Sweet spot on new equipment?

[Travis McGee]

I'm trying to get up to speed on the new CPU"S, mobos, memory and HD's/

What I have now are 2 socket A AMD's, one 1600 Athlon and one 3000+ Barton.
One board has 266 bus, and the other 400. Mem is DDR 400 Crucial.

My question is whether it's worth while to buy new equipment and what gains
I might see from an upgrade. There are some cheap Socket 754 CPU's now.

I'm looking for bare bones small form factor. I have on hand DVD/CD burner,
some nice socket A coolers, 1 sata HD (150), and one new IDE HD. Video card
is AGP, but would consider a PCIe.

I *could* use the 3000+ in my old Epox mobo 7Kh8 and maybae the 400 mem, but
it has a 1600 and runs pretty good now with what I do.

Download and install trail software......I'd like to port a new pc to my TV
though, and my newest video card has video out. It's an XFX something 400,
maybe a dinasour

I'd like to keep the budget around $200-$300 if possible...

Any advice?

Thanks!

 

[John Doe]

I'm trying to get up to speed on the new CPU"S, mobos, memory and
HD's/

I'd like to keep the budget around $200-$300 if possible...

Any advice?

I suppose you didn't want generic advice, but seems to me the sweet
spot is what satisfies your application needs, versus cost.

Good luck and have fun.

 

[Paul]

I'm trying to get up to speed on the new CPU"S, mobos, memory and HD's/

What I have now are 2 socket A AMD's, one 1600 Athlon and one 3000+ Barton.
One board has 266 bus, and the other 400. Mem is DDR 400 Crucial.

My question is whether it's worth while to buy new equipment and what gains
I might see from an upgrade. There are some cheap Socket 754 CPU's now.

I'm looking for bare bones small form factor. I have on hand DVD/CD burner,
some nice socket A coolers, 1 sata HD (150), and one new IDE HD. Video card
is AGP, but would consider a PCIe.

I *could* use the 3000+ in my old Epox mobo 7Kh8 and maybae the 400 mem, but
it has a 1600 and runs pretty good now with what I do.

Download and install trail software......I'd like to port a new pc to my TV
though, and my newest video card has video out. It's an XFX something 400,
maybe a dinasour

I'd like to keep the budget around $200-$300 if possible...

Any advice?

Thanks!

For low end, AMD has you covered via socket AM2 (cheapest AM2 is $29, decent
single core 3800+ is $76). DDR2 memory is pretty cheap.

There are several AMD 690G chipset boards. For example this one, is $79.

ASUS M2A-VM HDMI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131174

By means of an included adapter card, the card occupies the PCI Express
x16 slot, and has some video output options. It has an HDMI connector.
The DIN connector supports S-video (TV) and also has component outputs
(YPbPr). There is an RCA composite connector. And an RCA SPDIF copper
output. The motherboard itself has a DVI-D and a VGA connector. Generally
speaking, you can drive two display devices, in many ways similar to
a normal video card. (Like plug a monitor to the VGA connector, and
use the component video output for a high end TV set.) Plugging
in a regular PCI Express x16 video card, means the adapter card can
no longer be used (so you'd want your replacement video card to have
TV options in that case).

The X1250 built-in graphics, would not make a good gaming platform,
but for video playback, it should be fine.

The only reason I selected the single core processor option above, was
to give your 3000+ a "run for the money". In some situations, the lower
speed dual core processors might not be as impressive. It really
depends on what you'd be doing with the machine. If you get bored,
you can always try overclocking it. At stock, the single core 3800+
Orleans runs at 2.4GHz, and they got 3.1GHz for an Orleans, in this list.
For memory, try to use a dual channel config (i.e. 2x512MB if you are
on a budget).

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59753&highlight=world+record+database

Paul

 

[Travis McGee]

The only reason I selected the single core processor option above, was
to give your 3000+ a "run for the money". In some situations, the lower
speed dual core processors might not be as impressive. It really
depends on what you'd be doing with the machine. If you get bored,
you can always try overclocking it. At stock, the single core 3800+
Orleans runs at 2.4GHz, and they got 3.1GHz for an Orleans, in this list.
For memory, try to use a dual channel config (i.e. 2x512MB if you are
on a budget).

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59753&highlight=world+r
ecord+database

Paul

Thanks, Paul......that went straight to the printer! The reason I'm
considering this, is becasue I haven't yet activated XP, and it costs more
than the hardware now!
Will this thing boot from my sata without drivers? The MSI wouldn't...

 

[Paul]

Thanks, Paul......that went straight to the printer! The reason I'm
considering this, is becasue I haven't yet activated XP, and it costs more
than the hardware now!
Will this thing boot from my sata without drivers? The MSI wouldn't...

You mean the 690G/SB600 ? No idea. It is an ATI chipset. That is all
I know about it so far. At this point, it is "concept of the week",
and I don't know how happy people are with it.

Paul

 

[PeterC]

You mean the 690G/SB600 ? No idea. It is an ATI chipset. That is all
I know about it so far. At this point, it is "concept of the week",
and I don't know how happy people are with it.

Paul

I built a PC with the M2A-VM HDMI mobo, ATI690G, a month or so ago. I had
to use the drivers from the mobo's CD, but at the time I didn't have a
bootable XP Pro SP2 CD (and the XP is, well, um...!).

So far, the rig is running well and cool - only 45W at idle with Cool 'n'
Quiet enabled.