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New AMD and board- buy or wait for 333FSB,Barton,Hammer or forever?

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poldi1

Member
I decided to upgrade my system (Epox 8KHA+, Athlon2100, 512Mb Apacer) since I can sell the CPU, board and RAM to a friend.
Should I wait for the 333FSB Athlons, when will they come out? I dont think I want to wait till next year for the Bartons and Hammer, prolly cant afford those then anyway.
OR: Should I go for a 2,4 Thoroughbred-B as soon as its available here?
Should I go for CL2 PC2700 RAM (only available here from Corair-very expensive, or is 2,5 enough (Kingston).
Whats the best board for those things?

Thanks allready!

 
Thats an extremely fast system to be selling at this point, but if I was you I would wait a while and hope to get a 2400+ or a 2600+. Maybe you'll be able to overclock one of those enough to actually see a performace difference from the system you are selling. I'd go with pc 2700 ram, you'll be able to get more of an oc out of it.
 
poldi, are you selling your current system because your friend will pay you a high price and you're essentially getting a free or very cheap upgrade, or because you're trying to get a faster system and you're still going to be spending a few hundred $$ on the new system? You've already got a very fast system, and its unlikely that the performance increase you would see from anything that's available today would be enough to justifty the cost. I would recommend that you at least wait until the Hammers are in your price range before you upgrade.
 
As the people above have already mentioned, you already have a great CPU/mobo/memory setup. You wouldn't gain much from the 2400+, 2600+, or even the 333MHz FSB 2700+ and 2800+. You might notice some noticable performance differences from the Bartons, but they're a few months away.

What video card do you have? If you're looking for a performance increase as opposed to selling your system for a profit, then you might gain more from a simply video card upgrade.
 
Well people I am so sorry, but that happens when you are writing a post when you are dead tired and in the middle of then night. you start switching IMPORTANT numbers around! I have an athlon 1200 NOT 2100 ACK. STUPID! SORRY!

Please forgive me
 
Originally posted by: poldi1
Well people I am so sorry, but that happens when you are writing a post when you are dead tired and in the middle of then night. you start switching IMPORTANT numbers around! I have an athlon 1200 NOT 2100 ACK. STUPID! SORRY!

Please forgive me
Click to expand...

lol that does change things a bit. So it really comes down to how much you're gonna get for your current system, and whether any of your main apps are really starting to feel sluggish. A 1.2GHz Athlon is still a plenty fast system unless you're a hardcore gamer or do professional 3D graphics or other CPU intensive apps.
 
Well, if its an Athlon Thunderbird 1.2GHz, then you have to ask yourself if you're happy with the current performance you're getting. Yout CPU is still not obsolete yet, but its by no means a top performer, more like an entry-level to mid-range system. If you're unhappy about your performance and want the best system, get a P4. If you want the best system now while keeping your mobo and memory, get a Athlon XP 2200+. If you can wait, the 2400+ and 2600+ should be out soon, and would outperform the 2200+ by quite a bit, as well as running cooler and offering better overclockability. The 333FSB Athlons XP(2700+ and beyond) really bring nothing much to the table as you can unlock the existing Athlon XPs to get the 333MHz FSB as well.

Also, you still haven't mentioned your video card...
 
Thanks again for the replies!

Well I am not too happy actually with the performance, I like to turn everything up to max. with FSAA (quincux atm) and maybe Anisotropic filtering (not possible now) at 1024 to 1280 resoultions. I play GTA3, Arx Fatalis and EQ (which dont run to good) atm and looking forward to Asherons Call 2 (which surely wont run smooth).
I got a Geforce3 which I will also sell (not the Titanium one, the first version). Planning to get the Radeon9700Pro or maybe the NV30 (if its any good and if its available then).
Am I correct with this: the 2,4 Athlon is now Thoroughbred A mostly, then will be B, which is supposed to be better, then AMD will release 333FSB CPUs (dunno which frequenzies) then next year Barton core which has 512kb cache, then hammers? Took me quite some time and searching to figure that out, still not sure if thats correct. So I guess I will try to get a 2,4 Thorougbred B, since as you wrote its no use waiting for the 333FSB versions and i dont wat to wait for february or even march for the Bartons or Hammers (which will be too expensive anyway).
What do you think, that sound good?
Again the question: Is it very important to get PC2700 with CL2 or is 2,5 enough?
And: I think the P4 system would need 1066 RDRAM to be any good and thats too expensive, right?

Really! thanks again for your input, really appreciate it!
 
Oh cool! How could I unlock the 2400+ if I should decide to get one? Just use the BIOS or will I have to unlock some bridges like I had to do with the 1200 I am using atm.
And if I decided to get the 2400+ B, which board would you recommend?

Thaaaanks!
 
All Athlon XP's from 2400+ onwards will be Thoroughbred revision B's. There will be no revision A 2400+ and above. The current T-bred 2200+ and below are still rev A, but AMD has already stopped production of rev A and began production of the rev B for a few weeks now, so all future T-breds will be rev B. AMD will not produce any more rev A T-bred.

The 333MHz FSB T-breds will be launched at 2700+ speeds and beyond, somewhere in October. Bartons are simply these T-breds with 512KB L2 cache as opposed to 256KB L2 cache. They will be launched next year, and so will the Hammer.

The unlocking process of future T-breds will be the same as that of current T-bred/Palominos(Athlon XPs in general). This is different from your Thunderbird 1.2GHz, where you can just use a pencil to link the L1(?) bridges. To unlock the T-breds, you have to do some additional work, but AFAIK its still nothing drastic.

PC2700 with CL2 is preferred, if the price delta isn't large. It does provide a slight performance improvement, and will be able to overclock better.

A P4 Northwood system would outperform a comparable Athlon XP system, with DDR or RAMBUS memory. The Northwoods are just clocked too high, have a faster FSB and more L2 cache for the Athlon to compete against. The Athlons are however cheaper, and have a higher price/performance ratio.
 
My Opinion???...Don't upgrade man. You have a great system already. Also step down the FSAA ....I have a Pentium 4 2.13, CAS 2 512 RAM, and a ATI 8500 (non LE) and I still get hiccups if I run with all settings up and Anti Aliasing on all the way at 1024x768. If that is what is bothering you, your best bet is to just upgrade your Video Card. And with that I would wait too, to see how the NVidia NV30 turns out.
 
great input!
well atm, the P4 2,4B is the same price as the XP2400+ here. ATM I say).
Hmmm another hard decision again. Yuck! Did not know that a P4 is better, even with only DDR ram.....Geee.....
What motherboard is good for the P4 or AMD (Epox 8k3a+ or A7V?), for the P4 I got no idea...

sorry to bother you so much.
 
Originally posted by: poldi1
great input!
well atm, the P4 2,4B is the same price as the XP2400+ here. ATM I say).
Hmmm another hard decision again. Yuck! Did not know that a P4 is better, even with only DDR ram.....Geee.....
What motherboard is good for the P4 or AMD (Epox 8k3a+ or A7V?), for the P4 I got no idea...

sorry to bother you so much.
Click to expand...

Yup, DDR is a perfectly acceptable performance solution for P4s. PC2700 DDR is as fast as PC800 RAMBUS (actualy a bit faster) and not really much slower than PC1066 RAMBUS. The EPoX 8K3A+ is a good AMD board, but the newer 8K5A2/3+ is better, the A7V333 is also excellent, as are the Gigabyte 7VRXP and the Abit boards. On the P4 DDR front, you've got the Asus P4B533-V, the Abit BG7 and the EPoX 4G4A(I|+). Btw, if you're thinking about overclocking (those 3 boards are all great overclockers) then I would suggest either the 1.8A or the 2.26B. With the 1.8A you should be able to get at least 2.5-2.6GHz and a few lucky souls get over 2.7GHz with it. The 2.26B should hit 2.7-3GHz, but no overclock is guaranteed and there's always a very slight possibility of getting a "dud" that won't OC well at all.
 
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