Upgrade: New Pentium III or new Mobo & Athalon?

[Condor Beedee]

I currently have a Soyo VBA133 motherboard with 133 mhz ram, and Celeron 400 mhz processor. The best I have achieved is 500mhz. Anyhow, I wish to upgrade,and I am not sure what the best path would be. Originally I planned to buy a Pentium III for about $150-175 and leave it at that. This would bring me a 700-800mhz PIII. I just noticed that instead, I could ditch my current motherboard and buy a Soyo K7VTA with an Athalon 750mhz for about $180. Which is the better choice? I use the speed mostly for Unreal tournament. My current graphics card is a TNT2 Ultra which I will probably soon upgrade to an Nvidia GeForce2 GTS or MX depending on pricing. What do you think would give me the better performance? I'm beginning to lean toward the Athalon because I get another 2usb ports and AGP 4x instead of 2x which I now have.

Any thoughts?

Condor Beedee

 

[bonkers325]

get a 815e mobo and 700e and clock that baby

 

[jaydee]

Avoid the Athlon Classic. (It's still a decent buy, but as far as upgrading down the road, you will need a new mobo, and cpu when the time comes.) If you go AMD, then go T-Bird, or Duron. Your best bet, may be to get a P3, less complicate things. But if you want best performance (and don't mind overclocking), then I say KT7/A7V at ~$120-130, and a Duron for ~$40-50, and that should be better, when its hits 900-950, than a P3 @ 700, not to mention AGP 4X.

 

[Zedfu]

durons are excellent for price/performance ratio. a duron 600 can be overclocked to around 900-1000 in most cases with proper cooling. and UT also prefers tbird processors in general.


<< r best bet, may be to get a P3, less complicate things >>


i don't find amd products to be complicated at all. my pc had been working smoothly and hadn't encountered any problems so far. and for anyone concered with performance, extracting the xtra performance out of a system is no hassle at all, right, Condor Beedee?

 

[jaydee]

Replacing the motherboard and cpu, is more complex than replacing just the cpu. When you replace both, you must take apart your entire motherboard components, unhook all the cables, and power supplies, and then remember how it all fit there in the first place, and trouble shoot any problems. This mabey easy for some, but I don't know the skill level of this guy, and I'm not sure if he's willing to go through all that. But as long as you know what your doing, or have a friend who knows what there doing, it shouldn't be a problem. That and mounting the heatsink on an AMD processor, can be a heck of a project for many people. They are very hard to get on, and the possibility of breaking the cpu is much greater than an intel. That is what I mean about less complicated things. If he has no trouble with any of the above, more power to him, but I felt compelled to let him know what he's getting himself into if that is not the case.

 

[Bob151]

In addition, changing out the motherboard may also require reinstallation of Windows and other OSs. I've tried using existing installs but Windows always had some unknown device it could not find a drivers for in its cab files or on the software that came with the new mobo. So, he may have most of a day shot backing up data, re-installing OSs and nessesary applications and games, tweaking, etc....

But it is winter in the northern hemisphere.

 

[StickHead]

I think your cheapest and less frustrating upgrade would be a P3 733 or 800 like you said. Why buy a new board and different processor?

 

[jaydee]

Again, by no means, am I a fan of Intel, but upgrading your cputo a PIII to 733Mhz, and overclocking it to 850-900 is about as much performance as a Duron going at 950-1000 mhz. The only thing you miss, is AGP4x. The decision is yours, to decide whether or not 4x is worth it all.

 

[Condor Beedee]

Another question...I have PC133 Crucial memory installed. Will it be compatible with an Athlon motherboard? Just saw an add for some memory which said it was not compatible. I've reinstalled the OS before, although it isn't fun, it's not too bad. Someone once said that clearing out all of the devices from the System control panel will let windows reinstall them properly, which is what I'll try next time. If the memory is not compatible, I will definitely buy the Pentium. I don't want to buy new memory until the DDR ram is available. If the memory is available, I might just buy an Abit KT7 &amp; Duron 700. Can get it for about $210. A little more than a Pentium, but when you include having to buy another fan, it comes to within about $20. Anyhow, the memory is a big issue!

Condor Beedee

 

[Mem]

Crucial memory is a very good choice for Athlon boards infact I`m using Crucial ram in my MSI K7T PRO board with rock solid stability so you will be OK in that department.
Btw mine is also PC133 speed.

 

[jaydee]

PC133 RAM will not work on the AMD-750 (IronGate) chipset, but it will on ALL others.

 

[Jhhnn]

The easy way out (for you) is an Intel processor, because you already have a modern mobo. No reformat &amp; reload, no major construction. A P3e600,650 or 700 is probably the best choice, as they will often make the jump to 133fsb without a lot of trouble. Even if it won't, you can still run the memory at 133, depending on your bios, one of the nice features of the Via chipset.

Don't get me wrong here, the Durons are very good, but the P3e's offer better overall performance at the same clock speeds, so why fight it?