Must resist upgrade urge... Hmmm... XP 1900+ looks good... Help me decide on a new mobo... or wait?

[Eug]

Dammit I have to reformat Windows XP. As you can see from this thread, my peripherals are misbehaving.

Since I have to reformat anyway, I'm considering a new CPU. I've noticed that for simple things even like menu fades in XP it's dog slow now. (Is that the CPU or the video?) The only problem is I'd have to get a new mobo and new memory as well. ie. $$$. How feasible is it to get a reaonsable upgrade for $425, or maybe $500 with a new Matrox G450 Dual Head? (I have a Radeon LE now but I don't even have a fan on it since I never game on it anymore.) I'm a bit out of the loop these days, with my Celeron 533A@880 on BX. I probably wouldn't overclock much but I'd definitely would want an overclockable board, with 512 MB RAM (preferably non-RAMBUS).

Here is my rig.

I like the idea of an XP 1900+ plus DDR, but I'm not sure which mobo. I'm a little apprehensive about VIA boards in general. Out of two I've built in the past, one had some weird driver issues. (Then again my VIA chipset Iwill Firewire card works fine it seems.) And I flat out refuse to buy an Abit board.

How about the A7S333? Built in Firewire would be nice, but I already have a Firewire card. I don't care about on-board audio and would prefer to use my Live! with Live!Drive. RAID would be nice in the future but I'd probably just get an IDE RAID card. This would be for RAID 1 not 0, for my data drives, not my boot actually.

Or maybe I'll just wait it out until it's HAMMER time...

 

[joohang]

Get a new Mac.

 

[Adul]

i'd wait for the hammer. are you using the lsatest video drivers? just curious, but you should have enough speed there to make it by.

 

[MichaelD]

Well, we won't get into the whole "should I wait?" thing, since we all know the answer to that one.

I was in a similar situation a few months ago. I did wait for prices on DDR mobos/Athlon XPs to come down. Luckily, I bought 512mb of Crucial DDR last summer (!) so I had the DDR already.

I went with the Shuttle AK35GTR for the mobo. It has everything I wanted and got rave reviews from everyone, including Anand. The Shuttle is extremely overclockable and has been stable for me with the limited OCing I've done so far. I'm too busy to have time to "experiment", and when I do have some free time, I game. Anyway:

I got an AthlonXP 1800 to go along w/it and it's humming along smoothly now at stock speeds with just a FOP32-1 on the CPU.

The Shuttle was much cheaper than either the Abit or the Epox boards (at the time I purchased) and had more features than both. The Shuttle has excellent 5.1 onboard sound and even comes with the necessary headers (I use a SBLive though) should you needthem.

As far as the KT333 chipset goes, I can't talk to that subject since I've no experience with it. I do know that REAL PC2700 is rarer than $3-bills these days though. So let that factor into your equation.

The move from SDR to DDR is nothing short of amazing. I went from a "fast" 1GHz Athlon B (100FSB) and SDR to a 1.53GHz (133FSB) and DDR and the difference is readily apparent. Click an icon and the program is open almost faster than the vidcard can draw the images. It's great.

Basically, as long as you stick with one of the Top-3 DDR boards (Abit/Shuttle/Epox) you 've no worries.

Hope this helps, somewhat.

 

[Eug]

<< Get a new Mac. >>

Heh, I am considering an iMac G4, but as a second computer not my primary one. There are some things on a Mac that just can't be done easily on a PC, and vice versa. PCs are generally faster for hard core crunching type of stuff though. I already have a G3 iBook though.



<< Basically, as long as you stick with one of the Top-3 DDR boards (Abit/Shuttle/Epox) you 've no worries. >>

I generally avoid Abit now. My friends have had too many troubles with them.



<< As far as the KT333 chipset goes, I can't talk to that subject since I've no experience with it. >>

The board I was talking about has a Sis.



<< i'd wait for the hammer. >>

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but since I have to reformat anyway......

Hmmm...