Do I need to upgrade again?

[vagabond]

Hi folks,

ECS K7S5A Pro Ver. 5.0
Athlon 2400+ XP
512 PNY PC 2100
GeForce 4 MMX 440 8X AGP
40GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.2
80GB IBM Deskstar 7200
LG 52X CD-ROM
LG 16X DVD 48X24X48X CD-WRITER
420 PSU (no-name) but stable
19" CRT Compaq V90 Monitor
Win 98SE, Win XP Pro (Corp.), Linux (Knoppix)

Just wanted to know if it's time to upgrade. I do a lot of online gaming but mostly Counter-Strike. A little bit of video/audio editing. Nothing heavy though. CAD and intensive graphics I don't do at all so let me know what you think.

THX

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[blackphoenix77]

I think you're good for a while...you might want to get a new video card though. 9800Pro

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[Nights_L]

if you got extra money, nForce2/KT880 mobo should give you a performance boost for your cpu.
and you might need another video card..but from what you are playing, i guess MX440 is fine to you

 

[blah]

why do you want an upgrade if what you have is more than enough for what you do. From what I see you have no spare money to throw away. I would spend them on something more usefull than PC.

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

 

[addiarmadar]

Im not familiar with that mobo but yes time to do a minor upgrade. Get a barton 2500, unlocked one, and up to 3200 with a radeon 9600pro. Get some pc3200 ram to accomodate the cpu OC.

If you are broke then just focus on that AGP card cause that would be your bain to gamin performance in the future.

Mobile Barton 2500+ @ 2420mhz 11x220 1.7v
Asus A7N8X Dlx 440 FSB
1gb Geil GD pc3500 Dual Channel (2-3-3-6)
Segata 80gb SATA 8.5ms seek
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro(420/720)

 

[blah]

if you call move from 2400+ to 2500+ an upgrade, then I have no words to describe my excitement about life I have.

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

 

[vagabond]

That's what I'm thinking. Same with Nights L's recommendation. My understanding is the Barton runs a 333FSB right? I'd have some serious stability problems if I did that. This board is locked at 133FSB. If I was to upgrade the motherboard which chipset is/proved better over the other? The nForce or SiS chipset?

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[vagabond]

How did you know I don't have spare money to throw away? Have you been hacking into my savings account?

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[vagabond]

I can only upgrade one item right now and I'm thinking the mobo. It'll probably be the best choice right now.

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[endyen]

If you want a new mobo, get the NF7-S. It's the best board for $100, has the nforce chipset and soundstorm. It will give you the best perf gain, but even at that we are not talking noticeable at all. I would bet big bucks that you would gain more by a fresh os install.

 

[vagabond]

That's the one Crashman recommended a while back. That's an Abit board right? Gonna do some checking. BTW the old Socket 462 is good up to 3000+ right? That should be more than enough. There are still stability issues on the A64s and not enough mobos to choose from.

What did you mean by a fresh install? :frown: My OS is running fine.

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[endyen]

Most people have so much stuff on thier hard drives, spyware, and nonused programs loaded at startup, that they are lucky if thier computer runs at 2/3s speed. I showed a friend how to dissable and re-enable MSN messing-her and he was able to play games again.
The abit board is nice, but you dont really need it. If you are going to be playing HL2, Farcry, Or Doom3, a better video card is your best bet.
A word of caution, your chip will run hotter on any other board. That is the big plus to the unified n-s bridge on your mobo. I bought a K7S5A board for my palomino 1800+. It ran 5c cooler than on my via chipset board.

 

[vagabond]

I see. I'm not worried about junk in my drives. I've got Sygate, AVG and RegClean. I've got WebWasher for my email client. I know enough in regedit to delete unused registries so I keep my disk pretty clean. I've only got three shortcuts on my desktop. The rest I run from the menu. I don't have anything that autoloads with the exception of my anti-virus, and personal firewall and ISDN.

That's one reason I stayed with ECS despite all the problems people were having. Mine still runs stable. Another thing the Pro version (5.0) of this mobo which I have, I can adjust the CPU FSB and RAM settings. With Cheepoman's version I can fine tune the settings even further.

So you're suggesting my best bet would be to upgrade the GPU? 9800Pro seems to be a good deal.

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[endyen]

New graphics cards are due out soon, so thier are good deals to be had on many video cards. If you want to spend $200 the 9800pro is a great buy. The 9600pro is a little cheaper, and also good. Nvidia has the 5900Xt which is nice, as is the 5700 ultra. If you change platforms (nvidia to Ati) you may encounter driver problems, so get the drivercleaner from driver heaven.
Thing is,if you are not going to need it, dont get it.

 

[addiarmadar]

Either OC the 2400 or 2500 i dont care to get more out of the chip. Just the 2500 gives more luck

Mobile Barton 2500+ @ 2420mhz 11x220 1.7v
Asus A7N8X Dlx 440 FSB
1gb Geil GD pc3500 Dual Channel (2-3-3-6)
Segata 80gb SATA 8.5ms seek
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro(420/720)

 

[vagabond]

The 2400 can be overclocked only problem is the mobo won't let me. Besides the Barton can probably do a more stable OC than my T-bred.

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[baldurga]

My serious vote: don't upgrade.

Major rule: only upgrade when you NEED. If you feel confortable with your config, why do you want to spend money?

The truth about computers: time. Always play it at your side. Things get quick obsolte, prices go down, ...


Still looking for a <b>good online retailer</b> in Spain :frown:

 

[vagabond]

Actually I am happy with it. For now. I did some MP3 encoding last night and although it took a couple of hours I was still happy with the results since I was encoding it from the CDs. The burning part of over a hundred MP3 songs took the better part of a quarter of an hour. Like I said I don't do intensive graphics so I'll probably wait and see what comes out in the next six months.

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