Please gimme suggestions.
I am using CUSL2-C w/P3 866 with 512 mb 133 sdram. I want to upgrade to P4,
no need to have a super machine. Just want to change MB, CPU and memory. My
budeget is about US$ 300 or a bit more. Any suggestion! I am a fan of asus
and intel chipset. Please!!!!!!!!!!!!
From Newegg (for their great search engine):
2 Kingston 256MB valueram CAS3 @ 43 = 86 US (PC3200)
1 P4P800-VM or 100 US or
1 P4P800 (vanilla) 105 US
Processor is tougher:
2.4C/800/512 164 US or
2.4B/533/512 143 US or
2.8A/400/128 (Celeron) 127 US or
2.0A/400/512 123 US
I picked the P4P800 family for dual channel, and the fact
it has an Intel chipset. There are other chipsets for P4
with dual channel that you could get for cheaper, but you'll
need to google a bit more, to see if there are problems.
The DIMMs don't need any special matching (doesn't have to
come two in a box), just as long as they are constructed
the same way - the DIMMs don't talk to one another, so
there is no mysterious matching process needed.
Of the sampling of processors I listed above, I'd take the
2.4C if you expect to use bandwidth intensive tasks
(Photoshop). For a lot of other stuff, a high core clock rate
is the thing to concentrate on. You can also over clock
the 2.4C, by using the 5:4 memory divider and bumping up
the FSB a bit. I suppose you could also mess around with
the 2.4B quite easily.
P4P800 + 2*256 + 2.4C/800/512 proc = $355
For comparison (just to be fair), you could get
2 Kingston 256MB valueram CAS3 @ 43 = 86 US (PC3200)
A7N8X-E Deluxe 117 US
Athlon XP 2500+ 1.83Ghz/333/512 80 US or
Athlon XP 3000+ 2.1Ghz/400/512 158 US
for a total of $283 or $361. For the 2500+, you can overclock the
FSB from 333 to 400, to get more performance than the 3000+.
The multiplier is locked, so only the FSB can be adjusted.
(On Athlons manufactured late last year, you could adjust FSB
and multiplier.)
For overclocking info, go here to see what is possible. As
you won't be upgrading this rig (BTX is coming soon), think
carefully about this before buying the processor:
http://www.cpudatabase.com/CPUdb/
HTH,
Paul
