Would this be worth the money?

[Logan8252]

Hi. Just pondering a little holiday upgrade action and wanted some opinions. Here's the current setup:

ABIT BD7-II
P4 2.26
2x 512MB Corsair XMS3200

Couple quirks of this setup. The board undervolts a pretty good deal (1.63v when set to max) and I've been lazy to do the vid pin mod, so I don't know the true max of the CPU (running 2.8GHz right now).

Next, with 1 stick of RAM in I could run it with the 3:4 ratio and 2.8GHz fine, but with 2 sticks in it wouldn't even run at 160MHz FSB with the 3:4 ratio. So even if I did do the vid pin mod I'd have to bump the RAM down to 1:1 to get the max of the CPU, which sucks.

So because of these set backs I've pretty much decided on getting a Granite Bay board and am leaning towards the Gigabyte one. So here's the real question.

I can buy a 2.66 for around $200 from a friend then sell my 2.26 for like $140-150. So let's just be a little conservative and say I can upgrade the 2.26 to a 2.66 for $75ish. Do you guys think that would be worth it? I don't know the exact max of this 2.26 yet and I'd imagine that due to the higher multiplier of the 2.66 that when all is said and done, the max FSB of the 2.26 would be higher than the max FSB of the 2.66. So would the extra FSB on the Granite Bay with the 2.26 outweigh the extra MHz from the 2.66 (let's be conservative and say 200-300MHz, hopefully more though)? Thanks for your time in reading this long, boring post 😉

 

[Duvie]

personally I would stick with the 2.26ghz...The multiplier on the 2.66ghz is too high in my opinion and you most likely have no shot at a 166fsb with it...At least with the 2.26ghz you have I bet you can get it up to 2.85-2.9ghz with 1.7v or less (safe IMHO), for a fsb of around 168-170....

dual 168-170 would be quite a powerful thing likley pulling in 4200's in sissoft mem bandwidth...NOt to mention the fsb of 672-680 is much better...

With your 2.66 or 20x133 if you are lucky wont get much past 155 IMO....for 310mhz or about 3800's and a fsb of 620...

NOw if we were looking at 2.26@2.9ghz with dual 340mhzddr vs 2.66@3.1ghz with dual 310mhz I would likely stick with what I had as it likely is much of an upgrade. These GB DCDDR mobos are perfect for overclockers and low multiplier chip...


My advice is to hang onto the 2.26 and try it in the GB mobo then wait and try to change it out for a c1 stepping 2.26 or 1.8a/2.4b later when they start appearing in more numbers and they are consistently hitting 3-3.2ghz....A 2.26@3.2ghz would be 188fsb for dual 376mhz or dual pc3000...Need I say drool!!!!


The lower multiplier the better to insure high fsb and maximize those pc3200 sticks...

 

[Logan8252]

Thanks. Kinda what I was thinking myself, but I didn't want to pass up on a potentially good deal, hehe.