new CPU for AV7133/KT133?

[RNB]

What's the comparative value of a new CPU on a AV7133 w/KT133 chipset vs a full barebones DDR/RDRAM upgrade if all I do is DIVX rip/compress?

Anyone have Athlon XP w/PC SDRAM benchmarks?

I've invested a lot into my KT133 system, with 728MB of PC133 SDRAM I'm hesitant to upgrade to DDR with the standards changing so much, but my T-bird 800 just isn't cutting it anymore.

ASUS says(under the CPU part) I can even use an Athlon XP 2100 w/BIOS upgrade.

If you need a $ limit to answer rationaly, let's say a soft limit of 250 USD.

Thanks in advance folks. FYI I never buy premium, usually at some vague bang/buck mark.

 

[Electro]

Athlon XP will decrease the wait time but Pentium 4 (Northwood) does compress multimedia files a little faster (shown in Anand Tech Review). This is not because of memory bandwidth. Pentium 4 (Northwood) has big cache and its enigneered for future multimedia mediums. My Athlon 800 'Classic' does very good on compressing multimeda though the processor is not the only one that does the work. Other devices such as hard drive models. A very fast hard drive that doesn't or needs minimal processor usage should be used. Buy a RAID controller card that has its own processor to do the job. Users that enable RAID within their motherboard's BIOS should not be used when he or she wants all the processor usage they can get. Big memory bandwidth is a waste in compressing files. RAMBUS or DDR memory should be used in gaming systems. Large capacity RAM should be used though programs don't really use a lot of memory during compression.

RNB, you can step down to an Athlon XP 2000 and a RAID controller card or buy a barebone Pentium 4 system.

My Athlon computer is not running any more because of problems. If anybody want to know more go to:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=800203&highlight_key=y

As you can see, I already look at some motherboards. Buying a Pentium 4 barebone system will cost you around $500 to $1000 US dollars. RNB, you already have a good and healthy motherboard. I would go the Athlon XP route.

 

[RNB]

Thanks! Exactly what I was looking for.

I've played with Promise SuperTrak SX6000 on a file server at work. RAID 5 w/4 disks, 8mb cached each. It's always impressed me, I'll try and benchmark it to see the difference vs. a typical UDAM 33 drive. link:storagereview

Didn't really think my HD could be a factor as well, I was under the assumption that UDMA anything pretty much solved processor load issues.

PS if I switch to PIO my T-bird 800 can't even play a DVD with my Radeon 8500.