Suggestions for a CPU / Mobo upgrade

[Eyedea]

I've finally decided to upgrade my 1.4 GHz thunderbird but I'm going to need to upgrade my motherboard as well because the 1.4 is its maximum. I would like to go with AMD because of price concerns.

I already have a 9600 Pro video card that I want to stick with and I have 3 hard drives (2 X 200 GB and 1 X 60GB). I'd like to hook up the hard drives so they run nice and fast (SCSI?) but also would like to keep price in mind.

Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

(I'd like to spend less that $400)

 

[Ionizer86]

$400 is easy to stay under unless you need to buy some new ram too.
Athlon XP 2500+ is the best processor under $100, and it's a nice value too. It has 512k L2 cache, and it overclocks to 2.2Ghz very easily (3200+).
nForce 2 Ultra 400 is the chipset of choice. Good boards include the Abit NF7-S (~$115), Asus A7N8X Deluxe (~$125), and the now hard-to-find EPoX 8RDA+ (~$80).
Then if you want to run at 2.2Ghz, you'll want some PC3200 or higher ram. People recommend Buffalo.
Basically, you can fit in 1GB Buffalo ram, a board, and an XP2500+ in your budget.

 

[Eyedea]

Originally posted by: Ionizer86
$400 is easy to stay under unless you need to buy some new ram too.
Athlon XP 2500+ is the best processor under $100, and it's a nice value too. It has 512k L2 cache, and it overclocks to 2.2Ghz very easily (3200+).
nForce 2 Ultra 400 is the chipset of choice. Good boards include the Abit NF7-S (~$115), Asus A7N8X Deluxe (~$125), and the now hard-to-find EPoX 8RDA+ (~$80).
Then if you want to run at 2.2Ghz, you'll want some PC3200 or higher ram. People recommend Buffalo.
Basically, you can fit in 1GB Buffalo ram, a board, and an XP2500+ in your budget.

Wow....thanks for the advice....very informative.

I'm assuming you are talking about the 333 2500+ thus the recommendation of the PC3200 RAM. Also, how difficult is it to overclock?

 

[Mavrick007]

The barton 2500+ only comes in 333fsb, but it's fairly easy to overclock to 400fsb with most nf2 ultra boards using good ram.
You can not hook the hard drives you have now as SCSI unless they are SCSI hard drives already, it's two different interfaces.
You would have to buy a SCSI card and new SCSI drives which will cost you big bucks. Keep what you have and upgrade the mobo, cpu and ram.

 

[Eyedea]

Originally posted by: Mavrick007
The barton 2500+ only comes in 333fsb, but it's fairly easy to overclock to 400fsb with most nf2 ultra boards using good ram.
You can not hook the hard drives you have now as SCSI unless they are SCSI hard drives already, it's two different interfaces.
You would have to buy a SCSI card and new SCSI drives which will cost you big bucks. Keep what you have and upgrade the mobo, cpu and ram.

Ok thanks, I don't believe they are SCSI because it says on the box that they are Ultra ATA 133.

 

[Eyedea]

Anybody have any feelings on a GA-7N400 Gigabyte Nforce2 motherboard?

Somebody reccomended this one to me but I haven't been able to find too many reviews.

 

[Eyedea]

Can anybody reccomend a site where I can go to learn how to overclock the 2500+?

 

[Treeburst155]

If you're going for nForce2, you should make sure you intend to run up around the 200 FSB mark. I've just today proven to myself that down below 166, the nForce2 is outperformed by a mere KT333 on the standard gaming benchmarks.

 

[orion7144]

Price concerns are not there anymore. Get yourself an Abit IS7 $99, P4 2.4C $150, and 2X256 PC3500 ram and you can OC it to 3gig easily and still be way under budget.