Help push an aging system to the (safe) limit.

[Procrastinator]

I have a ABIT KT133A mobo and 1.2 Athlon (AXIA), 512 mb PC 133 RAM and 64 DDR GeForce GTS. I don't want to spend much money so a new Mobo/chip/Video card is not really an option. What is the fastest chip I can get with my mobo? I've read so many different accounts (I have version 1 of the mobo by the way so I am limited I think). Also, is it even worth it to get another chip if I can overclock the 1.2 safely to higher levels? I am not a heavy user so I don't need the fastest latest but multi-tasking is a bit difficult (ripping a cd and playing an MP3 taxes my system). Will adding more RAM even help at this point (I think the bottleneck is my CPU)?

Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated, and again, please do not suggest buying a new Mobo and Chip, because that will follow with a new Video card and new memory and I don't think that's a cost effective solution right now.

 

[WobbleWobble]

You can probably overclock your CPU to 1.33GHz, maybe 1.4GHz, probably not any higher. Thunderbird based Athlons were very hot chips and hard to cool. I'm not sure about your motherboard, but most then didn't have core voltage adjustment. You may have to do some modifications to your CPU to do that. You probably could take a Palamino chip, but the differences wouldn't be that noticable unless you got the chip for free.

 

[Wuzup101]

I had my 1ghz (AXIA) tbird running at 1425mhz (150x9.5) for quite a while with 384mb of crucial cas2 ram. You shuold be able to easily hit 1.4 or more... 1.5 isn't out of the question with decent cooling. They do run hot but should run safe on 1.85volts if temps are in check.

On a side note... my brother has my old system w/ the tbird in it... it's @ stock speeds/voltages now I believe (or perhaps 1.33ghz). He's running a Radeon 8500 in there w/ 384mb of ram and he doesn't ever complain about it having problems. (dvd playing + mp3 ripping + word + internet + etc... was never a problem when I used the system...) Perhaps you just need an update of your system drivers or a fresh os install. Obviously your system isn't the most powerful compared to today's computers; however, it should easily be able to do those tasks without a problem.

 

[maluckey]

Check out the ABIT-USA Forums. They have KT7/KT7a users with Athlon XP-1700+, T-Bred B CPU's, running just fine. Multipliers of 21x are available with this board. A newer CPU, and light overclocking would be less than 80 dollars, and would breathe much new life into your setup.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: maluckey
Check out the ABIT-USA Forums. They have KT7/KT7a users with Athlon XP-1700+, T-Bred B CPU's, running just fine. Multipliers of 21x are available with this board. A newer CPU, and light overclocking would be less than 80 dollars, and would breathe much new life into your setup.

I agree, if your motherboard will handle it, I think a T-bred would be a good investment, especially since you'll be able to move it later to a good, cheap nForce2 board like this Biostar M7NCD, which is only about $60-65, including shipping.