A few more upgrade questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jerry Natowitz
  • Start date Start date
J

Jerry Natowitz

Thanks to all who advised me to do the right thing, and upgrade CPU,
Motherboard, and video.

Now I have one more question. Given that I start with:

Iwill A500 mid tower case
Shuttle AK32-A systemboard (KT266A)
AMD XP 1700+ Thoroughbred - slightly overclocked at 1608 MHz (12x134)
2X512 MB PC2700 DDR
Western Digital WD1600 - 160 GB 7200 RPM ATA100
Maxtor 6L080J4 - 80 GB 7200 RPM ATA133 (running at ATA100)
Plextor PX-712A - 12X DVD+-RW
Generic 16X DVD-ROM
ATI All-In-Wonder Pro 8 MB video with TV in/out
Creative Sound Blaster Live Value

I am planning to make the following changes:

ASUS A8V-E Deluxe - $124 (probably will replace Soundblaster)
Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice) - $146
Sapphire 100591L - $65.

Given that I will probably not replace the RAM, is this a good
choice of components?

Second question: if I want to overclock the Athlon, is this a
good choice? If not, are there lower priced motherboards that
will do better?

Again, thanks in advance.
 
I am planning to make the following changes:

ASUS A8V-E Deluxe - $124 (probably will replace Soundblaster)
Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice) - $146
Sapphire 100591L - $65.

Given that I will probably not replace the RAM, is this a good
choice of components?

Second question: if I want to overclock the Athlon, is this a
good choice? If not, are there lower priced motherboards that
will do better?
Click to expand...

Just because it's the board I decided on and it seems to fit your
specs and costs about the same as the A8V-e I would recommend the MSI
K8N Neo2 Platinum (or the more expensive Neo 4 Platinum). These boards
use the Nvidia nForce chipset which has gotten better reviews for
reliability, compatibility, and performance than the Via chipset used
on the A8V-E board. There are quite a few posts in the alt.comp.*
newsgroups discussing these chipsets and there are also plenty of
websites with more info.

Here is a good article about overclocking the Athlon 64 3000+. Seems
to overclock well though I haven't tried it myself, yet.

I would plan to eventually upgrade your RAM no matter which board you
decide on, especially if you plan to do any overclocking.
 
Jerry,

While I'm a satisfied owner of an Asus A8V Deluxe mainboard (not the A8V-E),
I'd go for an NF4 board if I wanted PCI-E graphics. They are a bit more
expensive, but they are supposed to give the best performance. Also, the
K8T890 chipset in the A8V-E Deluxe is supposed to be incompatible with the
new A64 X2 (dual-core) CPUs. You may never want one of those (expensive),
but it's worth mentioning.

Another poster mentioned the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum. If I'm thinking of the
right board, it has a good reputation for performance, but it's an NF3
board, with AGP graphics.

If you're serious about overclocking, you may wish to consider one of the
DFI Lanparty boards. I have not used one, but they have what may be the most
complete set of settings available.

I'm not sure how happy you'll be with PC2700 memory with a CPU that wants
PC3200. You may be able to OC the RAM and avoid setting memory multipliers
off 1:1. The performance may be OK even if you have to resort to the
multipliers.

Bob Knowlden

Address may be scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
You'll most likely have to dump the PC2700 ram. It may work at 200FSB at
very relaxed timings but ram is pretty cheap righ now so get some PC3200.
You can get a gig of decent PC3200 for around $80-$90.
 
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