HELP! upgrading system 1st time in 4 years!

[wintwu]

Hey guys,

I'm finally thinking of upgrading my system from a pentium III 450! and so is my brother and dad ahha.

Anyways we were thinking of getting the AMD 1600xp deal on newegg.

I had a few questions:
1. What's the best 3 motherboards that's not over $100 for this cpu and ddr ram.
2. I guess AMD only uses DDR ram, so which one is the best to get and what are the differences? (is max 266mhz?)
3. What's the best heatsink newegg sells (that's quite too and good enough for overclocking)?
4. How much better is a pentium same speed same ram? (cause the pentium is more expensive and i think so is the motherboard).


Thanks for any info

 

[Soulkeeper]

get some samsung pc2700 (333mhz) memory that seems to be the best stuff out right now
do NOT get ocz or some kinda cheap or overclocked stuff good memory is important if you want low cas latencies
as far as motherboards go i like the asus a7v333 (not sure on the price) there are a few other nice via kt333 chipset motherboards out there too (ie: epox, abit, soyo etc..)
boards with the kt400 chipset should be coming out soon (nforce2 as well...)
I was looking at the thermalright slk-800 all copper heatsinks at newegg they are pretty cool the ax-7 are alright too if you don't wanna spend as much and don't mind using a louder fan
i wouldn't bother getting a P4 but that's just me i like the price/performance ratio of the athlon's anyday
AMD just anouned their 2400+ and 2600+ which will be available next month and will drop prices on all their lower end cpu's but i doubt that's worth waiting for
the 1600+ or 1700+ are good deals
welp have fun

 

[klah]

A lot of people are going for that deal right now, XP1600+ for $54. The Asus board he mentioned is $118 at Newegg. If you want to save some money, and do not plan on overclocking, I would recommend the Shuttle AK35GT2 ($74). If you want to look at the KT333 motherboards at newegg go to: Computer Hardware --> Motherboards - AMD and then select ViaApolloKT333 in the pull-down menu. Like soulkeeper said get PC2700, Samsung is good as well as Crucial. If you decide to go with Crucial it may be cheaper to order it from www.crucial.com than newegg. You can look at the performance af an AthlonXP vs. Pentium4 here:http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1554&p=4 and continue looking through the article. The XP1600+ finished between the 1.8 and 1.9Ghz P4's most of the time.

Good Luck

 

[rancherlee]

I recommend the Asus a7v-266C motherboard with the Nforce chipset
ROCK SOLID STABLE and good memory bandwitdh, also will run 167FSB very easy with that 1600+ from newegg if you into overclocking.

 

[dannybin1742]

xp 1600 + epox 8k3a + samsung pc2700ram (all from new egg)= great ocer- has tons of memory and voltage options. i got all my stuff there, currently running 166X10 @default voltage

the great thing about the epox board is that it ACTUALLY READS THE INTERNAL DIODE TEMPS FROM CPU. so what you see is actual temperature.

this is one of the only boards that does this, witht eh exception of maybe the av7333 (but thats still up in the air)

 

[o1die]

The asus n-force board has dropped to only $79 at newegg with free shipping.