today's baseline system.

E.g.

http://shop4.outpost.com/product/4705559?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

 

[cmrmrc]

actually i think that the nforce2 IDE controller is better...since ive change to SIS741, my xp boot up is a lot slower compared to my nforce2 board...

 

[Peter]

That's funny because SiS IDE controllers have been the fastest of them all (and still are). Your problem is elsewhere.