Battle of the Bartons... (Help me decide!)

Hi! I would go with the 2500 and spend that extra 100$ on a seperate videocard. And buy the mobo whitout the MX-420 builtin. Because then you could buy a mobo with built-in Nvidia soundAPU (notice only southbridge MCP2-T has this) wich gives you an avarage adavantage in games of about 8% over ANY other soundcard today. So the external videocard for about 100$ and the APU would give you much better speed benefits than going with an 2800!

I would suggest either the ABIT NF7-S or the ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe! Because you should make shure that the mobo actually USES the MCP2-T southbridge soundcapabilites since not all boards with MCP2-T does that. I know that these two boards does. If you insist on going with MSI then go with the K7N2 Delta-ILSR. But my best bet would be the ABIT board since its last version includes the NEW Nvidia nforce2 northbridge called ULTRA which gives slight benefits over the previous one.

Goodluck

Turk

PS Sorry for the lousy English

Save your coin. The 2500 will run anything you can throw at it fast enough. Put the $100 towards more and better sound/video/storage...you'll notice it more there than the extra speed the 2800 will give ya.

Give me Convenience or Give me Death!

The xp2800 is now $189 at newegg. Does that change things?
Normally I would suggest that you by the 2500 and bump it up in the bios a bit but soom people think that's overclocking.The two are very close to being the same chip but,oh well if you want to go on how some packager was feeling. But seriously dont get the onboard video. Friends dont let friends by mx esp not built in mx. Unless of course you need a computer now but promise to save up for a Radeon 9800 to fill that empty agp slot.

get the 2500 and turn the multiplier up to 12.5 (from the default 11) in the bios. This chip can do this with zero change in core voltage (voltage stays at stock 1.65). You will save yourself 100, and still have the 2800. When I did this my temps only went up 1 degree celcius. I don't consider a chip overclocked until the vcore is raised.

Well that 2800 is pretty darn cheap now and you can also bump its multiplier up a bit too so it can be the xp 3000. Just dont get that 3200 chip for it is a waste of money when you can take the 2800 and bump it up to that too. Id just go for the gold.

If you overclock, then only buy 2500+.

If you don't overclock, then buy AXP 2700+. It will be sightly slower than AXP "Barton" 2800+ in gaming and equal or slighly faster in most cases where clock speed is more important than extra cache. Not to mention, 2700+ is cheaper than 2800+

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Well as you said you are NOT overclocking, i would reccommend you get a XP instead. They are alot cheaper and you get mor Mhz. The increased Cache size of the barton only has a moderate performance effect at best.

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I am getting tired of people badmouthing the 3200. What it did was make the 200 fsb work. No wonder Intel fanboys hate it. Hello we cann't buy it yet but now most 166 chips run fine at 200.A year from now when your old system becomes a kids toy you will be glad of the 3200 to slap onto your board(at $100).Till then just smile and say, oh yah.

Just as you said the 166 chips can run fine at 200, in this case he is wanting to save money. Eventually the 3200 chip and its 200fsb feature will be great economically when there is MBs that can do 400 or even more so we can take it and make it do more than newer ones can. Just right now the 3200 chip isnt really a good choice as AMD is leading you to believe right now. This guys is looking for "more bang" for his buck and right now the 166 chips are the ones.

He already bought his motherboard, its a k7n2g, that has onboard gfx. they are mx440 anyway. the ILSR is the only one with mcp-t and surround sound

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Well, for $95 at newegg I'd get the barton 2500+
I have one and with stock cooling and default voltages I'm running at 3200+ speeds and 400FSB. Atleast it does this easily with an nforce2 ultra chipset. Even if you don't overclock, for being under $100, it's a great deal.

Thank you for all the replies! As far as graphics are concerned i am getting a Radeon 9700 Pro at a nice price, so thats what i'll be using. My question now is, if i just adjust the multiplier a little, do i need to get some high end RAM, or will i be able to get by with a gig of Apacer PC2700 333 mhz DDR running in dual channel mode? The mem is compatible with my motherboard, but does not have any of the fancy heat spreaders or anything. Thanks again for the great advice. My motherboard does have built in video but im not gonna use it, i just got that particular model because it supports a higher processor speed than the regular K7N2 board.