when to upgrade?

BudBud Chesterfield, Va
edited March 2004 in Hardware
I current rig is:
amd 2500+ barton (unlocked)
asus a7n8x deluxe-e
2x 512mb pny pc3500
160GB seagate sata (soon to be another for raid 0)
slk-7 with 80mm tornado
9800 pro 128mb
tdk cd-rw/dvd-rom
windows xp pro
all inside raidmax scorpio case with 420 watt power supply
when should i udgrade my specs and with what? Im debating P4 and AMD64 but is it worth it?

Comments

  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited March 2004
    Bud, I would hold off upgrading, since you already have a pretty darn fast rig right now.

    IMO, the A64 stuff isn't ideal right now. The present mobo's and chipset's all have little bugs/problems, like the lack of an effective pci/agp lock on any chipset, via or nvidia. Plus, the present .13 micron procs don't have a whole bunch of headroom either for overclocking. If you want to go A64, then at least hold out for socket 939 boards, which will be DC boards that will accept regular unbuffered ram.

    For P4, you are in much the same boat. My 2 P4 rigs don't perform much better than my NF7-S with my 2600 mobile, so with Northwood procs you wouldn't see much, if any real gain in speed, besides maybe in a few benches or if you are really heavy into video encoding. IMO, the Prescott in it's present form isn't an upgrade option either. It runs too darn hot and if you try to overclock it, prescott severely stresses the power handling components on the mobo in it's present form. MSI even disabled all overclocking options for their P4 machines when you stick a Prescott in them. With future revisions to the Prescotts this may all change if Intel can get a handle on the absurd power requirements that Prescott presently demands, along with the associated heat production from it.
  • BudBud Chesterfield, Va
    edited March 2004
    darn, im thinking 2.8 northwood but im not sure if it would make a big difference
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited March 2004
    going from a 2500+ to a P4 2.8, you wont see any real difference. Wait for the A64 939 pins that are coming later this year. If you have a real itch to get something, get some more memory or more drive space. Those are always good to stem off the upgrade itch for another month or 2. If I were you id bump the memory to 1.5 or 2 gig and add another 160gb. Maybe give me that 420 psu and get yourself a 600w? :D

    Gobbles
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited March 2004
    I would wait until the next round of goodies. 90nm CPUs and the next set of chipsets for any CPU.
  • Al_CapownAl_Capown Indiana
    edited March 2004
    I'd get a new heatsink (Thermalright SP97) a new psu (antec 550w true control) and overclock that barton to 2.2 GHz if you haven't already. It should be real simple. Just go into the bios (press del at startup) press enter @ the abit softmenu, then change the settings to user define, then change the external clock to 200. Should easily give you an increase in speed and hold off on future purchases.

    As a sidenote, SiS has a chipset for the A64 that does in fact have an AGP/PCI lock (http://anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1922). Nvidia also has a AGP/PCI lock, however doesn't full implement 800 HT speed.
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited March 2004
    Nvidia's current Opteron chipset the NF3 150 DOES NOT have PCI/AGP Lock although the NF3 250 (due out in 2-3 weeks) does.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited March 2004
    Omega65 wrote:
    Nvidia's current Opteron chipset the NF3 150 DOES NOT have PCI/AGP Lock although the NF3 250 (due out in 2-3 weeks) does.

    Thank you for confirming what I thought. I read an article online where they tested 2 or 3 different Opteron chipset boards and I know for sure the Via and Nvidia chipset were tested. They had some kind of board they installed in the pci slot to check bus speed and both Via and Nvidia showed the lack of a pci lock. I don't remember if they tested any Sis chipset board though.
  • EyesOnlyEyesOnly Sweden New
    edited March 2004
    muddocktor wrote:
    If you want to go A64, then at least hold out for socket 939 boards, which will be DC boards that will accept regular unbuffered ram.

    I was under the impression that A64 DOES take regular ram. He didn't say opteron which doesn't. :wave:
  • qparadoxqparadox Vancouver, BC
    edited March 2004
    But Socket 754 is a dead end upgrade probably at 3800+ ... which isn't all that far away.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited March 2004
    The Athlon64 does take the same RAM we put in our own systems.

    I dont know whats all going to happen off the top of my head but was the Athlon XP going to be socket 754? A renamed A64? Or am I smoking something?
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited March 2004
    Yeah, socket 754 does use unbuffered ram but like qparadox said, it's also a dead end socket, kind of like socket 423 was with Intel. ;)

    BTW, the article I was referring to was at Anantech, about testing the boards for a pci lock, and none of K8 boards have it that were tested.
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited March 2004
    Ask and you shall recieve....

    Anandtech: PCI Speed and Overclocking: Test Results

    According to the test result here, none of the A64 mobos (Via K8T800 , Nvidia NF3-150, or SIS 755) had a working PCI lock.
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