Upgrade for lil brother

[judasmachine]

Is it worth it to max out his mobo with a 333MHz FSB AthlonXP, and a GB of RAM for $350 or so?

Or...

Should he drop about $500 on a new mobo, athlon64, and RAM?

If we opt for the A64 we're getting the bottom end stuff. If we opt for the AXP then we're still only going as far as 3000+ Barton.

 

[Falloutboy]

what does he have now?

 

[judasmachine]

Originally posted by: Falloutboy
what does he have now?

It's kind of a spare parts PC that is slowly being turned into something worthwhile.
Here are the vitals:
AthlonXP 1700+ (great overclocker [2.1GHz without voltage bump] in my old RDA+, but he has a crappy mobo)
MSI K7N2 (nForce2 MATX board MAX FSB 333MHz)
2x256MB Crucial PC2700
Saphire RADEON 9800PRO 128MB 256-bit

 

[Falloutboy]

to be honest its not that bad of a setup, if you can get a mild overclock on the cpu (get it too 1.8ish ghz) and then add another cheap stick of 512mb for about 60-70 bucks then it would be pretty set for a while longer. I wouldn't put in any more money into a socket a platform it just is not wort it

 

[judasmachine]

Originally posted by: Falloutboy
to be honest its not that bad of a setup, if you can get a mild overclock on the cpu (get it too 1.8ish ghz) and then add another cheap stick of 512mb for about 60-70 bucks then it would be pretty set for a while longer. I wouldn't put in any more money into a socket a platform it just is not wort it

i was thinking of maxxing it out with some fast RAM so he could just use the RAM in the next sys he builds, perhaps something like DDR400 or something, and pray he doesn't get a sys that needs ddr2.

 

[RussianSensation]

NO WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

You can get A64 2800+ for $120 and Socket 754 mobo for $65. Add 512mb of ram for a total of 1 gig for $60. For $250 this setup will smoke anything AXP offers even at 2.4ghz AXP.

Now imagine what you can do with $350 you intend to spend? No need to dispose of old ram. Keep the ram and use a divider on an A64 system. Memory Bandwidth is almost not important for an A64 platform. There will be a marginal decrease in performance running the ram at 333mhz on an A64 platform. Also have you tried overclocking the ram to see if it can do PC3200 speeds? Then upgrading to A64 platform is a no brainer. The setup he has right now is plenty fast anyways. The only tangible differences you'll see if you jump to a faster videocard anyways. 9800Pro is the bottleneck regardless of anything as 2.1XP is plenty fast but 9800Pro isnt - esp. for Far Cry, HL2, or Doom 3, or Halo at high resolutions. I suggest waiting a bit longer and in 6 months getting A64 + PCIe and X800XL (when it comes down to a reasonable $299 MSRP).

 

[judasmachine]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
NO WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

You can get A64 2800+ for $120 and Socket 754 mobo for $65. Add 512mb of ram for a total of 1 gig for $60. For $250 this setup will smoke anything AXP offers even at 2.4ghz AXP.

Now imagine what you can do with $350 you intend to spend? No need to dispose of old ram. Keep the ram and use a divider on an A64 system. Memory Bandwidth is almost not important for an A64 platform. There will be a marginal decrease in performance running the ram at 333mhz on an A64 platform. Also have you tried overclocking the ram to see if it can do PC3200 speeds? Then upgrading to A64 platform is a no brainer. The setup he has right now is plenty fast anyways. The only tangible differences you'll see if you jump to a faster videocard anyways. 9800Pro is the bottleneck regardless of anything as 2.1XP is plenty fast but 9800Pro isnt - esp. for Far Cry, HL2, or Doom 3, or Halo at high resolutions. I suggest waiting a bit longer and in 6 months getting A64 + PCIe and X800XL (when it comes down to a reasonable $299 MSRP).

Yeah we don't want a S754 setup, as they seem doomed not to last the year. If I upgrade him now we're getting a S939 setup. That crucial ram will max out at 184FSB. Yeah I guess waiting isn't that bad of an idea. Yeah I just wish his mobo had more settings for OverClocking it has 100/133/166 only, and no multiplier settings. I know the chip and ram can overclock well, and his system runs fine at 166FSB which puts the chip at 1.8GHz. I guess I'll tell him to hold off till he can afford something better. He plans on jumping to an A64 sometime.

 

[Falloutboy]

yeah if the chip will run at 1.8 then thier is no reason to throw another cip on that board. you were thinking of going with a 3000 but a 3000 will only net you a gain of 200mhz which is not worth the money it would cost you. also as many have said ram speed on A64 is not really important so no need to by new ram just stick with what you got and maybe pick up another cheap stick of memory to hold the system over. (I just went from 512mb to 1gb and it was a big difference in the overall snapyness of my system when I got alot of programs open) a sempron for 939 should be comming out soon so I would go for that when it does should be a nice entry level chip for that platform

 

[Falloutboy]

also you might look into setting the multi's on the chip itself if I remember those older chips could have thier default mult's changed by adjusting the bridges on the card you might look into that and you might be able to get it to 2.0ghz

 

[judasmachine]

cool i think i'll just tell him to hold off till he can buy the whole setup and it won't even be a question. btw he just got that 9800PRO, i don't think he's even thinking about a X800 yet.