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Upgrading motherboard/memory?

I

ibyffin

Junior Member
Hi.

I'm looking at upgrading my Athlon 2000 XP system and trying to figure out which parts I should start swapping out first.

At present:
- Athlon XP 2000
- Asus A7V266-C Motherboard
- 768 MB mixed 2100/2700 RAM
- Radeon 9700

The rig is mainly used for gaming so I'm mostly looking for cheap, phat framerate improvements 🙂

What I was figuring is going for a new mobo first, namely a A7N8X (since Asus never let me down before and a friend recommended the nforce chipset). Would that in itself give me any improvements speedwise? 8 x AGP over 4 x AGP, faster buses etc... Or do I need to get faster memory as well to be able to take advantage of the new mobo.

My plan for now is:
- Mobo
- Memory
- Processor

Goal being biggest jump in performance for each step keeping it relatively cheap along the way 🙂

Any comments really appreciated.

Thanks.

/iby

 
Your A7V266-C only supports AGP 4x and up to PC2100 RAM. Going to the A7N8X will let you use an AGP 8x vid card and PC2700 RAM, but you'll have to trade our your PC2100 RAM to do it.

You should be able to o/c your XP 2000 for more speed by nothing more than upping the multiplier in the CMOS. If it's a retail CPU with a stock HS/F, you may want to invest in a bigger one for better cooling, but unless you have a new home for the your mobo and CPU as a combo, a new CPU wouldn't be high on my list until you find out how fast your current one can safely go. For reference, my XP 1800+ (1.53 GHz) is quite happy and cool @ 2 GHz (133 x 15). With my HS/F, and it runs around 37 deg C on a hot day.
 
Thanks for the answer.

So what you're saying is that I should go mobo + memory first while at the same time seeing how much mhz I can get out of my current processor? Seems like a sound idea 🙂

Any clue how much of an performance increase I would get from just the new motherboard and memory, for arguments sake without overclocking. For gaming purposes that is.

/iby
 
Dont worry about what your performance increase is from the mobo...you will get some, but until you upgrade the mobo, it is pointless to upgrade anything else. Get the mobo, get some PC3200 memory then get the processor (mebbe a 2500+ OC'd to 3200+ speed).
 
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