Upgrade options

[juyanith]

I have an old Celeron 300A (450) system that, while having served me quite well for 2 years, is looking kinda dated. I'd like to upgrade, but with the onset of DDR and new chipsets to use it, I'm not sure I want to really go hog wild.

My thought was that perhaps I could save the cost of upgrading memory right now if I went with the KT133 & duron option since the fsb would stay at or near 100 MHz. This would allow me to extend the life of my memory a bit more (and a chance to save up for new memory when the time comes.) This, combined with a low-cost Duron option seems like it would hold me over for the next six months -- time enough to see how the AMD 760 mobos shape up.

So, my question is what chance do I have that my existing generic PC100 memory will be ok? It has run in the old system without a hitch, and since any of the KT133 systems seem to run at most 105 to 110 it seems wastefull to buy PC133 memory. I realize I may also have to upgrade my power supply (250 W) for the AMD chips, but this isn't a big deal since I'm sure I'll need that for the future anyhow.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

 

[jaydee]

You mat want to stay away from an Abit board in your case. They seem to be picky on RAM.

 

[StickHead]

My generic PC133 works fine on my KT7.

 

[kylebisme]

your power supply should be fine actualy, only the t-birds an clasics are realy picky about power. your ram should work, though you probably wont be able to turn the ram up to 133mhz the kt133 chipset will let you run the memory at 10omhz. however you never know, so genirc ram will do 133mhz just fine. you should be able to find a good duron and mobo with multiiplyer adjustments for well under 200$.

 

[juyanith]

Thanks for the input guys. I'm still debating the issue, even wondering if a PIII might work in the old BH6 (revision 1.0) board. I just want to stretch things out a bit until we see what's going on w/ new memory and chipsets.

 

DDR ram wont be the next big change in computing right now.
SDRAM should be going strong for a while.
DDR is brand spankin new and shows no massive performance increase over current chipset solutions.
And hardware is CHEAP right now.
my opinion

 

[JimMc]

Yes, you can run a Celeron II/PIII in your BH6 with a BIOS upgrade. Cost you about $90 for a retail Celeron II 633, probably will go to 950. Cost you about $75-100 more for a MSI/Duron bundle that should overclock to the same neighborhood, but will probably perform better.

The Cleron is an easier upgrade, but the MSI will allow you to shove in a 1.2 GHZ TBird later on if you want.