O.k. now that my life is back on the track ( girlfriend gone, dropped out of uni, no job... ) and I've paid all my debts and got a propper job ( I'm with the police now ) I'm thinking of upgrading my system. I don't want to jump on the 64bit waggon yet though. What I've currently got is: Asus A7N8X Deluxe r1.xx AMD Athlon XP 2600+ running 2100@200 Club 3D 9700np @ 320/297 1GB Corsair XMS 3200 Pro (nice flashy flashy bling bling) I'm looking for a new CPU and a new graphics card. So what to get ? Would you even recommend a CPU upgrade or only GPU ? X600, X700 or 6600, 6600 GT ? Price wise I'm looking for something in the 180 - 280 Euro section for GPU and no more than 130 Eurp for a CPU. Any thoughts are welcome Cheers Fred
Well your CPU @2.1ghz is effectively an XP3000+, will it not go any further esp with a little voltage? You may get better luck with a different Barton based AthlonXP (default speed is irrelevant so XP2500+ is fine) or you could go for those popular but over-priced AthlonXP-M but you're unlikely to get near slow Athlon64 perf levels. Seriously check how much a 754 Sempron & nForce3-250 mobo cost. Your 9700nonPRO should also o/c better, is 320/297 the most it can do? Most 9700/9700Pro cores can hit 350-370mhz. Many nonPRO owners flashed with the 9700PRO BIOS which increases stock speeds and often helps to o/c further, so you could try that too. A 9700 @320/300 is pretty close to a 9800Pro, X700Pro or 6600GT so upgrading to any of those won't be worth it IMHO. You'd want to look at a 6800 or X800SE as minimums with X800 or above being more ideal. As the cards get faster than 6600GT you really do want something faster than AthlonXP/XP-M, which is where the A64 or A64 derived Sempron come in. Just to cover the cards you mention; X600 are just 9600 so way inferior to a stock 9700nonPRO, the 6600 is a decent step up from X600 but not as good as the cheaper X700 but even that's a fair deal slower than X700Pro which isn't in itself much faster than an o/c'ed 9700. DO factor in that some cards may be PCI-E only rather than the AGP you're currently using.
I would recommend the switch to a barton cored athlon xp, as you should be able to get a decent speed from one of those and benefit from the larger L2 cache. My current 2600 is reaching 2400 pretty easily with decent cooling like the thermalright SI-97. Graphics wise it depends on what you want to be able to do. If you want to play all the latest games on high settings then you will probably benefit from the jump to a 6600GT, else i would stick with what you have until you are ready for the jump to 64bit PCI-E, thats what i am doing.
My CPU is a T-Bred B 2600+ and has a standard clock of 2083 Mhz. So taking a Barton might be a good and cheap option. The problem with an N-Force 3/A64 or N-Force 4/A64 setup, is that it costs around 440 Euro which wouldn't be so much of a problem BUT what is really annoying is that I'd have to get a new cooler for my CPU. I have watercooling and OCPC who made the block I have ( see my avatar ? ) doesn't exist anymore afaik so I can't just get a new top for it and haveing one custom made... well... no. So up goes that price to around 500 Euro cause I don't want to get one of those ugly and tiny coolers they offer here, so I'll have to order from the UK or something so the price goes up to 520 Euro because of shipping... And an X800 / 850 isn't an option simply because I'm not willing to pay as much for a graphics card as I did for the rest of the whole system!!! The whole matter would change I someone could point me to somewhere I can get a new top for my Atlantis Waterblock... anyone here up for a challenge in makeing one for less money than it would cost me here? ;-) Cheers Fred EDIT: I don't play many games. The only two games I have installed are Half Life 2 which I play rather seldom and Flight Simulator 2004 which I play quite often due to being a member of a virtual airline. What the card would have to be able to do is 1280x1024 at full quality (not full details!!!) settings and get me a framerate of around 20 - 25 in FS2004. EDIT 2: My current card is almost maxed out. It came out of the box at the above speeds and I can only increase to 325/300 any more and it's artefacts all over the place
My apologies, my mistake. Have you tried o/c'ing the CPU? I'm guessing you chose 10.5x200=2.1ghz simply to fully utilise 400FSB & PC3200 but without truly o/c'ing your CPU. Chances are good you can get 2.3ghz at least and that would put you up there with an XP3200+ (taking into account the cache deficit of a Tbred). Going for Barton (XP or XP-M) should get you a little extra perf per clock cycle but if your Tbred can hit 2.3ghz or more it wouldn't really be worth forking out the cash IMHO. It seems your gfx needs aren't high so I'd suggest simply sticking with your 9700 which is practically at 9700Pro speed. If you didn't mind taking a small risk you could flash with a 9700Pro BIOS but it may not get you that much higher. In the UK X800 (std) can be found for a similar price to the 6600GT making them superb value, I wasn't talking about the X800XT LOL!
Ah, that's my next problem. It seems I've got the components with the least overclockability in the world The most my CPU will do is 2185 at 190x11.5 at full voltage trying out 200x11 just gets betty bi***ing and I have to reset the BIOS. It's the whole reason for wanting to upgrade to some extent since I can't overclock worth s*** on this machine Cheers Fred EDIT: It would cost me more than an entire new block, as all the local workshops only use Macrolon from Bayer which is expensiv as is and workshop prices here are unbelievable... we're talking about 100 - 130 Euro. There's the material, the man hours and the CNC-mill time... A new DD block would cost me 39.67 Pounds + shipping at Coolercases UK, which would be around 60 - 80 Euro in total. P.S.: Thanks for all the input up to now - keep it coming
