new athlong 64 machine, questions suggestions

[Dr. Nick]

hi, I currently have a dual athlon xp 1700 machine on a tyan tiger MP board
been using it for 2 yers but looking to upgrade to an athlon 64 rig. I've
been looking at barebones setups and for about 400 I can get a setup with a
case, mobo (gigabyte K8NSC-939), athlon 64 3000, 1GB of PC3200 dual channel
ram (2x 512) case. I already have an ati all in wonder radeon (128 mb, 4x
agp) but since I don't really play games I don't think I need anything more.
already havea DVD-rom and DVD burner and sound blaster live 5.1 that I can
steal form my old rig. getting an SATA hard drive for it. what my questions
are, is the motherboard and CPU adequate? would it be worth it to upgrade 1
or both of them? if so what would you recommend? any other sites with good
deals on barebones sytems I'd be appreciative of having. thanks!

 

[Wes Newell]

hi, I currently have a dual athlon xp 1700 machine on a tyan tiger MP board
been using it for 2 yers but looking to upgrade to an athlon 64 rig. I've
been looking at barebones setups and for about 400 I can get a setup with a
case, mobo (gigabyte K8NSC-939), athlon 64 3000, 1GB of PC3200 dual channel
ram (2x 512) case. I already have an ati all in wonder radeon (128 mb, 4x
agp) but since I don't really play games I don't think I need anything more.
already havea DVD-rom and DVD burner and sound blaster live 5.1 that I can
steal form my old rig. getting an SATA hard drive for it. what my questions
are, is the motherboard and CPU adequate? would it be worth it to upgrade 1
or both of them? if so what would you recommend? any other sites with good
deals on barebones sytems I'd be appreciative of having. thanks!

I'm not sure you'd gain anything going from a dual cpu system to a single
core A64 3000+. You might want to consider keeping what you have and just
overclocking the 1700+'s you have if they are at stock speed (1466MHz).
They will easily clock up to 1733MHz even if they are old Palomino or
Tbred A cores. If they're B cores, they will easily go over 2000MHz. Wait
til dual core A64's come down in price and then upgrade. The low end dual
cores will have to come down pretty quickly or AMD won't sell many of them
going agian a dual core Pentium that less than half the price of the AMD
dual core. I havn't owned an Intel cpu since my 486SX20, but if i were
buying dual core today, I'd probably go with a Pentium D 820 (dual core
@2.8GHz) for $275 vs the low end AMD X2 4200 for almost $600.

 

[Dr. Nick]

well the thing with my computer is that my motherboard is on it's way out,
my brother and I built identical computers and his board died over a year
ago. so I'm trying to get out while this computer is still usable. sell teh
CPU's to defray the cost of the new rig. and get into a 64. I also haven't
owned an intel cpu since my 386, since then I've owned a cyrax 5x86 and 6x86
and then amd k5, k6-2 and k6-3.

 

[dawg]

I'm not sure you'd gain anything going from a dual cpu system to a single
core A64 3000+. You might want to consider keeping what you have and just
overclocking the 1700+'s you have if they are at stock speed (1466MHz).
They will easily clock up to 1733MHz even if they are old Palomino or
Tbred A cores. If they're B cores, they will easily go over 2000MHz. Wait
til dual core A64's come down in price and then upgrade. The low end dual
cores will have to come down pretty quickly or AMD won't sell many of them
going agian a dual core Pentium that less than half the price of the AMD
dual core. I havn't owned an Intel cpu since my 486SX20, but if i were
buying dual core today, I'd probably go with a Pentium D 820 (dual core
@2.8GHz) for $275 vs the low end AMD X2 4200 for almost $600.

Tyan motherboards aren't very overclocking friendly. Especially the dual cpu
boards. But if the poster wants dual chips, most any 939 board will supprt
the new dual A64 cpu's.
And just yesterday I read that the dual Intel 2.8 will only cost around
$250.

 

[Nick]

I'm really not interested in dual core chips (mainly because of the cost
right now and don't need that, trying to stay as cheap as possible while
still upgrading my machine (before it dies) was just wondering what
motherboards are good (for the price) and also which chip, is there a big
difference between 3000, 3200, 34000 (ext.)? thanks

 

[Wes Newell]

Tyan motherboards aren't very overclocking friendly. Especially the dual cpu
boards.

The board doesn't have to support overclocking. You overclock the CPU,not
the board. So he could still turn the 1700+'s into anything from 2100+'s
to 3200+'s, asumming they are not multiplier locked. And it may be
possible to mode those for mobile MP's and still do the same. I'd consider
going from a dual 1700+ cpu to a single 3000+ cpu a downgrade when just a
little effort would give him at minimum of a 20% boost in power, with
possibilites of a 50% boost if he has the right 1700+'s (tred B cores). In
6 months, dual core A64's will be half of what they are now.

 

[Wes Newell]

I'm really not interested in dual core chips (mainly because of the cost
right now and don't need that, trying to stay as cheap as possible while
still upgrading my machine (before it dies) was just wondering what
motherboards are good (for the price) and also which chip, is there a big
difference between 3000, 3200, 34000 (ext.)? thanks

A socket 754 3400+ is faster than a socket 939 3500+ in all applications
(except bandwidth test) when both are run at stock speeds. So if you plan
on keeping this combo for a year or more, you'd be wise to get a socket
754 machine and save the money for a new socket M A64 (Yes, socket 939 is
being replaced when AMD goes to DDR2).

 

[dawg]

The board doesn't have to support overclocking. You overclock the CPU,not
the board. So he could still turn the 1700+'s into anything from 2100+'s
to 3200+'s, asumming they are not multiplier locked. And it may be
possible to mode those for mobile MP's and still do the same. I'd consider
going from a dual 1700+ cpu to a single 3000+ cpu a downgrade when just a
little effort would give him at minimum of a 20% boost in power, with
possibilites of a 50% boost if he has the right 1700+'s (tred B cores). In
6 months, dual core A64's will be half of what they are now.

If the board doesn't have multiplier settings or FSB settings how do you OC
the cpu? I don't know specifically whats in the bios of his board but
generally Tyan dualies don't have much wiggle room.

 

[Wes Newell]

If the board doesn't have multiplier settings or FSB settings how do you OC
the cpu? I don't know specifically whats in the bios of his board but
generally Tyan dualies don't have much wiggle room.

You overclock the CPU, not the board. There's several ways to do it. One
is directly on the cpu by changing the multiplier bridges to whatever
multiplier you want (you can do the same for default FSB and vcore). One
could also add the wiring to the MB to give complete multiplier control
via jumpers/switches (lot's of work). But most would use the pinmod or do
it on the cpu. You really don't need anything in the bios to do it.

http://fab51.com/index-e.html

http://www.ocinside.de/go_e.html?/html/workshop/pinmod/amd_pinmod.html