2500 or 2600 or 2700?

[blackphoenix77]

I'm going to buy one of these 3 processors. Which one would have the best bang for the buck? I'm ordering off of tigerdirect.com so the are $85, $100, and $115. I'm only looking to play games like Counter-Strike and Battlefield 1942, and play AVI and DVD movies but I'm not too worries about them. I'm completely new to overclocking but i guess once i get more money i could put a couple of fans in my case to keep the temp down. would it hurt just to take the case off? I know dust and stuff would get inside but I could clean it out regularly.

My Rig:
AthlonXP 2000+ 1.677ghz
GeForce Verto FX5200 128mb DDR
Maxtor 7200RPM 80GB, Stock 40gb
Kingston 384MB DDR
Cendyne 52x24x52 CD-RW
Lite-On 4x DVD-RW
Go EMachines...

 

[superpsa]

2500+ can go to 3200+ easy. Same with the other too. Depends how much you wanna OC.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[TheRod]

If you have DDR400, you can easily overclock a 2500+ to 3200+.

--
Would you buy a GPS enabled soap bar?

 

[afterdark]

Even without overclocking, the 2500 should be plenty powerful enough to play Counter-Strike and Battlefield 1942, and Duron systems have no problem with AVI or DVD.

And really, it wouldn't hurt anything to remove the side panels off the case, but just having good airflow is much more effective. My mom's computer is in a Xaser II case with fans on each door as well as in the front and back, and removing the panels actually makes the temperature increase a bit.

 

[SoDNighthawk]

I have had and still have an XP 1700+ and a 2500+ cpu sitting in the little plastic packs in my computer desk drawer.

Ok saying that I also have a AMD 2800+ installed running at a modest 2.09 GHz and it is outperforming even my old AMD 2500+ even when that one was overclocked.

Now I never got any real performance benefits aside from running a few games until I took the 2800+ to a really good quality motherboard. We are going to run the 2500+ in a ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard but we don't have the case for it yet and I am scraping parts out of my son's IBM Aptiva case so we can give him a performance computer.

The 2500+ if it is a Barton and not locked will overclock on the memory and FSB if you have a good board and P.C 3200 DDR 400 memory.

The 2500+ when we had it up and working before was in a KV333 Asus Motherboard using SDRAM and a Geforce 2 440 MX card and the CPU performed very poorly.

But compared to some Intel rigs it was still doing better then some of the comparable Intel CPU's for games.

I have the 2800+ running like a champion with a ASUS A7N8X Deluxe and two sticks of Corsair 512MB DDR 400 memory sticks. The A7N8X supports dual channel memory and this system is running very nice @ 2.09 GHz.

However we are using the BIOS options for the A7N8X to run the computer at aggressive settings. The system peaks the memory out at 200MHz so that means with DDR it's true speed is 400MHz.

If we had another A7N8X Deluxe and popped that 2500+ into it and pushed it along a little it would do just as well and even perhaps better then the 2800+ in some cases.

I recommend that you get the 2800+ since all your prices are so low where you are and simply run it in a good board with proper memory in Dual Channel mode. You would not see any improvement even going to a 3000+ @ 333MHz because the AMD 2800+ is currently pushing 400MHz in the aggressive settings mode in the motherboard BIOS.

Since the AMD 2800+ up here is over $300.00 Canadian and the 3000+ is $400.00 Can and finally the AMD 3200+ at 400MHz is just under $600.00 Canadian you cant go wrong with a 2800+ where you are for less then $200.00 in change.

Try to go with the PC3200 Crucial Memory it should cost next to nothing for two 512MB sticks where you are and it out performs the Corsair and Kingston memory for cost. The other thing is it will function perfectly in any ASUS board that supports those CPU's.

We had some real problems with Kinston Memory in both the Asus A7V8X-X and the A7N8X Deluxe motherboards. We had trouble with a few MSI boards and the Kinston ram as well.

If you want to drop some extra cash go with the Corsair memory in two 512MB matched sets for the dual channel option the A7N8X supports it will double your system performance in most cases plus you will get the nVidia nForce chipsets on the A7N8X Deluxe and Nvidia provides a free overclocking software program you can run fully at the desktop to set overclocking settings that take effect in the BIOS and you don't have to work overclocking values out manually in the BIOS.

Barton 3200+ 400MHz
A7N8X Deluxe
Liquid
2x512 Crucial DDR 400 PC3200
GeForce FX5900
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9@80Gig
SONY CD 52x
SONY RW 52x/24x/52x
SONY DVD 16x/40x

 

[Makaveli]

I own a 2700+, and its a great chip I've had it for about a year already I paid like $400 CDN for it. lol damn price drops! But anyways, if price is a factor then the XP2500 is the chip for u.

If your goal is to overclock it gets abit trickier! I've had experience overclocking all 3 of those chips. And its gonna come down to your cooling. Cause yes the XP2500 can run @ XP3200 speeds, but it will need alot more voltage than say the XP2700+. Which by defaults runs a much higher clock speed than the XP2500+. You can also factor in the extra cache of the barton's but the performance improvements are nothing to by excited about! 3-5% on avg and as high as 10% in some appz. But what i've always found it clock speed will always gives u a bigger boost in performance than cache.

So figure out what your goal is gonna be for the chip, then go from there.


My specs
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=16172" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=16172</A>

 

[Johanthegnarler]

2500+ will run counter strike with no problems. And you could oc it to a 2 ghz cpu with no problem.

<A HREF="http://arc.aquamark3.com/arc/arc_view.php?run=610166081" target="_new">http://arc.aquamark3.com/arc/arc_view.php?run=610166081</A>
Figured i'd do it too..reality my ass.

 

[tombance]

If I were you I would sell your Geforce FX and buy a new graphics card instead. That card sux.

<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7454540" target="_new">Yay, I Finally broke the 12k barrier!!</A>

 

[endyen]

As far as I can tell, it looks like amd is getting great yields on the bartons. They are all the same, just with different badges and hsf. Get the 2500 because it's exactly the same as the 2800, 3000, and 3200, with just a different fsb and hsf from the 3200.

 

[Flinx]

Are the latest 2800's locked? Or do u just bump from 333 to 400 ?

The loving are the daring!