A7V8X.x Upgrade...Help needed

[DB]

I'm wanting to upgrade my system and it's a bit of a jungle out
there..............

My current system is the A7V8X motherboard and on it I have the
following.................

Athlon XP 1600+ CPU
256 Meg DDR memory
160 Gig HD
Radeon Pro 9600 Graphics Card.

A friend of mine gave me a list of new components to up garde my set up and
absically he's written down everything that would make
a brand new "super machine".......basically everything I have is cr*p and
should be ditched, well, I'm not convinced...surely i can give myself a
little boost by upgrading the CPU to something with a bit more poke.

What is the fastest CPU i can put on this board.

I don't plan on spending the £800 that my mates list come to.....

If i put a top CPU onto this board and take the memory upto 1 gig .....how
much better off would I be.

I'm not gonna spend £300 to get 5% more power - if you know what I mean.


Can some kind folk out there tell me what i can and cant do with my set up
to improve things.

Many thanks as always.

Dave

 

[RonK]

You can upgrade the cpu and memory on the A7V8X-X and have a nicely
performing computer.

You can go up to the Athlon XP 2600+ which has a FSB if 166 compared to the
133 that your XP1600 has.

Replacing your 256 memory with 1 gig of PC3200 will give you a nice boost as
well.

The Radeon 9600 Pro is a good video card that can handle most games very
well and has very good graphics.

You already have a 160 gig hard drive but if you are a download junkie you
could add a second drive later.

I don't know what was on the new list but if it's not really top end super
high performance parts you may not gain as much performance as you hoped
for.

If it were me and not wanting to spend big dollars, I would upgrade the cpu
and memory.

The XP 1600 runs at 133 FSB and at 1400 MHz.
The XP 2600+ runs at 166 FSB and at 2088 MHz.
(There's a 50 % increase in cpu performance if not more because of the
faster FSB)

The A7V8X-X supports 400 MHz memory (I don't know what your 256 is)

Ron

 

[DB]

RonK, thanks for the info...

the list my friend put together is as follows....

AMD Athlon 64 3000 Retail / MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum / 1GB GeIL
Value PC3200 Dual Channel Kit - Bundle (BU-046-OK)






AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail
(ADA3000BPBOX) (CP-117-AM)
1




GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5
(GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
1




MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express
Motherboard (MB-046-MS)
1


£239.85
£239.85



XFX GeForce PCX6600 GT Extreme Gamers Edition 128MB DDR3
TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT43GNDD7) (GX-046-XF)




£114.95
£114.95



Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940)
(FG-000-AR)




£14.95
£14.95



Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 200GB 6L200MO SATA 8MB Cache - OEM
(HD-027-MD)




£55.95
£55.95



OcUK Value Floppy Drive - Silver (CD-001-AP)




£6.50
£6.50



LiteOn SOHW-1693S Dual Layer 16x16 DVD±RW ReWriter - OEM
(CD-014-LO)




£27.00
£27.00



OcUK Value Rainbow Series Case Silver With 350W PSU (CA-000-RB)




£18.95
£18.95



Viewsonic VE710s 17" LCD Monitor (MO-043-VS)





Is the 2600+ the maximum my board will take...

 

[RonK]

Hi Dave,

Here's the cpu info that the A7V8X-X will support:
A7V8X-X
Revision: 1.01
Form Factor: ATX
Chipset: VIA KT400 AGP DDR
Bios: 09/07/2004 or later. Recommended Speeds:
AMD AthlonT XP 3000+ (333 FSB)
AMD AthlonT XP 2800+ (333 FSB)
AMD AthlonT XP 2700+ (333 FSB)
AMD AthlonT XP 2600+ (333 FSB) Model 8
AMD AthlonT XP 2600+ (333 FSB) Model 10
AMD AthlonT XP 2600+ (266 FSB)
AMD AthlonT XP 2500+ (333 FSB)
AMD AthlonT XP 2400+ (266 FSB) Model 10 w/ 256K Cache
AMD AthlonT XP 2400+ (266 FSB)
AMD AthlonT XP 2200+ (266 FSB) Model 10 w/ 256K Cache
AMD AthlonT XP 2200+ (266 FSB)
AMD AthlonT XP 2100+ (266 FSB) Model 8
AMD AthlonT XP 2000+ (266 FSB) Model 8
AMD AthlonT XP 2000+ (266 FSB) Model 10 w/ 256K Cache
AMD AthlonT XP 1900+ (266 FSB) Model 8
AMD AthlonT XP 1800+ (266 FSB) Model 8
AMD AthlonT XP 1700+ (266 FSB) Model 8
AMD SempronT 3000+ (Socket A)
AMD SempronT 2800+ (Socket A)
AMD SempronT 2600+ (Socket A)
AMD SempronT 2500+ (Socket A)
AMD SempronT 2400+ (Socket A)
AMD SempronT 2300+ (Socket A)
AMD SempronT 2200+ (Socket A)

If your bios is not the 09/07/2004 you will have to flash the
bios first before installing a newer cpu.

Ron

 

[RonK]

Dave, My copy and paste did not display correctly.

Any AMD AthlonT XP should have pasted as:

AMD Athlon XP - Not with the T in there.

 

[RonK]

AMD Athlon XP Barton 3000+ (2.167GHz) Socket A Processor

 

[DB]

Thanks RonK,

I haven't tried flashing the bios before - is this a simple process? the
reason I ask, quite a while back I had an MSI DVD writer and this was an
absolute swine to flash.

I was just looking at a 3200 chip on ebay....i think i'd better steer clear
of it.

What about overclocking, have you any experience of overclocking a 3000 chip

Im off to the ASUS website to try and "flash" this thing.

Cheers

Dave

 

[DB]

Gotcha Ron - thanks

Dave

Thanks RonK,

I haven't tried flashing the bios before - is this a simple process? the
reason I ask, quite a while back I had an MSI DVD writer and this was an
absolute swine to flash.

I was just looking at a 3200 chip on ebay....i think i'd better steer
clear of it.

What about overclocking, have you any experience of overclocking a 3000
chip

Im off to the ASUS website to try and "flash" this thing.

Cheers

Dave

 

[RonK]

Dave,
Make sure you download the Bios Flashing instructions from Asus and print
them for reference.
Normally a bios flash is simple and quick but there is always a chance that
something could go wrong and cause the computer not to boot.

 

[DB]

Ron, i downloaded the instructions but have hit a problem....that I don't
even think you can solve.

Because i'm in the midle of building work in my house, 99% of my computer
stuff is living in my mother in laws loft - can i heck find a floppy disk!

i've searched everywhere,nowt!.........I even tried putting the files onto
my usb memory stick,nowt....

Damn frustrating or what.....

Hmmm got an idea.....theres a small shop in town (it's an off
licence/anything shop) ...I wonder....they just might have a flopy disk i
could use....

I'm off to try it.

Dave

 

[DB]

No luck..........blast.............

On the CPU theme , a shop in Newcastle (not too far away) has a Socket A ,
Sempron 2800 for £49 - this looks a good price to me.

Will I need a new fan ?

Dave

 

[RonK]

Dave, I don't recommend the Sempron. Its a lower class CPU just like the
difference between the Athlon and the Duron CPU's.
What price difference is there between the Athlon XP 3000+ and that Sempron
?
The Sempron has only 256 on die cache where the Athlon XP has a 512 on die
cache.

Ron

 

[DB]

RonK...

My local store doesnt have anything but the Sempron....but I have looked at
Microdirects website and they have
the Athlon 3000 barton core 333 for just under £65.00

This looks a fair price to me......again, can this be overclocked and pushed
that bit further?

Cheers again

Dave

 

[DB]

Also.......just had a look in my pc......

case has powersupply of 300 - will this be sufficient for this Athlon 3000 -

DB

 

[DB]

Flashed it and it booted OK so I think I did it right........

Now all i got to do is get a new cpu,probably a new fan and some ddr memory,
as the new chip will be 333 - im sure i will need ddr333 unless i've read
something wrong.

DB

 

[RonK]

The motherboard supports ddr 400 (PC3200)
Glad your bios flash went ok !

 

[DB]

RonK, I assume that the fact that this thing boots up fine means that all
went well with the Flash, i did get the prompt to confirm Y/N with the 2
parts of the flash.

Then there was a display of numbers which i assumed were just like a
progress bar but in numerical terms.

then the thing booted but to the naked eye there is nothing telling me
anything has changed. - If I go into the BIOS what should I look for?

Thanks for the memory info too

Dave

just checked the manual ( i spent half the afternoon in the mother in laws
loft retrieving stuff) and on page 1-4 , the section about CPU's supportedit
states the following..

FSB DDR266 DDR333
DDR400
FSB/DDR 200/266Mhz y y
y
Support Table 333Mhz y


From this....I assumed that as the AthlonXP 3000 is 333 that I would need
DDR333, i think i'm missing the point here,lol.....

Simple english,Please

Dave

 

[RonK]

Dave,
The motherboard supports DDR400 so you can install that and run the memory
at 400 and the CPU at the default 333. You will gain the extra speed of the
memory.
Some motherboards complain about the cpu and memory not running the same MHz
but all the older systems I built I only had a couple where I had to match
the cpu and memory MHz at 333.

If you do encounter problems you just go into bios and set the memory to
Manual 333.

Bios:
When you boot up the computer at the first screen hit the Pause key on the
keyboard. You will then be able to see the bios date and revision number.
If the date is very recent then you have successfully flashed the bios to
the newest version.
Ron

 

[DB]

Ron wil it need to be in a pair i.e. 2 x 512 or will i be able to put in a 1
gig mem board.

Dave

 

[RonK]

Either way Dave - Which ever is the best price.
Ron