worth upgrading from XP2100+ tbredB to XP2500+ barton?

[edmundoab]

I used to be able to run XP 2100+ at 211Mhz X 11 = 2.3Ghz

but after using that OC for about 8 months or so.
It wasn't stable anymore and I had to reduce it to 205Mhz X 11 = 2.251Ghz

do u think its time for an upgrade to XP2500+ instead?

are they significant performance difference with a larger cache?

 

[Slaben]

I went from a XP 2100 OC to 2.2 Ghz ( 14 months now) to a Barton 2800 and my system slow down so I switched back. Still rock solid stable! YMMV I guess!

 

[maluckey]

You are still faster in most all apps with the XP 2100+, even with the lower (now) clock speed.

I find the need to remove the H/S and reapply thermal compund about every six months on schedule. It allows me to keep the clock high. Without doing this, I gradually have to lower the FSB. Someone told me that "pumping" from the heat cylcling has something to do with it. I just know that each time I do it, I can raise the FSB back to where it was.

 

[4x4expy]

Originally posted by: maluckey
You are still faster in most all apps with the XP 2100+, even with the lower (now) clock speed.

I find the need to remove the H/S and reapply thermal compund about every six months on schedule. It allows me to keep the clock high. Without doing this, I gradually have to lower the FSB. Someone told me that "pumping" from the heat cylcling has something to do with it. I just know that each time I do it, I can raise the FSB back to where it was.

I was going to suggest this along with cleaning all lint and dust off of the HS. This along with maybe an aging power supply would be the only reasons that come to mind that would cause the need to gradually back off of the FSB.

But back to the original question. I would stick with the tbred since you already have it paid for and know what performance you are going to get out of it. The Barton is definitely worth the difference in price comparing it to the 2100+($20-30 extra) if you don't yet have either CPU, but you are going to have to pay full price for the Barton now that you already have the Tbred.

 

[edmundoab]

so i guess sticking to XP2100+ is a better choice then..
I'll do some cleaning of the HS,
and reapply AS3 again. 🙂

 

[pelikan]

I went from a 2100+ at 2400MHz to a 2500+ at 2400MHz. I'm glad I switched. It was fun to overclock a new chip again. And this barton is faster. A barton is 100-200MHz faster at the same clock speed. In UT2003 the barton is worth 200MHz:

UT2003 Botmatch:
2100+ at 2400MHz = 79 FPS
2500+ at 2400MHz = 84 FPS

 

[deadseasquirrel]

I'm sure the 2500+ Barton would be noticeably faster than my 1700+ TbredB (at 166x13.5). But if I got one, I would really want to move to 200fsb, which would mean selling off my KT333 board for an Nforce2 (that Shuttle at newegg is a great deal), and replacing my pc2700 with pc3200.

All in all, after selling off the old parts, the upgrade would cost around $100.

I don't know if the improvements would be worth that $100.

In fact, all 3 ways of upgrading that I can see will cost around $100. Which one of these would offer more performance gain for that $100:

1) doing the above move to 200fsb with the 2500+ Barton, hopefully clocked around 200x11.5
2) buying another 512mb stick of pc2700 to give me a full gig (okay, this one is a bit less than $100)
3) selling my ti4200 for around $100 and dropping another $100 on a faster $200 video card

#3 is probably the most expensive route, but I'm sure would offer the best performance increase in games (which is pretty much the only place performace is needed on this machine).

deadseasquirrel

 

[pelikan]

One and three would both help for gaming. Maybe do three first.

 

[edmundoab]

ok pelikan I've got one more question,
should I use my money right now to get a raptor HDD instead of a barton 2500?

my current HDD is a 40GB Maxtor Fireball with 2mb cache

 

[pelikan]

I didn't notice much difference going from an IBM 2MB cache HDD to a WD SE 8MB cache HDD. Nor did I notice much difference going to a Raptor. Games seem to load at the same speed. What is noticably faster is installing XP, doing a virus scan, defragmenting and running a windows cleaning program. Installing XP is rare, and those other things are done in the background anyways. Now I'm happy with the Raptor but if I had to choose I'd get a barton for sure in a second. Gaming performance is the most important thing to me.