XP / Sempron question

Afternoon!

I have XP 2000 (Palomino) on a K7S5A motherboard, which only suppports the 166fsb, not the 200. So my question is this: while my xp2000 is great for everything now, in a year's time, it may not be (already had it 2!) so what are my upgrade options?

The XP is being discontinued, replaced by the sempron. But as I understand it, the sempron isnt exactly identical, though nearly, and socket A. So can my board take a sempron (say 2800, cos 2400 is the xp2000) with a bios update?

Cheers, Chris

XP2000, 512 ddr 2700ram, GF4 MX440, XP Pro

AFAIK all the semprons will run on a 166Mhz FSB (333DDR), and your board <b>does not</b> support higher than 133Mhz/266DDR., so no, it won't work.

you can get an Athlon XP 2400+ that runs on 133/266, and IIRC they made a few 2600+ chips that run on the 133Mhz bus, but they're very rare.

Going from XP2000+ to Sempron 2800+ would not be much of an upgrade anyway - remember the Sempron rating is designed to compare with the P4 Celerons, whereas the XP rating is loosely based on the P4B chips<font color=blue><b>*</b></font color=blue> (which destroy a Celeron at the same speed)

I would say that if you won't upgrade for a year, you might as well wait a year to see what happens - you might find you could get a socket 754 A64 system very cheaply by then.

<font color=blue><b>*</b></font color=blue>I know, that's not what AMD claim... But it's pretty obvious.

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Epox 8RDA+ V1.1 w/ Custom NB HS
XP1700+ @200x10 (~2Ghz), 1.4 Vcore
2x256Mb Corsair PC3200LL/1x512Mb Corsair XMS PC4000 2.5-3-3-7
Sapphire 9800Pro @412/740

Upgrading the cpu is probably a waste of money on that board, its better to sit it out a bit longer, and upgrade the motherboard and ram as well. Its not like you spent $250 on that motherboard anyway, so don't sweat it.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

I think most of the people who are regulars here know... y'know?

When you're reading about all this new stuff all the time it's hard to remember that only 1% of the population actually has rigs as powerful as those we read about, and the 'average' gamer probably still has a PIII/Geforce2MX combination

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Epox 8RDA+ V1.1 w/ Custom NB HS
XP1700+ @200x10 (~2Ghz), 1.4 Vcore
2x256Mb Corsair PC3200LL/1x512Mb Corsair XMS PC4000 2.5-3-3-7
Sapphire 9800Pro @412/740

You should still be able to get an xp-m (mobile) chip in a year. Then you could use the ocers bios and run the chip past 2.2 gigs. It may not be worth it if you are using the sdram slots, but with good DDR it should make a big difference.
For those who dont know, the board has 2 slots for sdram, and 2 for DDR ram. They can not be used concurrently.

The xp-m chips do use the 133 fsb, though they work fine at any speed.
The stock bios on that board is the biggest block to ocing. Get the cheapoman bios, it works well.

I remember someone linking to www.ocworkbench.com a long while back, which had all the bios', including said cheapomon one for k7s5a's.
At the moment its running too hot at stock for me to overclock (averages 51C idle, 57 under heavy stress....I think its because its summer and we're having a heatwave here in the uk) and I'm a little edgy about flashing the bios - thoough AIDA 32 is telling me to do it (WARNING! bios over 2 years old! OH NO!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! lol) so maybe I'll give it a go at some point.

XP2000, 512 ddr 2700ram, GF4 MX440, XP Pro