Time for an Upgrade to tide me over Till Dual Cores!

Bill Harrison

Junior Member
Dec 27, 2004
2
0
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Hey all. I have done some reading, and it seems I can do better than what I currently have with some XP Mobiles. Here is my current setup:

Asus A7M266D
2X Athlon XP 1700+ Tbred B's @ 2.3ghz Each
512mb Crucial Registered PC2100
80gb WD 8mb Cache
100gb WD 8mb Cache
Radeon 8500DV

I want a little more speed, but I can't find any good boards to upgrade to an Opteron setup yet. So I am thinking about making a few bumps to this system to hold me over until Something I like comes down the pipe in a dual Opteron motherboard (Hopefully from Asus, whats the holdup guys!)

I have heard that people are getting a pretty reliable 2.5-2.7ghz out of athlon XP mobile chips. For now, that would be a decent bump for me, worth the price I would say, since I can probably net 80-100$ for the pair I have right now. But what is the preferred chip for overclocking? The prices are pretty similair, as in 10$ diff between 2400+ and 2500+. I usually buy my chips from newegg, but they do not guarantee steppings. Is there a particular stepping to look for, and a place that sells them? I found a link to bigfoot computers, but they show as being out of the 2500+ Cpu's right now.

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I am looking to do something hopefully within 2 weeks, as this system is getting a tad slow for my tastes.

I will be upgrading the ram and HD's as well, but thats pretty straightforward. I want the items I purchase (Cpu's notwithstanding) to move over to my opteron setup which I plan to get within the next year. Right now the price on Opterons just moves UP so quickly, I would be looking at close to 1k for a pair of processors that equal or slightly exceed what I have now, OUCH.

1k right now is just a bit too pricey for me, for a minor upgrade. Especially since I have yet to find a motherboard that has everything I am looking for, they are still lacking in a few areas (mainly overclocking!)

Bill
 

11427

Senior member
May 9, 2003
412
0
71
I agree,.....I was looking to upgrade a K6 to 2500+ or so but it's just not worth it. My opinion, to get the OC you want you'll need a new MB, new ram, and a new chip. Even then it may not beat your current OC. For that kinda coin you may as well get a socket 754 AMD 64, you could do that for the same or less than an XP. Dunno about where you are but XP's are getting very scarce here. Only one shop has any left.
 

Bill Harrison

Junior Member
Dec 27, 2004
2
0
0
I dunno, I really love my duallie. I don't think I could ever run a single processor system again. I have gotten so used to having 15 windows and programs open and once and quickly switching between them with no lag.

I would consider jumping into a duallie but only popping for one cpu, but there really is nothing awesome in terms of motherboards right now.

Blah
 

Stormgiant

Senior member
Oct 25, 1999
829
0
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Then, why waste money ?

Wait some more.... If you REALLY need the power of two opteron's...
 

bobsmith1492

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2004
3,875
3
81
I switch between 15 windows with no lag on all my systems - 2x single barton systems at 2.3 and 2.1, and a P-M 1.7. Unless you like running Prime in the background or dual UD agents or something, I'm sure you wouldn't notice the difference.
 

FlameDeer

Senior member
Dec 30, 2000
386
0
71
Try find another cheap 512mb Crucial Registered PC2100. With 1GB of RAM will increase the performance of multitasking new software from your lovely duallie. :)

Can wait til next major platform upgrade - dualcore, 64-bit, PCIe, DDR2, SATA2.