hello, i have a little hardware question once again.
i sit here with an athlon xp 2400+ (thorton) and 2x512mb of
pc3200(400mhz) ram and i'd like to find out the cheapest and most
efficient way to use these components together.

the first thought i had was to buy one of those cheap via kt880 boards
(around 35€ with sata, lan and audio) but as my thorton is multiplier
locked at 15x i had to run it at 15x133mhz meaning also the ram would
be only on 133mhz when running in sync with the fsb.

another thought that came to my mind was that i could try and sell the
thorton to get an athlon xp-mobile 2600+ for less than 100€ where i
could change the multiplier at least to lower values and so run it
on 10x200mhz.

my favorite solution however would be to just take that multiplier
lock off that thorton and run it on 10x200mhz but from what i read
the only chance to do that is to mod it to an xp-mobile what doesnt
sound too promising to me.

thanks for any help or suggestions...

On 1 Feb 2005 06:15:16 -0500,
(E-Mail Removed)lid (nmx) wrote:

>hello, i have a little hardware question once again.
>i sit here with an athlon xp 2400+ (thorton) and 2x512mb of
>pc3200(400mhz) ram and i'd like to find out the cheapest and most
>efficient way to use these components together.
>
>the first thought i had was to buy one of those cheap via kt880 boards
>(around 35€ with sata, lan and audio) but as my thorton is multiplier
>locked at 15x i had to run it at 15x133mhz meaning also the ram would
>be only on 133mhz when running in sync with the fsb.

I can't decide for you, if you want to overclock it... but
if you did, get an nForce2 board instead since it has the
AGP/PCI multipler locked itself, such that you could vary
the FSB speed up to the max the CPU will tolerate (probably
slightly over 150MHz with decent heatsink on it). You would
of course lose a few percent performance but then again the
memory may run at tighter timings at the lower bus speed,
making up some of that difference.

>
>another thought that came to my mind was that i could try and sell the
>thorton to get an athlon xp-mobile 2600+ for less than 100€ where i
>could change the multiplier at least to lower values and so run it
>on 10x200mhz.

A Thorton @ 2.3GHz is faster than a Barton @ 2.0GHz... but
of course the Barton will o'c higher than 2.0GHz most
often... again your call to make.

Seems pretty late in the game to not have a board yet AND be
contemplating buying a Barton though, if you like the idea
of selling the Thorton I'd suggest getting an Athlon 64 or
the socket 939 Sempron, and of course the appropriate
motherboard.

As for cheapest and most efficient way (as you wrote), get
the nForce2 board and o'c the parts you have. Granted an
nForce2 board might cost slightly more than KT880 but it's
generally better to avoid the cheapest boards anyway, they
typically cut more corners than just the chipset on 'em.