Thinking of upgrading my 1600+ any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

[cheap]

Hi, I've been driving a truck so was out of the loop hardware wise for a while and would greatly appreciate a suggestion on which CPU would suit my system best. I'm thinking of only upgrading a CPU at this point and not replacing the whole system because of all the new technologies coming out at this point like AMD64 and PCI express ect. So I'll wait a bit for things to mature.

I currently run AthlonXP 1600+ which is starting to show its age

My mother board is is a socket 462 KT400 epox 8K9A. I also have a 2700 ram which runs at 166 MHZ DDR.

Epox site states that it can not take Barton FSB-400, can take upto 3000+ Barton FSB-333, left Sempron colum blank (doesn't list speed for it for some reason), and can take upto 2700+ Thoroughbred FSB-333.

In BIOS I can set multiplier as high as 13 and clock as high as 266mhz.

Which CPU would you guys recomment at around 50-100 dollar range? It doesn't have to be good overclocker but if it does it's a bonus. Or should I just go for the most expensive/fastest one? If so then which core?

Thanx in advance.

EDIT: Also, I'd like CPU to run at lowest voltage possible so it doesn't run as hot. I know mine is 1.75v I think but there are others at 1.6 and even 1.5 I think.

 

[Markfw]

Athlon64 2800+ at about $128 + Chaintech vnf3-250 for about $200 total. Will work with your ram fine, and OC. Use a divider....

 

[cheap]

That's a great suggestion. I'm surprised these nForce3 boards are running so cheap.

You don't think it's worth it to hold out for PCI Express boards? I like playing games and skimming through some tech site I've read that it doubles memory bandwidth.

Thanx.

 

[SickBeast]

Yeah PCIe would be worth waiting for if you can (more for the upgrade path than performance). Early next year you should be able to get a cheap NF4 board for around $100.

 

[cheap]

That's what I was thinking. Drop in a fast cheap CPU right now to tie me over in all these cpu hungry games, and sometime in the middle of next year go all out and get a PCIe board, A64, PCIe video card, raptor or SCSI drive for WinXP for fast boot up, 200-300gig HD for everything else, and some CAS2 400mhz memory.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: cheap
That's what I was thinking. Drop in a fast cheap CPU right now to tie me over in all these cpu hungry games, and sometime in the middle of next year go all out and get a PCIe board, A64, PCIe video card, raptor or SCSI drive for WinXP for fast boot up, 200-300gig HD for everything else, and some CAS2 400mhz memory.

Sounds logical. If you can access the high multipliers, a mobile barton 2500+ would work very well in your case. Mine runs at 2500mhz, which beats out an A64 3200+ in most benchmarks.

 

[cheap]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Sounds logical. If you can access the high multipliers, a mobile barton 2500+ would work very well in your case. Mine runs at 2500mhz, which beats out an A64 3200+ in most benchmarks.

How high of a multiplier does it need? I can go upto 13. Mobile barton is not locked?

 

[cheap]

Well, thanx for all your suggestions. I decided to go with mobile barton 2500+ after doing a bit of research and seeing around 200 reviews on newegg praising the hell out of it. Damn, if it really turns out to be as fast and runs cool as most of those people are saying I might as well put off building new A64 PCIe system till the end of next year.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: cheap
Well, thanx for all your suggestions. I decided to go with mobile barton 2500+ after doing a bit of research and seeing around 200 reviews on newegg praising the hell out of it. Damn, if it really turns out to be as fast and runs cool as most of those people are saying I might as well put off building new A64 PCIe system till the end of next year.

I have a friend in the same spot. He has a KT333ce board with 1600+ that he was running@2200+ by boosting the FSB to 166fsb synch with his XMS 2700DDR but Doom3 forced him to downclock it due to instability. He is strapped for cash so I just ordered the 35W 2200+ for $77.99 for him. even that is out of his budget so I'll have to take his 1600+ as part of the payment. I had terrible luck with the 2400+ mobile I bought, it only reached 2.2ghz stable, so I thought I'd give the 35w 2200+ a go this time.

 

[cheap]

Hey guys, I'm back from another trip. Went to order a cpu on newegg and noticed for only 8 bucks more they also have a mobile 2600+ with a lot of good reviews. Do you think if the cpu is rated 2600+ there's a chance of getting a better yield chip over a 2500+ or are cores themselves all basically the same at this point?

Thanx.