How best to upgrade?

[metatrophia]

at the advice of rick criswell i downloaded SiSoft's Sandra benchmarking program and gained some valuable info on my system. i must say that my Gigabyte KT133 chipset performs better than expected with my modest AMD Athlon 1Ghz processor and PC-100 RAM.

I would like to hear opinions on how best to upgrade my system. Do you think i should work from a new motherboard on up, or would a faster CPU and a change of RAM be most beneficial?

 

[sligoirish]

If you have a few dollars, I'd spend them on a new motherboard and CPU.
Here's an idea, but it's up to you in the end.
GIGABYTE nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU, Model "GA-7N400-L" - $75.00
AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 266 FSB, 256K Cache Processor 1.67Ghz - $67.00
Kingston ValueRAM 184 Pin 256MB DDR PC-2700 - $43.00 or $86.00 for 512MB

So for $185.00 or $228.00 you can have a decent machine with a lot of options to upgrade from.

 

[jammydodger]

The system you have at the moment wont support any of the new athlon XP's and your RAM is SDR(which is now pretty much obsolete). If your going to upgrade you will have to upgrade the motherboard CPU and RAM all at the same time.
How much money do you have to spend?
The Xp 2500+ is very cheap now

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[o1die]

If you want to use your old case, hardrive, etc. in your new system, I would try selling just the motherboard, cpu, and memory in your local paper. I usually install them for free as an extra incentive. Then you'll have more money for your upgrade.

 

[Spitfire_x86]

My recommendations:

CPU: Athlon XP 2400+ (faster than 2500+ in most cases)

Mobo: ABIT NF7 v2.0 (I'm using this board since last ~7 month, and it's great. Buy NF7-S v2.0 if you need better audio, Serial ATA/RAID, Firewire)

RAM: 2 x 256 MB = 512 MB Kingston Value RAM PC2700 DDR

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[metatrophia]

thanks a lot guys...ill price some of this stuff out and take it all into consideration. thanks!

 

[endyen]

If you are hard pressed for hard earned, you can keep your old chip, and run it on the new board ( with new ram) until you have the extra cash.

 

[jammydodger]

Can you run the old T-Birds on a nforce2 board?

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[metatrophia]

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If you are hard pressed for hard earned, you can keep your old chip, and run it on the new board ( with new ram) until you have the extra cash.
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youre referring to the nforce2 ultra400 chipset? do you also recommend gigabyte?

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Gigabyte is not bad, but ABIT nForce2's are the best

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