need some advice for first big upgrade please!

[boing]

Hi, i currently have a PC100 BX Pro 100MHz board with a Celeron 466MHz and SDram. I was thinking of upgrading to an Asus A7V266 with an Athlon
1.4GHz (266MHz FSB) and DDRram. Could you let me know if this is a decent set up and are there any ancilliaries i should think of getting (extra cooling has been mentioned along with a 400W power supply)
Also does ram manufacturer affect performance badly? who is the best?

thanks.

 

[vikash]

with the Athlon 1.4 Ghz, you just can't go wrong! I would suggest you go for the ECS K7S5A mobo in place of the Asus. It's based on the Sis 735 chipset and offers great performance...but the icing on the cake is that it's only anout $70.

if you are not planning to o'clock, then get yourself a Retail box pack CPU.

cooling is important...get at least one 80mm inlet and one 80mm exhaust fans in the case.

as regards ram, you can never go wrong with Crucial. Plus they are real cheap.

what about the other components ??

 

[boing]

cheers vikash, i had heard that the new via 266a chipset was better than the sis, know much about this? is it even out yet?
by the way what about the power supply is 400W nessecary? what happens if i try to run with a lower rating?

 

[vampiro]

I would go for an AMD 761 chipset over the VIA, SiS, or ALi. My personal favorite is the 8K7A from EPoX, but I have heard that DFI offers a great mobo for less money. Other than that I would agree with everything vikash said. On the subject of the 400W PSU, it is probably a good idea.

 

[majewski9]

Yeah AMD 761 is a sweet chipset with very good performance and stability! Expensive though. The ECS K75SA is a sweet board and for 62$!

 

[boing]

could you guys clear something up for me? what is it that actually makes up the chipset? and would an AMD chipset always work best with an AMD chip?

 

[Wetling23]

No, an AMD chipset would not necessarily run better with an AMD chip than any other chipset. The chipset runs the board so the same chipset can have very different performance depending on which board you buy.

 

[Athlon4all]

K7S5A is great, but with KT266A on the horizion (Next week as a matter of fact), There's 3 confirmed boards using it, but there's gonna be loads more. The best will probably be Abit KR7-RAID. It's been in development for 6 months, they've been waiting for KT266A and now it's finally here. Another good board should be EPoX 8KHA+. The current 8KHA (using KT266) is a nice board on it's own.

<< and would an AMD chipset always work best with an AMD chip? >>

That used to be true with Intel CPU's but never was the case wityh AMD CPU's.

On the chipset. A chipset is basically what connects all the different parts of the computer together. A Chipset comprises of 2 Chips on the mobo, traditionally called the North and South Bridge's. The North bridge houses the Front Side Bus to the CPU, the Memory Bus, the AGP Bus (Video Card Bus), and in traditional chipsets the PCI bus (The bus for the White expansion slots on the mobo) is used to connect the 2 Bridge's, and then the Bus would continue to the PCI slots but now in modern chipsets there is a dedicated North-South Bridge connection. VIA's is called V-Link, SiS's is called MutIOL, ALi is using HyperTransport, etc. On to the South Bridge. The South Bridge in modern chipsets that uses dedicated connections to the North Bridge, houses the PCI Bus, On-board AC'97 sound codec, USB Ports, etc. So there you have it. The main 4 chipsets for the Athlon for a while will be VIA KT266A, SiS 735. ALi MAGiK B0, and nVidia's nForce.

 

[boing]

excellent, thanks Athlon i'm a bit overwhelmed by form factors, socket types, chipsets and bus speeds at the momoent so i'm gradually building up a picture of what i need. I don't want to leave it up to someone else as the last guy i did that with sold me a piece of crap!