worth upgrading mobo?

[MadOni0n]

I have a p4 2.4B Northwood, with a 845g MAX-L mobo. Mobo is 2 or so years old, right? Is it worth upgrading the mobo? Isn't the performance upgrade minimal? I know the mobo's do vary alot though on overclockability, correct? How would the 845g overclock? I havn't tried anything on it yet. For cooling i have a Zalman cnps7000b-cu, how much do you think i hit with it?

 

[MadOni0n]

anyone?

 

[masshass81]

You mobo seems to be a nice overclocker according to these reviews.

http://www.hothardware.com/vie...icle.cfm?articleid=131

http://www.accelenation.com/?ac.id.152.1

The 845G officially supports up to pc-2100, but your MSI 845G mobo tweaks the bios settings so you are able to support pc-2700 which will greatly increase overclock potential. Just try overclocking your system and see how high you can go. If it doesnt go that high, your memory might be the bottleneck if you got pc-2100 or below. But I dunno if it would be worth it to upgrade to pc-2700 just to get a few more Mhz. I dunno if it can support pc-3200, if it does then it would be worth it to get the pc-3200 as you can just slap it in another mobo when you upgrade it.

 

[MadOni0n]

Yea i use 512mb of PC2700 with it. So max for my ram would be 167fsb? My multi is 18, so max speed i can hit while holding onto the 1:1 ratio is 3006mhz? But, my mobo can limit me to something less then that right?

 

[CraigRT]

You should be able to run close to 3GHz with that setup, I can run 2.9 with my 2.4B at work on a P4B533 mobo... it's not a speed demon like my A64 at home, but it works pretty good still, definitely a good option to just OC what you have.

 

[MadOni0n]

Well my setup is:

P4 2.4 "B" Northwood
Zalman cnps7000b-cu
MSI 845g MAX-L Mobo
Samsung PC2700 512mb
Nvidia Geforce4 Ti4200
350w PSU
ibm 60gig 7200rpm
cd-rw
dvd rom

So i hear my mobo is great for now, i have about $200 extra. What should i spend it on? im looking for the best price / performance increase. I game, so getting a new vid card would be a good choice? or getting more ram instead?

Also, is my 350w enough for my setup? The PSU is also 2-2.5 years old, i heard its worth getting a new psu every few years?

 

[MadOni0n]

anyone?

 

[MadOni0n]

one last bump.

 

[karlreading]

looking at your setup, if ur into games, a geforce 6600 GT on a AGP bopard would go down nicely with ur p4 setup, that ti4200 is getting on a bit now, and the 6600GT has dx 9.0c, and will power you should get another two years out one of those lkike ya ti4200
although ull have to wait for a 6600 gt about 2 moneth is think, there will be a delya as the first 6600GTs will be on the pci-express bus, but agp ones coming soon
all the best
karlos

 

[masshass81]

you should just wait til the a64 gets pci-e support,.. you only have to wait til the end of the year or beginning of next. Around the same time, AMD will release their mainstream s939 chips (a64 3000+), so a s939 setup will be very affordable by then and you will be set for futureproofing (up to 4200+, dual-cores, SLI?).

 

[MadOni0n]

arn't 939 already out? what's s939? but a new 64 system doesn't sound bad.. might get a 64 system the next time prices drop (when would that be?).

 

[masshass81]

Yeah, s939 (socket 939) chips are already out, but only 3500+ and up chips are available. The 3500+ being at least around $350 last time I checked. But check out this article ...

AMD Prepares Affordable Processors for Socket 939

AMD says they will come out with sub $200 s939 cpus very soon, such as an s939 A64 3000+. By that time, pci-e will probably be out also (along with the ability setup dual gfx cards). =) So, in my opinion, I would wait until these new technologies arise from AMD so I would be able to futureproof my system at an affordable, mid-ranged price.