Motherboard upgrade please advise

[rexking]

My father gave me the following computer. Specs:

P4 1.7 GHZ
512MB DDR SDRAM
PC CHips 920LR motherboard
Creative SB live 5.1
Geforce3 ti500

I've had it for two months and its stable, plays all games with no problems. However, I'm a trifle disappointed with the motherboard. According to the manual "This mainboard has a socket 423, VIA VT8753(P4X266) Northbridge and VT8233 Southbridge chipsets......"

Cant ask Dad any specs (he's passed on).

Anyway, will upgrading the motherboard bring me any speed improvements and take advantage of the great video card.

Have been reading AnnandTech's reviews on motherboards that are compatible with the DDR Ram. Will the P4 and RAM be compatible with any of those.

But the main question will they offer any GREAT improvement in speed and offer stability as well.

I appreciate any advice on this subject since my hardware knowledge is severely limited.

 

[Strawberrymom]

Well i have the GA-8IRXP and other than unclarified bios settings its nice and stable.

im even using the onboard lan without any issues

 

[AkumaBao]

Sorry to hear about your Father. You can always get a Socket 478 motherboard with an 850i chipset that will take more advantage of the performance you can receive from your hardware. The only problem is that the price of a 478 CPU is still a little pricy. I think you can now buy socket 478 boards with DDR, but I'm not sure. Sorry, I'm an AMD person. You could also try a AMD setup if that's what would suit you. Check the article on the AMD 2000+ on the home page to see the "price over performance" reviews. It really depends on what you want to do with your PC. It will show what you can get out of a P4 & Athlon XP's on certain applications. Hope that was of some help.

 

[rexking]

Thanks all.

 

[Duvie]

Look at the SIS645 it is scoring right up there with the highly touted P4 with rdram i850 platform...

Pick up the ECS P4S5a board for a great price at a lot of places...

What is so slow or disappointing about this board???