Please analyse what's the slow part of my system!!

[scarfase99]

Gigabyte GA-7dx (AMD 761 Chipset)
Athlon XP 2000+
2 x 256mb DDR 2100
40gb 7200 RPM Maxtor
80gb 7200 RPM Seagate
ATI Radeon 8500LE 64mb

i have to think it's the motherboard, but does motherboard really make that much difference in speed? i've yet to get anything close to standards in other benchmarks like Sandra, PC Mark, 3dmark. :-(

 

[mechBgon]

What kind of 3DMark2001 scores are you getting? Should be around 7000 to 8000, I'd think.

 

[scarfase99]

7179.... but my PC Mark and Sandra were much lower

 

[scarfase99]

and the main question, HOW much impact on speed does a motherboard have (i don't overclock)

 

[floccus]

but does motherboard really make that much difference in speed?

YES!!! The chipset is what interfaces the cpu with the rest of your system. The most important part is the memory controller. A good memory controller can reduce latency and supply the cpu with the data necessary for it to do what it does. The 761 was developed by AMD as workable chipset. They don't have the resources to create a truly evolutionary chipset like the nForce2 or even the KT600. Basically your board is hurting you, and you'd see improvement by upgrading to an nForce2 board, especially due to the dual channel DDR. You might want to get some new ram too... PC2100 is about to hit retirement soon and some PC2700 will help you out. Also, which HD is the OS on? Depending on the seek times and such, you could be losing a little performance. But mainly, yeah, an newer chipset based boad will help you out a lot.

 

[floccus]

THG: Athlon now and then

Here, give this a read... it pretty much will tell you everything you wanted to know. I quote the following

The fact that an important part of increasing performance has to do with chipsets and memory technology is not often discussed.

Chipsets are importante... perhaps more important than everything but the cpu itself.

 

[mechBgon]

Just my 2 cents' worth: when I'm reading a review and I see Sandra or PCMark benchmarks, I don't even bother looking. I just go "

" and click "Next Page."

 

[rogue1979]

I have a SiS 746 running at 198MHz fsb speeds. I also have three Abit KG7 (761 chipset) motherboards running. Make sure you have the correct AGP and IDE drivers. Running around a 150MHz fsb with optimized memory timings gives good performance. Games and 3DMark aren't that far off the 400MHz DDR performance of a SiS 746 or nForce2 for that matter. Memory benchmarks will look dismal in comparison, but in real life office apps, gaming and everyday stuff the performance difference isn't nearly as much as those synthetic benchmarks suggest.

If I ignore all the benchmarks, I can't tell a much of a difference between my SiS 746 @ 396MHz ddr / 2300MHz and my 8 year old son's AMD 761 @ 280MHz ddr / 2100MHz. We are both running 128MB GF4 Ti4200's at or near Ti4600 speeds. If you are running a Radeon 9700 Pro overclocked than maybe the extra motherboard speed and memory bandwidth are actually needed. Some people think they need this speed, I had a 9700 Pro and wasn't overally impressed.
I only invested in the ECS L7S7A2 because it was only $66 shipped, and my 2300MHz cpu is a $72 1700+ t-bred "B" 1.5v cpu.