Time To Upgrade BH6 - Suggestions Plz

[Guest]

Greetings all!
I have decided it's time for my Abit BH6 system to retire. Originally, I had the famous BH6 & Celeron
300A @ 450, then upgraded a year or so back to a Celeron 2 550 @ 850. What a great mobo - however I picked up an ASUS V8200 Deluxe video card (to replace my aging Canopus Spectra 2500 16 mb TNT) and realized the BH6 mobo only supports AGP 2x. I am on a bit of a budget (the video card killed me) but would like some suggestions for a new mobo/cpu/ram setup. I am leaning towards an AMD Athlon 1.13 GHz 133/266 and 256 mb of DDR ram. I have no idea which mobo to get. Any commentary on the pros/cons of Rambus vs. DDR & AMD vs. Intel is welcome! Do u think I made a wise choice with the Asus Geforce 3 video card? I have heard a new version is coming out in a month? Should I return the card and wait for it?
Thanks in advance!

Hardware Junkie

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Pro's and cons of rambus?

well you DID say you were on a budget, so that kinda excludes the P4/rambus combo,
unless u want to go for a 1.3Ghz version.
*shrugs*

go with a tbird C. anything from 1 to 1.333 Ghz will be very nice.
if you can find an axia or an unlocked tbird, all the merrier.
ddr? may as well if its cheap. where i am it wasnt (australia) so i went the tried and true sdram route.


My Hamster has 512MB of SDRAM @ 150Mhz CAS 2!

 

[Crashman]

Don't blow your entire budget on a new motherboard when the one you have will support the PIII 1GHz. Yes, any motherboard that support the Celeron II will support the Coppermine PIII. And the BH6 supports a 133MHz FSB. Plus the BX chipset supports a 1/4 PCI divider. So at 133 the only thing that gets overclocked is the video card, and the entire GeForce2 series supports that higher AGP bus speed (89MHz). So spend your money on a new processor and RAM. Forget the video card and motherboard. 89MHz AGP2x gives about the same perfromance as 66MHz AGP4x. So the fact that it only supports 2x is not a big issue.
If you can't afford the PIII 1GHz, the 700 will go to 933@133 FSB, for only $96. I use the FC-PGA version on an Abit Slotket III (available at googlegear for $9). You don't even really need the Slotket III, you could use almost any Slotket made for the coppermine, as you have the added features in BIOS.
So saave yourself a bunch of money and simply get a new processor and RAM.

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

 

[Frocer]

First off, AGP 2X and AGP 4X makes almost absolutely no difference. In 3D Marks 2001, I only noticed about 20 pt drop when I changed 4X to 2X, so if that's your concern, don't worry about it.

If you insist on upgrading, like the other say, if you are on a budget that pretty much ruled out Intel. I would suggest you to get DDR, since it's not all that much more expensive than SDR, it's only like $70 for 256MB of PC-2100 from Crucial.com. Mobo wise, I use the Asus A7M266 with AMD 761 chipset. It performs better than the A7A266 with ALi Magik chipset and it is more stable, the only down side of the A7M266 is the Via southbridge, god do I hate Via, so many incompatibility issues, ESPECIALLY when you run win2k! You just have to download a bunch of fixes and patches though, not that big of deal.

The Asus GeForce3 is awesome, I am using that as well, no problem so far. It is the fastest GF3 on the market(not by much, but still something to brag about, hehe).