Upgrade advice: from PIII 550 + Abit BE6-II

[mobiusloop]

Hi all,

Long time lurker, first time post.

I have a PIII 550 (slot 1) and Abit BE6-II, finally throwing my arm in the air tonight and decided to upgrade. But, in the middle of many upgradable solutions, I wonder what's the best option in turns of price / performance / longevity / future upgradability?

I can purchase a P3 1Ghz and a slocket mounting on the mb to hold me over, according to Abit it can still sustain it. This way saves the money of buying a board. But is that going to be stable? Will that get the most out of the chip? I can always just do that now, and upgrade the mb later (doesn't quite make sense though, since it totally defeat the purpose of saving money.)

I can purchase a Tbird 1Ghz and Asus A7V. But that would mean my BE6-II was "used once", seems like a waste to me. Also, the A7V mb would probably mean "one-time-use" as well, since the technology is getting old.



Should I just wait another month and see how the market shifts?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Shack70]

You could sell the MB and the processor here on the for sale/trade forum and put that money torwards the AMD setup. Thats what I would do...

 

[bacillus]

a p3 700MHz o/clocked to 933MHz(hopefully more) should tide you over as well as being cheaper than a 1gig cpu.
your ram & videocard will have to be able to cope with the o/clock though but at 133fsb your pci bus speed should be a standard 33MHz ie not o/clocked!

 

[MadRat]

You'd be surprised at how well a Celeron 566@850mHz or Celeron 600@900mHz really performs. For $60 you can upgrade to these near-gHz speeds. Thats the path I'd choose. Heck, you can pawn the P!!!-550 on the For Sale/Trade forum for $60 pretty easily.

 

[Intergalactic]

Im running a BE6-II Raid, and a P3-550 slot 1 @825mhz 150mhz FSB
If your running your 550 at stock speed, then maybe you should try to overclock it, because I know my system is not up right there with the fastest anymore, but I can still hang, and Quake 3 runs perfect at 1024x768 32bit, so until some prices start droping im not changing anything.
So overclock a bit if you arent already, and Intel just cut prices, which should be coming down to us soon, which is somthing to wait for.

 

[bacillus]

his p3 could be a katmai which doesn't o/clock well unlike a coppermine!

 

[Poof]

bacillus - I'm not sure if the katmai P3s went much beyond 450, maybe 500 (I have one here at work).

Anyone know for sure?

 

[bacillus]

Poof, the katmai went from 450-600MHz with its 512kb external L2 cache!

 

[SCSIfreek]

I'll suggest you wait a week or two cause the 1.2Birds w/ 266Mhz are coming to town. also get the Asus A7V133 instead of the A7V (price difference is like $10-$15). With a 1.2 Bird at 266Mhz (I think you could hang in there til the market shifts to DDR or RAMBUS). If by chance the ASUS A7V133 supports the next generation of Birds then more Power to you. These are just my suggestions <---- I could be wrong.


--SCSI

 

[mobiusloop]

Confirming with basillus:

I have a katmai CPU, tried to oc to 600 Mhz. It's unstable. I don't know if it's really the CPU, or the mb. Speaking of the mb, the onboard HPT UDMA66 is very unstable. So, I'm thinking of tossing it, and upgrade to something else.


To SCSIFreek:

If ASUS A7V133 can support the next generation of CPU, I'm going out there today to buy one! When will we find out the specs for the next generation of Tbird?


To all:

Let me lay out my setup, and what I do with my computer, so you can tell me what stays and what goes:

PIII 550 Katmai (want to oc, but doesn't work...at least not that well)
Abit BE6-II
Promise UDMA66 card (disabled the onboard HPT to use this one)
Adaptec SCSI 2940U2W (houses Cheetah Ultra2 9.1 GB + DVD + CD-RW)
Monster 3D MX300
Viper 770 32MB AGP Ultra (Replacing with Radeon 32MB DDR today)
Canopus DVRaptor Firewire card
Dual-boot, Win2K Pro and WinME
2 18GB IBM 7200RPM UDMA66
2 30GB Maxtor 7200RPM UDMA66
2 13GB WD 7200RPM UDMA66
Ext. Zip drive

In case you are wondering about the 7 HDs (WTF?), I am a video editor/graphic artist.
But, I think either my mb or the power supply (300w) is overloading). (Should I add another Power supply?)

I am also a casual gamer, range from Q3 &amp; UT &amp; Alice to Sims.

Ok, back to original question. By looking at my system and my needs, should I upgrade, should I stay for another month? If upgrade, AMD or P3? If P3, then 815E or my ol' BE6-II with Slocket?

Thank you again, in advance

 

[SCSIfreek]

wait another month. by then there should be much more choices. Also T-bird prices should drop a little and more widely available.


--SCSI

 

[Poof]

Poof, the katmai went from 450-600MHz with its 512kb external L2 cache!

Yikes! Thanks bacillus... didn't realize they kept crankin' them out like that being that the cumine process was cheaper! Prolly due to the number of plants that had to switch their dies...

 

[MadRat]

Like I was saying, you get ahead in the jump to a Celeron at 100fsb, plus you can afford a 450W powersupply with the money saved.

 

[Wik]

A celery works rather well. Get a 633 and run it 100mhz for a 950mhz total speed. It will perform quit well. I have set up several of these myself and I know someone that has a P3 700@933 and a C2 633@950 side by side and perform about the same for a home power user. You can get a retail C2 633 for around $80 or you can find a P3 700 in the For/Sale forums for $150 or less.

 

[Kowan]

My old 550 Katmai would do 630MHz with a Alpha P3125. I have a SECC2 850E @ 1074MHz with a Swiftech MC-1001 in it now.