Need advice (cheap upgrade)

[steimm]

Planning to sell some of my stuff in a computer and that is Motherboard+CPU, which means that I'm keeping the 512MB SDRAM Crucial.
So the I have to buy new of those...
How would you combo these? Remember, I live in Sweden and the prices maybe different from other countries:

CPU:
Duron 1.2GHz (or Duron 1.3GHz)
Athlon 1.0GHz(266MHz) (if I add some money I get a Athlon1100MHz (200MHz) or a Athlon 1.33GHz(266MHz) for almost the same price, but is it really much difference between 1.0 and 1.33 in terms of o/c?), does it matter if it is 200MHz or 266MHz FSB on the Athlon?

Motherboard:
ASUS A7V133-C
MSI K7T Turbo2
ASUS A7A266-E

What would be the best combination of CPU and Motherboard of those choices be for me?
Stability, O/C, Performance, Gaming is my main interests...



/steimm

 

[steimm]

Anyone?

 

[Deadlifter]

I've just completed a similar upgrade, in that I wanted to keep my PC133 RAM. I went the intel route and bought a celeron/tualatin 1.1A and an ABIT ST6 and tossed out the retail HSF and bought a Thermalright SK6 with the quieter Sunon fan.

By tweaking up the core voltage, I can run the CPU at 1.47 GHz which gives me benchmarks comparable to an Athlon 1800+ or a 2.0 GHz P4 (well at least a Williamette).

My rationale was that in addition to not wanting to buy new RAM, I also wanted to keep my Enlight 7237 case with 250W power supply. I suspect the AMD CPUs were going to need a 300W supply, and per the benchmarks I wasn't going to get much more performance out of them. The CPU was also only $66 in the USA, so it was cheaper than anything else I could buy. The motherboard was $85 and many web postings I found rated it very highly for stability and overclocking; I'm also used to ABIT boards so I felt comfortable with the purchase.

My primary interests are the same as yours, and now my Radeon 32DDR is the system bottleneck. Previously my celeron 566/850 couldn't keep the Radeon fed fast enough.

sorry if this answer wasn't helpful (since you wanted AMD advice) but I can definately see the improvement in my upgrade so I recommend you proceed with an upgrade.

 

[steimm]

Thx 4 the reply.

I've actually been thinkin of staying with Intel-based (always had Intel) but I'd like to try AMD for a while and see how it performs and acts.

For the moment I have a o/c'd rig CeleronII850@1275 MHz on a ASUS P3V4X and that is what I'm selling and buying new stuff... Maybe I shouldn't sell? But it's fun to try new things and just get it to work...

/steimm

 

[Smythie]

K7s5a-

I have two of 'em, one w/XP1600+ and one w/Duron 1.3 gig.
You can reuse your Sdram cause it takes either Sdram or DDram.
Works with bus/memory speeds of 100/100, 100/133 or 133/133

Faster than a striped ape on crack with ddr and XP 1600+ Duron is fast, too.

Stable and very cheap. Built in 10/100 nic and sound (never used the sound).

Downside is little o/c ability. You can download a program called Setfsb and
run the 133 fsb to 147. Makes my actual 1.4 gigahurtz run at 1.54.

Good Luck

 

[adlep]

Another voice for ECS K7S5A board. It is not on your list, it is cheap, and many people complain about it (I build around 10 systems using this board and no single glitch), but its cheap (around $55.00 in the US), it has 2 SDRAM slots AND 2 DDR RAM slots, so you have an option of leaving the RAM you currently have and then you can upgrade to DDR, SiS chipset used in it is fast, the entire board is fast, it has build in LAN (does the job and saves you some bucks as well), and sound(nothing special but it is), last but not least, it will support all the XP's and Durons including the one with the new core (Throughbreed).......
It will be perfect for your needs and much less expensive than the boards you listed....

 

[steimm]

Thx, but the downside of the ECS-board is the non-overclocking ability. The software that you are referring to, does it keep the settings or do I have to set the FSB each time I start the computer?

I've heard that it is possible to o/c (onlt FSB) through BIOS, is that true?

/steimm

 

[adlep]

You can download oc bios via www.ocworkbench.com but I never have done it. I ve heard that it adds couple of
o/c options in bios... It is true the ECS board is not design for overclocking, but if you need CHEAP and FAST board it's probably the best option...
It comes from the experience... About a year ago I was stupid enough to buy big fancy motherboard with RAID, which was "design"
for overclocking... Abit KT7A-RAID, so I bought it, and now it wont officially support XP's.. so I would have to get rid of it soon....
In my opinion, the fact that you can use various memory combinations in K7S5A, and that it supports ALL AMD T-bird, Duron, and XP processors is much more important that "overclocking", but of course it is just my opinion.....