Processor Upgrade? 1.4 T-bird to XP 1900, Worth it?

[mjolnir2k]

Hi All,
I am in the process of debating the merits of upgrading my CPU. I am going to switch my video card from the GF3 to the GF4 and am thinking an XP would be a better match.

The setup:
See my sig for my spec's. I will be keeping everything except the video card.

Your Opinion here:
Is this upgrade worth the investment in Money and Time? Why or Why not?

NOTES:
I am limited to a 1900 / 2000 due to my MOBO (which I will still have to figure out how to flash the bios to accept the XP, which it will do up to a XP2000,..but that's another question for another day.)

The CPU I have now is the AYHJA 1.4 T-Bird (see sig) that OC's well and is very dependable.

Thanks in advance for your insight.
-Mj

 

[EKAtBzboyz]

well xp1900=1.6ghz
you are at 1.533 (same as xp1800+)

athlon xp has sse instructions whereas tbirds dont, that would increase performance

but i think you should hold out until you can upgrade the mobo and the cpu and ram

why, because as long as you have pc133, its not taking advantage of the videocards capabilities and cpu

maybe the new nforce2, xp2400+, and pc3200 ram would be a better choice in the long run (unless you plan to upgrade later on to something like that)

you can upgrade to geforce 4 now if you wish, but hold off on the cpu upgrade till you can do cpu/mobo/ram imo

//edit
btw are you sure you cant get that tbird up higher? (especially with that heatsink/stepping it should be able to i think..)

 

[JSSheridan]

IMO, for gaming purposes, I doubt the change would give you a noticeable boost. I say this only because your memory would hold the CPU back. Perhaps a change to DDR memory might give you a comparable improvement, that would be my first move. You could probably hold off on upgrading the processor until July 03. Hope this helps. Peace.

 

[jaybee]

Keep the T-bird. Save the $ for DDR.

jaybee

 

[Killrose]

Which GF4? It would not be worth upgrading to the XP1900+ if you are now at 1.53gig with the old bird. Sure you would see an improvement. You might want to think about just getting an overclockable XP 1600+ and pushing it to 1900+/2000+ speeds? That's the only way i'd do it.

 

[DT4K]

I agree with others that a CPU upgrade doesn't make sense without also going to DDR.

I also have a GF3 Ti200 @ 240/510 running with a 1700+ @ 1650 (11 x 150). And I would suggest waiting on the video card upgrade also. I don't know what resolutions you are running on that LCD, but at 10 x 7 or lower, my Ti200 runs all my games fine. You are probably limited more by your memory than by your video card.

I'm planning on waiting until I can afford either a NV30 or 9700 before I upgrade my Ti 200. I think it makes more sense to not uprgrade with each generation. Either that, or wait for NV30 to be released and get a GF4 cheap.

 

[jaybee]

Re: video -- I'd wait for the 9700 to come out. My GF4 is great -- as long as I don't turn on AA or AF. Of course, I run at least 2x AA on just about everything, so my poor card ends up sucking wind. If you look at the benchmarks, the 9700 Pro outperforms the GF4 by 2 or 3x at high res+AA+AF. The 9700 should be close to $100 less (street) than the Pro, with the only penalty being slower core & mem.

jaybee

 

[bizmark]

yeah, as the others said, I would wait for a new mobo/RAM before buying a new processor, and I'd probably put off buying a new video card as well.