Upgrading from BH6/Celeron300 to ????

[scorpioLP]

Need your help guys...

Currently have the Abit BH6/Celeron300 (overclocked to 450) combo.

She was great for all this time, but now it's time to double the speed.

Basically I want to sell my BH6, Celeron 300, 128 MB PC100, and also a PIII 700 that was just acquired. I want to use that money to fund a new mobo/cpu setup.

I don't necessarily need to hit the 1 GHz mark, but I want a mobo that will be able to in the future when I want to upgrade. One definite is that I do want 133 FSB. Also, it would be nice to have an ISA slot in the mobo, because I'd rather not pour out more money for an SB Live card just yet, my current AWE 64 is just fine. Also overclocking is not mandatory, neither is RAID.

I have been skimming through reviews, etc. and it seems like I may be going AMD for the first time.... the Thunderbird looks like a bargain nowadays compared to Pentiums. So I was looking at the Abit KT7, Microstar K7T Pro, and a couple others. As for CPUs, I think my min. would be 800 MHz.

But I want some opinions on what you think I can do. If I sell my stuff, what kind of mobo / cpu combo you think I can move up to ??

I think I may be able to get $320.00 for the stuff that I'm selling, so using that much money, what would combo would you get ??

P.S. I wouldn't mind adding a little more $$ for a better setup.

 

[Daehawk]

I have the exact same setup as you..Im gonna upgrade myself in a couple weeks...Im keeping my BH6 since I flashed the bios and am getting a slocket converter and putting a 633 celeron in it and overclocking it to 950mhz..that should do me for another 2 years hehe....saves me lotsa cash too.

 

[Jeff H]

scorpioLP, have you considered just running your P!!!-700 on your BH6? Unless you have a compelling reason to do a full upgrade right now, that combo would do a good job carrying you into the next wave of DDR capable boards. Just a thought <g>.

You made no mention of your current video setup. Maybe that's an area you could spend some $$ on to improve total system performance. FWIW I have a BH6 that currently runs a P!!!-650, on an Abit Slotket!!! and a Thermaltake Golden Orb HSF. I recently upgraded my video to a Hercules Prophet II MX retail card and for $150 retail that's a tough card to beat.

Also, what HD are you running? I can't get over what $130 will buy, hard drive wise these days. If you're running an older ATA33 5400RPM drive a move up to an ATA66/100 7200RPM drive would be noticeable (OK, noticeable because of the increase in RPM's more than the 66/100 thing).

 

[scorpioLP]

Jeff H,

Just slapped the P3-700 in last night, I just recently got it, that's why it wasn't in before. My thinking before was that I could get a higher speed without inputting in $$, just selling what I have now.

But now with the 700 in, I may just hold off on an upgrade, the increase is definitely notable, but then again I'm wondering what 900 Mhz would feel like.....

But, I have been getting some BSOD errors now. I think it's overheating. I have some crappy generic heat sink / fan combo on the P3 now, but I may need to get something decent. Plus I need to add a couple case fans..... I just recently moved up from a mid to a Full tower.... now I have the space, but not enough air circulation. After running my machine for a while last night, motherboard temp read 105 F.

As for vid. card, I have a CL Riva TNT2 AGP right now.... I think I'm going to upgrade to an ATI All-in-Wonder, I have a TV card, and use my DVD player in the background alot, so upgrading would free up 2 more PCI slots. For my hard drives, I think it's a Maxtor 5400 rpm, I do have a couple 15 GB + 7200 drives sitting around, that I just haven't gotten around to putting them in yet.

But I think I'll upgrade the video card first.... any bad stuff about the ATI All-in-Wonder that I should be aware of ??? Any other recommendations ?? I do need hardware DVD playback w/ TV out, also need TV Tuner, plus some decent gaming abilities (not a hard-core gamer, but still would like to play every once in a while and have it look cool.... plus the cool factor for friends needs to be there).

Also my monitor is a 19&quot; Viewsonic A90 which I run at 1280 X 1024.

Let me know if the ATI AIW will do the trick, or if you recommend anything else ??

Thanks.

 

[GEShields]

I have a BH6 with P3-600E @ 800 and the Stock HSF was plenty....

What I noticed is that the &quot;Green&quot; HS was untouchable though...even at 100MHZ bus. Make sure you apply thermal compund between chipset and green cooler and try to get airflow to the heatsink..That fixed my problem..


Greg

 

[Jeff H]

scorpioLP, if you're talking about one of the Radeon AIW's, they're supposed to be great cards for DVD and TV. What are you cooling that P!!!-700 with? I have a Gorb on mine, and it does a good job. Otherwise look at something from Global Win. The Alpha's are great heatsinks, but nearly impossible to find these days. The key is good application of thermal grease, w/ the small contact area on the CuMine's.

 

[scorpioLP]

Jeff H,

Actually at the time that I posted, i was referring to the AIW 128 Pro, but after cruising over to the ATI site and reading the review here, it looks like the Radeon AIW is the only way to go.

Too bad they're $300.00 :Q :Q :Q

Well maybe it won't hurt so bad after i flea-bay my CL Riva TNT2, Hauppage TV card, DXR2 card, and my old Celly 300a. $$ from that stuff should put a small dent into the RADEON AIW price.

As for cooling on the P3-700, I just have some cheap $10 heatsink / fan combo that I got at the local computer show. I didn't intend to use it, because I was planning to resell it with the P3. Also it's a slot 1 chip, not a flip-chip, so I don't think there are golden orbs for slot 1 chips. I'm actually looking over at Outside Loop to see what kind of cooling solutions I can get.

LP

 

[RickH]

So is the PIII 700 stable on your BH6 or not?? The PIII 800 and 850s are getting cheaper, I may try one on my old BH6 v1. How do the benchmarks of a C633@950 compare with the PIII 700-800?? The clock speed of the Celeron maybe greater, but what do the numbers say. Thats where it counts. R.

 

[scorpioLP]

RickH,

Right now, it's not. But I'm certain it's a heat issue, for the case, not just the CPU. This weekend, I plan to buy some fans, maybe a card cooler, and something better for the CPU.

I'll run WinTune and SiSoft and get the numbers before putting in any cooling solutions, and then afterwards, for some comparison.

Here's a link to Anand's review of the FC-PGA celerons.... here are some parts of it, to compare overclocked celerons to the P3s.



<< Here we see the mediocre performance of the Celeron 566/600 under Content Creation Winstone 2000 jump up to highly competitive levels simply by increasing the FSB to 100MHz resulting in the processor running at 850MHz. At 850MHz the Celeron is about as fast as a Pentium III 800E.

Increasing the once again, to FSB to 112MHz we get a Celeron running at 952MHz (up from 566MHz) and on a BX motherboard this is a very powerful setup, coming within two points of a 1GHz Athlon. >>





<< We have a similar distribution here under SYSMark 2000. The Celeron at 850MHz is a little faster than a Pentium III 700E, but this time the performance is much further from the Pentium III 800E that it was under CC Winstone 2000.

At 952MHz we have a very powerful solution once again, for $188 we have a processor that is almost as fast as a 950MHz Athlon and it's still running on a BX motherboard using the &quot;old&quot; 100MHz FSB. >>



Quake 3 Tests :


<< Clock for clock the Pentium III comes out on top of the overclocked Celeron, but at the overclocked speeds you're definitely getting your money's worth with the Celeron on your &quot;old&quot; BX board. >>





<< The best case scenario for the Celeron 566 seems to be running it at 952MHz on a BX motherboard. Since you only need to have the 112MHz FSB frequency at your disposal (something almost all BX motherboards support) in order to accomplish this, it shouldn't be too difficult as long as your chip can physically run at that frequency. At 952MHz the Celeron becomes a very powerful contender, and for a CPU that costs under $200 you'd have one very cost effective setup that outperforms most of what's currently out there. >>

 

[RickH]

scorpioLP

Let us know how you make out. I have a BH6 and a C300A@450 with a standard Intel heatsink. I just pluged it in and it ran perfectly, for the last 2 years. I want a new/faster processor for the old BH6, but it needs to be 100% stable. No BSOD, I am too old to spend days screwing around trying to get it to run. If you think that your problem is heat related just take off ther case and set a large window fan next to the computer. If it still gives you errors with all that air flow, the problem is not heat. What bus speed are you using? R

 

[scorpioLP]

P3-700 7 * 100

I may test it out tonight, with the case off and a room fan blowing air in... only thing is a would like to run it a solid 6-12 hours, but i have a cat and that would mean having to stand guard over my open PC for a while.

I'll see what I can do and I'll let you know what happens.

 

[Jeff H]

scorpioLP, check out 2CoolTek for Slot1 Golden Orbs.

 

[looper]

Daehawk.... I have a BH-6 version 1.0 can I do what you're doing to mine ? Looper

 

[Jeff H]

looper, I apologize for jumping on your request to daehawk, but there isn't any reason why you shouldn't be able to do the same. Flash your BIOS to the latest version before you do the processor swap, and you should be good to go.

From what I've read the most overclockable of the C2's is the 566. At 100MHz FSB that will get you an 850MHz C2.

 

[squirrel dog]

I have two bh6's and on one I noticed the power supply was blowing hot air onto the cpu.Its an older antec 250watt unit.I took it apart and turned the internal fan around,and my motherboard temp went from 105f to 80f.The cpu's are cel633's@950.On the bh6 the cpu is right under the power supply,so you dont want it flooded with hot air all the time.I agree with others,keep what you have,tweak it,and wait for the ddr boards.