CPU upgrade from 900 to 1.4GHz worth it??????

[MyGiggaHurts]

HI, I have a AMD 900 T-Bird on a Epox 8kta3 mobo, two ?s, my mobo manual says 1.2GHz is the limit, the Epox site says 1.4Ghz and I saw a review online that says 1.666GHz, how fast of a cpu should I put on there and is it worth upgrading over my 900? I just installed a PNY NVidia 4 4400 and I would like to squeeze some more time out of this mobo if possible. Thanks for any help and advice!!!!

 

[Super6]

Check the Epox site for bios updates which may provide some info.

Super6

 

[Frosty3799]

1.4's are nice, i did a 900- to - 1.4 upgrade late last summer

i am enjoying it quite a bit.... only thing is i also upgraded to a DDR mobo at that time, and noticed some performance increase there also.

Josh

 

[Mitzi]

CPU upgrade from 900 to 1.4GHz worth it??????

I'd say no. I have 2 machines a Athlon 750@1000Mhz and an Athlon 1.4@1.53Ghz - I don't think the speed difference between the two machines is that great (well the Athlon 1.53 is faster but thats because it has four times the memory of the 1000Mhz machine). If I were you I'd save up the cash and buy a new motherboard and Athlon XP2000 or something when the price comes down more.

 

[dunkster]

What Mitzi said.

I upgraded from PIII600@800MHz to XP1600@1558MHz and I can't say that gameplay in any of my games is dramatically different.

The cost of a top-line video graphics card would have provided more visible improvement in game-play than the cost to replace cpu/mb/ram, at about half the expense.

In my experience, the only really dramatically visible improvements have been graphics card and monitor upgrades.

Hope this helps!

 

[hoihtah]

i second the notion of waiting.
you should be able to push your 900 tbird up to about 1.1-1.2ghz... air cooled.
given the fact that you have an older mobo with 200mhz fsb cpu, going to say kt266a with 266mhz fsb cpu will give you some improvement.
but it's not anything to write home about.

although at times it's very difficult to resist...
i try to hold off on upgrades until something at least 2-2.5x faster unit comes out.
meaning with your 900mhz system... i'd hold off until something in 1.8-2.25ghz system comes out.

keep in mind even if you were to purchase the newest line of xp cpu... xp2100+... it's less than 1.8ghz.

so i'd wait till Thoroughbred comes out if you want to stick with amd.

if you don't mind crossing the street and head back to the pentium world...
i'd recommend going with pentium 4 1.8a northwood core.

i got mine running at 2.7 ghz.
i got up to 2.79ghz... almost 1000mhz more than what it's spec'ed out for.

 

[emjem]

I don't see how we can answer your question without knowing what you use your computer for. If you just do email and surf the net you already have more than you need. If you do intensive graphic work you need as much power as you can afford.

I jumped from 1 gig to 1.4 and I saw a big time improvements in my graphics applications. And online Quake III performance was significantly improved.