Ugrading..need some advice

[stevty2889]

Basicly I am getting an lga775 3.6ghz P4 for free, but don't know weather I should just get a new motherboard, that has lga775 and an AGP slot(such as the abit AS8) and a new PSU (460w enermax), and keeping my geforce 6800GT AGP, my gig of pc4000 kingmax, and just selling my old motherboard and 2.8e with the thermalright sp94 and my 350 enermax. Or should I sell the whole system(keeping my raptors, and putting an 80gig sata in it), and rebuild from scratch. Full system specs are in my sig..selling the 3.6ghz p4 to get an A64 is not a possibility, so please don't make that recomendation, I very well know the a64 is better for gaming, but a free 3.6ghz p4 is plenty good enough for me.

 

[Geomagick]

I think for $88 you can't go too far wrong with this setup.

There is however the issue of the fact that you are running at 3.5 already. The difference will be quite minimal and you would lose out on some memory bandwidth although this is not the end of the world. If you are able to sell the new CPU I would and pocket the change/put it away for a more major upgrade in the future.

If this really isn't possible then a straight mobo swop would be the best idea, your PSU should be able to take the strain but an upgraded version wouldn't go amiss, especially if you add more hardware later.

Remember that if you do move over to 775 then you are unlikely to get much of an overclock out of the chip especially on air.

 

[Sc4freak]

What makes you think that LGA775 prevents overclocking? 3.6ghz, you'll most likely be able to reach 4.0ghz (air, stock cooling) or higher on a better HSF.

 

[Geomagick]

Because of the sheer heat output of these things, coupled with the fact that even the older 775 chips still throttle to some extent which negates the very reason for higher clocking to start with.

Unless you can cool a chip sufficiently to prevent any throttling occuring at max load at all then there is no point in actually clocking the chip that high.

Just my 2 cents

 

[stevty2889]

It's also an engineering sample, so it has unlocked multipliers..I am going to use a thermalright xp120 with a panaflo 82.5cfm fan to cool it. Water cooling is also an option. I plan on getting a 460w enermax to go with it as well.

 

[Geomagick]

I guess you don't mind lots of noise!!!

The XP120 certainly has the ability to cool something like that but how far I don't really know, A good water cooling setup would certainly help, but would be quite costly.

When you do start to overclock it I would double bench it at each speed increment first from cold, and the second run straight after and see if there is more than a couple percent difference. This should provide some indication on whether the chip is happy.

Good luck and lets see some numbers when you have finished.

 

[stevty2889]

bump