The Upgrade Bug Got Me -- BAD ....... UPDATE: IT'S ALIVE!!!! (and I don't feel empty)

[Amused]

Well, after much agonizing I pulled the trigger.

I split the order between Newegg and ZipZoomFly, picking who ever was cheaper for the parts I needed.

I'm upgrading my current P4T-E, 2.0 GHz 1 GB RDRAM machine to:

3.2 GHZ P4
Zalman 7000A-ALCU cooler
P4C800-E Deluxe
2x 512 (1GB) Mushkin PC 3500 Level 2 Dual pack CAS2-2-2
2 x 36.7 GB WD Raptors (for RAID-0 )
1x 250 GB WD
Antec TruePower 430
Plextor PX-708A 8x DVD burner
Soyo Bay One Plus AVI 6 in 1 card reader, USB and Firewire
Win XP Pro

I just got a Gainward 5900nu last month, so I'll just transfer that over to the new system and pop my old GF 3 Ti500 back in my old system.

And I got a small Antec case, floppy and LiteOn CD Burner for my old setup to go into. I'm giving that one to my GF.

What do you think my chances are of reaching 3.6 GHz 1-1 mem with this setup?


Update:

Well, after two RMAs for a faulty mobo AND faulty RAM, not to mention finding a bug in Prime95 version 23.7 software that causes windows errors on some hardware... I finally have this thing together and running smooth at 225 1:1 FSB, 3.6GHz with 2-2-3-7 timings and Prime95 + Superpi stable overnight.

Here is my PCMark04 score:

5642

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm04=87382
----------------

PCMark02 Scores:

CPU: 8921

Memory: 11236

HDD: 2257

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm=1652280
----------------------

3DMark03 Score:

6696

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=1763393
--------------------------
3DMark01SE score:

19281

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7354922
--------------------------
What do you think of that? Good scores?

I'm pretty pleased so far.

 

[JBT]

Nice upgrade have fun playing and breaking her in =)

 

[Chaotic42]

Man, what are you running that the 2.0 couldn't handle?

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Man, what are you running that the 2.0 couldn't handle?

My ego?

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Man, what are you running that the 2.0 couldn't handle?

My ego?

LOL

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Man, what are you running that the 2.0 couldn't handle?

My ego?

At least you're honest!

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Man, what are you running that the 2.0 couldn't handle?

My ego?

At least you're honest!

That would be me.

Seriously, though, I LOVE building and tweaking systems. I've grown bored with my old 2.0, and the GF could use a new system. She's using an old Dell PII450 upgraded to a Celeron 1.4 GHz.

 

[GTaudiophile]

You just stomp all over my ego! I'm using a P4 2.0A on a ASUS P4B266 mobo with 512MB PC2100 DDR RAM!

I am doing some minor upgrades for Xmas, however:

One more 512MB stick of Crucial PC2100 DDR
Upgrading from a Radeon 7500 to a 9600XT
Replacing my 40GB Maxtor 7200rpm with a 80GB Maxtor 7200rpm +8MB cache

(I won't do a major upgrade until early 2005 when Prescott and PCI-Express mobos have been available for a while.)

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Man, what are you running that the 2.0 couldn't handle?

My ego?

I was just curious, sorry. I seem to be coming off the wrong way on the forums today.

I've been thinking about upgrading, but I just can't justify the ~$500 cost of going up 800-1200 MHz.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Looks nice, I'll probably be getting the P4C800-E when I finally upgrade, and it's what I recommended to my brother for his upgrade a month ago.

Please post on whether you like the Zalman once you've installed it, I'm still trying to decide between it and being lazy and using a retail HSF.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
You just stomp all over my ego! I'm using a P4 2.0A on a ASUS P4B266 mobo with 512MB PC2100 DDR RAM!

I am doing some minor upgrades for Xmas, however:

One more 512MB stick of Crucial PC2100 DDR
Upgrading from a Radeon 7500 to a 9600XT
Replacing my 40GB Maxtor 7200rpm with a 80GB Maxtor 7200rpm +8MB cache

(I won't do a major upgrade until early 2005 when Prescott and PCI-Express mobos have been available for a while.)

Ya know, I thought about waiting, too. I considered just buying a P4 2.6 400FSB to upgrade with, then add a SATA RAID card and 2 Raptors to replace my ATA RAID card and 4 WD SE drives But I'm just so damn bored with this machine. It wont OC over 2.3.

Plus, I just built a system for my brother's friend VERY similar to the one I'm building myself. The speed and "snappiness" of the system was shockingly noticable over my current setup.

I'll build this system now, and do it again when Intel reaches 5 GHz, I guess.

What do you think my chances are of reaching 3.6 GHz 1-1 mem with this setup?

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Looks nice, I'll probably be getting the P4C800-E when I finally upgrade, and it's what I recommended to my brother for his upgrade a month ago.

Please post on whether you like the Zalman once you've installed it, I'm still trying to decide between it and being lazy and using a retail HSF.

I thought about going with the stock HSF. I have on every system until now. It's just that the stock cooler on my 2.0A is the loudest thing in my case, and it doesn't do that great of a job at cooling. I figured I'd try something that's been tested as quieter, yet better cooling.

 

[rb56]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Looks nice, I'll probably be getting the P4C800-E when I finally upgrade, and it's what I recommended to my brother for his upgrade a month ago.

Please post on whether you like the Zalman once you've installed it, I'm still trying to decide between it and being lazy and using a retail HSF.

I'm running the Zalman on my P4C800 E with a 2.8c and it's working great. I run low 30's most of the time with the fan running a little over 1600 rpm. I would highly recommend the Zalman.

rb56

Edit: By the way Amused great upgrade!

 

[Sunny129]

Originally posted by: Amused

What do you think my chances are of reaching 3.6 GHz 1-1 mem with this setup?

i think your chances are very good. although 3.6GHz seems to be the high end on average of the northwood core, its still very attainable, and you hardly have to OC a 3.2C to get to 3.6GHz. your fsb will be at 225MHz, and so on a 1:1 divider, memory will be running at DDR450 mhz. that's only a slight OC for PC3500 memory. the only possible downside to it all is that the memory may not run its rated timings at an OCed speed. but that is not to say you cannot reach 3.6GHz on a 1:1 divider. that Mushkin PC3500 will undoubtedly hit 450mhz, tight timings or not.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Man, what are you running that the 2.0 couldn't handle?

My ego?

I was just curious, sorry. I seem to be coming off the wrong way on the forums today.

That's OK. You simply asked the very same question I kept asking myself as I agonized over doing this, and even as I pulled the trigger and clicked "order."

I've been thinking about upgrading, but I just can't justify the ~$500 cost of going up 800-1200 MHz.

That's what I was thinking.

I was able to justify it by looking at various benchmarks and seeing that the 3.2 paired with good memory is nearly twice as fast as the 2.0. I had promised myself I wouldn't upgrade until the 4.0 came out. But I revised that to "twice as fast."

PLUS: I really want USB 2.0, gigabit (I asked Santa for a gigabit switch) and SATA. So that helped justify it too.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: Sunny129

Originally posted by: Amused

What do you think my chances are of reaching 3.6 GHz 1-1 mem with this setup?

i think your chances are very good. although 3.6GHz seems to be the high end on average of the northwood core, its still very attainable, and you hardly have to OC a 3.2C to get to 3.6GHz. your fsb will be at 225MHz, and so on a 1:1 divider, memory will be running at DDR450 mhz. that's only a slight OC for PC3500 memory. the only possible downside to it all is that the memory may not run its rated timings at an OCed speed. but that is not to say you cannot reach 3.6GHz on a 1:1 divider. that Mushkin PC3500 will undoubtedly hit 450mhz, tight timings or not.

That's good to hear!

Hey, any tips on what bios settings I should use on the P4C800-E? Should I just try the auto overclock feature? Or do it manually, or what? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Tetsuo]

Nice setup you got there

 

[GT1999]

Nice setup. I tend to upgrade small parts of my system, but I miss getting a whole setup like you're doing -- you notice the performance and are glued to your PC for days until the fun starts to wear off.

Fairly good odds of 3.6GHz (with voltage) I'd say.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: Geekish Thoughts
Nice setup. I tend to upgrade small parts of my system, but I miss getting a whole setup like you're doing -- you notice the performance and are glued to your PC for days until the fun starts to wear off.

Fairly good odds of 3.6GHz (with voltage) I'd say.

Well, I can hope.

I hope it all ships today. It would be nice to get it before Turkeyday.

 

[NokiaDude]

Very nice. I'd ditch the Zalman for a higher performance heatsink, like a SLK-900.

 

[neutralizer]

Um... I find that the Zalman and the SLK are about equal in cooling power. It's just I like the Zalman better because it is pretty damn quiet, but it's really heavy.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: NokiaDude
Very nice. I'd ditch the Zalman for a higher performance heatsink, like a SLK-900.

Yeah, I thought about that, but I didn't want anything as loud or louder than the stock HSF. The damn stock HSF on my 2.0A is the loudest thing in my case.

 

[VRmaster69]

I have been bitten too
Im hungous for a new video card proberly a new Radeon

 

[Compddd]

Me too, I just upgraded from a P4 3.0 to an A64 3200+

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Amused

I was able to justify it by looking at various benchmarks and seeing that the 3.2 paired with good memory is nearly twice as fast as the 2.0. I had promised myself I wouldn't upgrade until the 4.0 came out. But I revised that to "twice as fast."

Barring hitting the lotto, my current plan is to wait until I can get roughly 8-10x the performance of my processors. That would be about 240-300 on the Content Creation Winstone 2003. The P4 3.2 gets 52.2.