Comparison: AMD Processors & "smoothness"

[elfnumber1]

Currently I am running an Abit KT133 board with the Athlon TBird 1.0gHz and 196mb PC133 ram. It's not nearly as smooth as my Athlon XP based system. This is what I've been considering and what I've recently aquired either free from a friend or cheaply:

ECS K7S5A (sis 735 I think)
PNY 256mb DDR PC2100 (generic basically)

Will this increase "smoothness" (ie: internet browsing, multitasking, normal usage, etc.) if I were to put these in with the TBird 1.0gHz compared to the Abit and PC133.

Oh yes: and will the processor really make that much of a difference? i'd rather save the 60 bucks on an XP and stick with the tbird, but i would also rather have something that'll make my system smoother.

Let me know your advise! Thanks!

elfnumber1

 

[BDawg]

Originally posted by: elfnumber1
Currently I am running an Abit KT133 board with the Athlon TBird 1.0gHz and 196mb PC133 ram. It's not nearly as smooth as my Athlon XP based system. This is what I've been considering and what I've recently aquired either free from a friend or cheaply:

ECS K7S5A (sis 735 I think)
PNY 256mb DDR PC2100 (generic basically)

Will this increase "smoothness" (ie: internet browsing, multitasking, normal usage, etc.) if I were to put these in with the TBird 1.0gHz compared to the Abit and PC133.

Oh yes: and will the processor really make that much of a difference? i'd rather save the 60 bucks on an XP and stick with the tbird, but i would also rather have something that'll make my system smoother.

Let me know your advise! Thanks!

elfnumber1

I'm not sure what you mean by smoothness. My primary machine is a PIII 933 and I don't notice any lack of smoothness from it from games or general use.

 

[Markfw]

You need to specify more details about your system, video card especially, and what type of activity seems "not smooth", and what your definition of smooth really is. I don't know what speed XP you are using for comparison either. With 196 meg of ram and a 1 ghz tbird,most every single application I can think of should be smooth. As you add multitasking tasks, this could get very slow on any machine. Games are another story. A lot of todays games require all the CPU, video and memory you can afford!

 

[Floydian]

lol, i thought he was talking about the tops of the die's, not err, "smoothness"

BTW what do you mean

 

[zephyrprime]

probably has more to do with your operating system and disk system than your processor.

 

[flood]

i think what you want is a scsi hard drive :-]

 

[Bovinicus]

I definitely noticed a more responsive Windows environment when moving from SDR to DDR. There are also some performance gains in terms of framerate and such. Multi-tasking is also improved. As well, the motherboard you are using uses a dated chipset, therefore more performance gains will be noticed in that sense. Of course, your ABIT board if far more tweakable than the ECS board.

 

[Adul]

people say that about a p4 system, but i don't get it either. if it is faster I will take notice wherere the cpu make a difference sped wise.

 

[gared]

If what u meant with smoothness is response level, then what u need is bigger ram (to reduce swapping) and faster HDD. My old system (duron 750, abit kt7, 512 MB) worked perfectly without hiccup doing browsing, playing music or video, etc. But if you want the highest response level while doing many cpu-intensive apps, you should consider dual proc system like I am using right now.

Other thing to consider is, the operating system. Use w2000 or wxp instead of w98 or wme. The first two os multitask lot better than the last two.

 

[elfnumber1]

Ah, THANKS for all the feedback! What I mean by "smoothness" is the feel of doing day-to-day things on your computer. Ok let me give you an example as to what I was experiencing previously:

I would browse the web and listen to mp3's at the same time (IE 6.0 & winamp). Nothing else is in startup or loaded/running. I would get skips in my music while the webpages would change. That I attributed to my hdd, so I swapped it out for another one.

This is what I'm running now: the other:

ABit KT133 asus k7v (?)
1.0gHz tbird xp 1700+
196mb pc133 (@pc100) crucial 512mb pc2100
40gb 7200rpm maxtor 40gb 7200rpm maxtor
gf3 (64mb ddr) gf3 ti200 (64mb ddr)

Now the problem with the skipping mp3's aren't happening anymore. But the hdd makes a reading sound (it's actually louder than that, it sounds almost scratching), and it feels a bit slower than my other system, which is the exact same hdd.

ANYHOW, the 1gHz system just doesn't seem as smooth, it could be that the speed difference of the processor is involved and possibly the ram as well. But I'm positive it's not the OS since I've tried winxp on the 1gHz and it was really lagged. What I'm asking, more specifically this time, is if I were to purchase an athlon XP (say the XP 1500+ since it's the cheapest) would this be nearly as smooth as the xp 1700+??

elfnumber1

 

[elfnumber1]

I definitely noticed a more responsive Windows environment when moving from SDR to DDR. There are also some performance gains in terms of framerate and such. Multi-tasking is also improved. As well, the motherboard you are using uses a dated chipset, therefore more performance gains will be noticed in that sense. Of course, your ABIT board if far more tweakable than the ECS board.

This is what I expected, but then I've been getting mixed emotions about the ram. Also about the CPU.

I'm not concerned with the tweakability of the board since I do not want to overclock nor do I care for much of the other features that the ABit has over the ECS. I would also think that the chipsets would be a considerable factor involved.

elfnumber1

 

[DeRusto]

If you want to know what parts to change in order to get more of this 'smoothness', I would say that a new motherboard that supports DDR ram and MORE ram, at least 256mb, would do the trick.

The processor should be plenty fast to keep up with these every-day uses.

 

[Bovinicus]

More memory, a faster harddrive, or faster memory (DDR) would be your best bet in terms of improving general application performs under Windows. Games will be affected more positively by a CPU upgrade. 1GHz is definitely fast enough for general use and reasonable multi-tasking.

 

[elfnumber1]

Ok, I'm not going to upgrade the CPU. It boils down to this: will the improvement be worth the $65 for the new CPU? And I think everyone would agree with me here, that it wouldn't be worth it.

Well, thanks for all the input guys I'm gonna be "upgrading" it tomorrow!

elfnumber1

 

[Mavrick007]

I think you will notice an improvement in upgrading to a newer mobo with the newer chipset and ddr ram (at least 256megs) especially if you are using WinXP or Win2000.

The cpu probably will not give you as much of an effect from going from the 1ghz Tbird to a 1500+ XP, but if you went for say a 1800+ or a 1900+ minimum, I think you would notice a big performance boost (53-60% faster cpus) and it might be worth the upgrade to you. I usually don't suggest upgrading a cpu at the present if you already have a 1Ghz or better cpu or if the tech isn't at least twice as fast but it really depends on what you use your machine for and what is important to you.