PIII 1 Gig upgrade, worth it?

[gunf1ghter]

I have been running a PIII 700mhz processor for about a year now. I have had it overclocked to 933mhz (133mhz fsb) and it seems to do pretty well but I have noticed the occassional instability problem (games occasionally crash, ocassional CD burning probs, etc).

PIII 1 ghz processor is down to $200. Seems like a damn good deal. Would it make more sense to do this, or to just replace the entire Mobo with an Asus A7V with integrated RAID and run an Athlon?

Keep in mind I run Win2K (and probably XP down the road) and need something thats completely compatible.

 

[RaysMD]

I was in the same boat as you a month back.

Upgraded by P3 700E to a 1GHz P3. Didn't seem much of a benefit. So, I gave the chip to a family member. Bought, an Iwill KK266 with a 1.33GHz Tbird. Now, I'm running at 1.47GHz with no problems. I'm running win2k also. No probs. The VIA chipset took a little more effort to make it stable, but it's possible. Just read up a little and you'll be fine. The Iwill is an excellent board. Read all the reviews on it. anandtech, amdmb, etc.


RaysMD

 

[gunf1ghter]

Ray,

Without getting into a lot of specific details I have been reading a lot about the VIA chipset (specifically the northbridge) being unstable with Win2K SP1. Did you have to load SP2 RC or a SP2 hotfix to make the board stable?

I was actually considering the Asus A7V133 motherboard since I don't know if I want to spring for DDR plus having onboard RAID 0 would be quite nice.

 

[RaysMD]

Iwill also makes a RAID version, the KK266-R.


Yes, I had to do a lot of things to get it stable.

1. Latest Via 4in1 drivers
2. SP2 hotfix by Microsoft
3. USB Filter
4. George's patch for SB Live and ATA100 problems.

After that it's all fine. Take a look at the Iwill FAQ. It's pretty comprehensive. Iwill KK266 FAQ


RaysMD

 

[gunf1ghter]

OK, this just seems kinda weird to me. The KK266 board doesn't support DDR? Why do they call it a 266? I guess I'm just confused.

 

[Rand]

They call it "266" because it provides support for the 266MHz FSB Athlon's as well as the 200MHz FSB Athlons.

 

[gunf1ghter]

OK, so is there a good motherboard for the Athlon 266 chips that has DDR support?

 

[TuffGuy]

the KA266 supports ddr. (i think)

 

[gunf1ghter]

Yeah, I just found that one, looks like it has dual processor support though, which I will almost certainly never need.

 

[TuffGuy]

dual processor? wft are you looking at? ka266

 

[gunf1ghter]

Cool, know anyone whose running win2k with that chipset? I know win2k has kind of shaky support for non intel chipsets right now.

 

[TuffGuy]

sorry, can't help you on that one... you might want to post in the OS forum.

 

[lifeguard1999]

Back to the original question...

It depends on what you are going to use it for. Office Apps ... no. FPS games like Quake 3 ... maybe (but your video card is the bottleneck).

If you have $200 to burn ... do it.

 

[lifeguard1999]

I take it back. Don't spend the money to upgrade yet. It looks like Intel will cut prices later this month.

Inquirer article

 

[Pers]

ok....first off the KA266 is the Ali Magic chipset, which does support DDR. BUT there is NO such thing as a dual-processor chipset for AMD systems.

Anyways, the ALi Magic chipset isn't the greatest DDR chipset (actually, probably the worst). But, i think Iwill only uses Ali Magic chipsets for their DDR boards.

There are many other mobo companies offering better choices for DDR. As of now, the most successful boards seem to be based on the AMD 761 chipset..

 

[gunf1ghter]

well, actually there IS a dual cpu Iwill board, I saw the review and could clearly see that it had two sockets.

as to what I am going to use the new rig for, well gaming of course!