Reccommended upgrades - ?

[Valhalla1]

It seems like I've been using this same system FOREVER (its been over a year). C300a@450, needs to be upgraded. I've spent a LOT of money the last two months upgrading :

15" monitor upgraded to KDS 19"
TNT 16mb upgraded to TNT2 32mb
$5 speakers upgraded to Klipsch Promedia's
$25 cdrom upgraded to Pioneer 16x DVD slot-load/40x cdrom
3-harddrive rig upgraded to single 40gig 7200rpm Maxtor DiamondMax Plus
10bt network upgraded to 100baseTX switched network
finally got another printer
Dual monitors up and running in Windows 2000
MS Intellimouse Optical 5-button
upgraded BH6 to BE6-II
upgraded from 64mb ram to 192mb
lets see.. guess that's it


Still have original SB Live! Value and c300a@450. the sound card is fine for me, but I need to upgrade that cpu! I want to be in the 900mhz range (overclocked). any suggestions? P3 obviously is what I'll need, and upgrade my PC100 to PC133.

 

[Prodigy^]

you answered your own question

get a nice P3, like a 800 MHz or thereabout.

also upgrade your video card later on

SB Live! is fine

 

[hubbs]

Yup I recommend upgrading vid card later on. The TNT is definatley not a top of the line video card.

 

[Valhalla1]

no, the TNT original was just archaic, top of the line when I got it, but I had to upgrade. Didn't want to get a Geforce, I was going to skip the whole geforce/geforceDDR/geforce2 line and pickup whatever's after that. This TNT2 is doing me just fine.



As for the P3, an 800 might be too much for what I want to spend, maybe I'll get one though. Like to overclock one, though, I'm cheap like that.

 

[Ulysses]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=28&threadid=199398

 

[Scifione]

Your chances of OCing a 100Mhz FSB to 133Mhz FSB look good with the latest BIOS. Your biggest concern will be what revition of the BE6-II you have (1.x OR 1.2 and later). Here is a quate from the BIOS download page.

***"Since there are two different key versions (One is the version 1.0x series,the other one is the version
1.2 and newer series), it's very important to know how to recognize which mainboard version you have
before upgrading your board's BIOS.How can you tell? There are three ways:
The first way:
You can find the version number on a white sticker on the side of the last ISA slot, with a string of
characters like ""BE6 II-OK V1.0X"".
The second way:
You can read the last two letters on the bottom right of the first
boot-up screen (with the "Energy Star" logo) to recognize what the BIOS ID number you have.
Comparing this ID to the list below will tell you which version
you have.
The third way:
You may check to see whether or not your BE6 II has the HPT 370 chip on board."***

Go here and read more about the latest BIOS support for P3 with 133Mhz FSB. http://www.abit.com.tw/english/download/index.htm

You should be able to hit 866Mhz or 933Mhz depending on BIOS support, so a P3 650E or 700E should be what you are looking for!

On the Cooling side of things, I think that the "Golden Orb" is the best for the money, cooling, and noise.

Buy PC133 name brand. There are a great number of good RAM makers. Ask around if you don't know which are good.

 

[Valhalla1]

cool, thanks for the great info!