advice wanted...

[Waylander]

hi all,
looking for aquick bit of advice, looking to upgrade a system, currently an
xp200+ on a abit kx7-333, 1Gb crucial pc2700 (2x512), pny geforce
fx5700ultra, 2x 80Gb maxtor 6l080j4 drives, audigy 2 platinum
toying with going to asus p4s800 along with P4 3.2 800fsb + above vid/sound

question, obviously, this is seriously quicker, but
1. do I go with this now for around £300 uk, (including hsf& nec dvd rw) or
am I better waiting for athlon 64s to come down abit..
2. will my ram work ok with this chip.mobo combo?

cheer

Mike

 

[~misfit~]

hi all,
looking for aquick bit of advice, looking to upgrade a system,
currently an xp200+ on a abit kx7-333, 1Gb crucial pc2700 (2x512),
pny geforce fx5700ultra, 2x 80Gb maxtor 6l080j4 drives, audigy 2
platinum
toying with going to asus p4s800 along with P4 3.2 800fsb + above
vid/sound

question, obviously, this is seriously quicker, but
1. do I go with this now for around £300 uk, (including hsf& nec dvd
rw) or am I better waiting for athlon 64s to come down abit..
2. will my ram work ok with this chip.mobo combo?

The system you have outlined requires PC3200 RAM (200Mhz true FSB), your RAM
isn't up to the job being PC2700.

The first question is purely a personal decision, only you can make it.

 

[Waylander]

The system you have outlined requires PC3200 RAM (200Mhz true FSB), your
RAM

isn't up to the job being PC2700.

Nuts.. ok, thanks for that...

The first question is purely a personal decision, only you can make it.
--

yeah, know that, looking for some experiences of people who have done
simialr and regretted/loved it so I can get a feel for it..

cheers

 

[Waylander]

The system you have outlined requires PC3200 RAM (200Mhz true FSB), your RAM
isn't up to the job being PC2700.

just had a rake arouynd on crucials site, their configurator/advisor thing
says anything from pc2100 up will work with that board??

follow up question is, obviously the faster the better as far as memory is
concerned, but will pc2700 work in that board, has anyone tried it?

cheers

 

[Trent©]

just had a rake arouynd on crucials site, their configurator/advisor thing
says anything from pc2100 up will work with that board??

Work? Probably. At optimum? Get 3200.

Just look at the spec sheet for that board. That should open your
eyes to what you want to know.

follow up question is, obviously the faster the better as far as memory is
concerned, but will pc2700 work in that board, has anyone tried it?

No...haven't tried it. But the spec sheet says it'll work.
Again...take a look about what that sheet says about the memory.

I've built a few 2.8's lately...and I've gone with the Intel boards.
You might consider them...depending on what you want the board to do.

To comment on question #1 for you...

Consider keeping what you've got...and upgrading to a couple of WD
Raptor drives. Simply awesome!!

Good luck on your new system.


Have a nice week...

Trent

Certified breast self-exam subcontractor.

 

[kony]

hi all,
looking for aquick bit of advice, looking to upgrade a system, currently an
xp200+ on a abit kx7-333, 1Gb crucial pc2700 (2x512), pny geforce
fx5700ultra, 2x 80Gb maxtor 6l080j4 drives, audigy 2 platinum
toying with going to asus p4s800 along with P4 3.2 800fsb + above vid/sound

question, obviously, this is seriously quicker, but
1. do I go with this now for around £300 uk, (including hsf& nec dvd rw) or
am I better waiting for athlon 64s to come down abit..
2. will my ram work ok with this chip.mobo combo?

cheer

Mike

Your board supports 1/5 PCI divider so it should be good-to-go running @
166MHz FSB, synchronous 166MHz memoy bus. That would enable you to use an
XP Barton and o'c it till the wheels fall off, or at least till Athlon 64
platforms come down in price or P4 platforms are faster than 3.2GHz... at
least that's what I'd do, a pretty cheap performance boost and a lot less
work than swapping boards & reconfiguring the OS. Perhaps a BIOS update
would be prudent if that course is taken. Keep in mind that for serious
overclocking you'd probably want the Mobile Barton, since it's defaulting
as a 133MHz FSB CPU and still has an unlocked multiplier unlike current
"desktop", regular Bartons.

To more directly answer your question:

1. I'd wait, and consider the o'c Barton to tide me over

2. No, you need PC3200, the PC2700 you have will reduce peformance too
much, or at least it really hurts the bang-for-buck value of a P4 3.2G
box.

 

[~misfit~]

just had a rake arouynd on crucials site, their configurator/advisor
thing says anything from pc2100 up will work with that board??

I wouldn't run RAM slower than the CPU FSB personally. I've only tried it
once, while I was waiting for some new RAM to arrive, and the system was
unresponsive (relatively) and benchmarked abysmally.

follow up question is, obviously the faster the better as far as
memory is concerned, but will pc2700 work in that board, has anyone
tried it?

I haven't tried it. I'm assuming the board allows you to run the RAM
asynchronously from the FSB? Or do they mean that you can run a 400FSB
Celeron in it, which would only require PC2100?

The CPU you listed is an "800FSB" part, meaning, to run optimally, it needs
PC3200 or higher RAM or the RAM becomes a bottle-neck. If it allows
asynchronous operation you could get by with your current RAM for a time
while you save up for some faster RAM.

I prefer Kony's suugestion about getting all you can out of your current
system. Throw a Barton in it. It's a cheap upgrade and will give you by far
more 'bang-for-buck' than the other options you've outlined. Especially the
mobile Barton and a bit of tweaking here and there. If you're new to
tweaking we'll help, either here or in alt.comp.hardware.overclocking. You
could probably get just as good performance, if not better, out of a tweaked
mobile Barton as you would out of the P4 3.2 in everything except video
rendering. And it's cheap.

 

[Waylander]

I wouldn't run RAM slower than the CPU FSB personally. I've only tried it
once, while I was waiting for some new RAM to arrive, and the system was
unresponsive (relatively) and benchmarked abysmally.


I haven't tried it. I'm assuming the board allows you to run the RAM
asynchronously from the FSB? Or do they mean that you can run a 400FSB
Celeron in it, which would only require PC2100?

the board will allow async running, however the ram is crucials top stuff so
there is some scope to bring the ram speed up toward the cpu, to attempt to
minimise the bottleneck. this is only a temp measure until I get some pc3200
anyway, probably about a month or so...

although I am now considering the mobile barton option as well...

thanks for your advice all, I'll elt you know how I go..

Cheers

mike

 

[pi0neer]

Hi there,
You got me thinking about upgrading as well now!! I like the
suggestion from Kony! I built my PC a couple years ago and have lost
track of the different types of processor/RAM etc.

I currently have:-
- ABIT KX7-333 Mobo
- XP1900+ Processor
- 512mb (2 x 256mb) Crucial Ram PC2100 184 DIMM ER CL2.5
- ABIT Siluro GF4 MX440 Graphics Card
- Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Sound Card
- Pinnacle PCTV Rave TV Card

Just looking on the ABIT web site I THINK the maximum processor I can
get is a XP2600+. I guess that looking above I should change my
memory to PC3200 (would the KX7-333 support this memory?)

Maybe someone could list a couple suitable items from
http://www.overclockers.co.uk as this is where I previously bought
most of my PC components and I found them very good!

Would appreciate your advise!
Thanks
pi0