Filling a Socket A on a Budget

[Guest]

I was toying with the idea of upgrading an old celeron system recently, but after an unsatisfying attempt to get a cheap katmai I had the good fortune to be able to get hold of a Socket A Motherboard & 300w PS and a *little* cash for some new internals. I should probably spread this Q over the boards but I'd appreciate advice on what to put on this board.

Watching the budget I'm looking at a Duron CPU for now. I can currently range between a 750 and an 850 in price - but Tom's tests show very little performance difference. Is it worth spending a little extra $ on a Duron above 750 or will the 750 be nearly as good anyway.

I also want to harvest the 128MB of PC100 ram and a TNT2 card from the old system, but replace the old 8GB UDMA33 HDD with a Fujitsu 7200rpm 20.4GB piece which is going cheap at present. Is that a reasonable approach?

I'm predicting that these changes will whip the old celeron 500 performance anyway!

As the MB supports up to 266 FSB I'm also mindful of a future upgrade to Athlon & DDR - when they become entry-level cheap in 9+ months. I know I'm scrabbling around the budget end here, but hey - that's what mortgages do for you!

Thanks for any insights

 

[wapaaga]

the 800 is seen as the best bang for your buck right now

to bad you don't have pc 133
but that doesn't matter much becuase you can unlock it and overclock it with some good cooling to about 1 ghz
the duron can take a 266 fsb easily if you lower the mulitplyer which will make you have to unlock it
and makesure you have the muliplyers set so that you have the same speed.

what mother board do you have becuause what i said could be pretty much viod if the mobo dosen't have muliplyer,(except the 800 part}

<font color=red> very important unless you have the ali chipset then you can't use your old ram, ddr ram dose not fit in the smae slot as the sdram does</font color=red>

<font color=red>Gasoline + Fire</font color=red> Can be a lot of fun

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the tips. I think I will settle on the Duron 800. I'll look into overclocking possibilities and a future upgrade path (athlon 1.4+, ddr ram) but right now I expect *anything* will seem like a rocket compared to the old celeron 500 setup!

 

[HighCv2]

Man, at $26 for a duron 700 cpu buy a cluster

"He who laughs last doesn't get the joke"

 

[phsstpok]

You didn't say which motherboard you have but if you are going to overclock almost all the Duron's will get to 900mhz+. If you aren't going to overclock see if you can find a Socket A Tbird 750 or 800, which should be very cheap. Without overclocking these will easily match the performance of even overclocked Durons.

Just checked Pricewatch. I can't find any 750's or 800's. I saw one Socket A Tbird 700 for $47. You can get a Tbird 950 for the insanely low price of $63. Maybe you can find the others at Ebay.

 

[Oni]

I don't know what part of pricewatch you were looking at but I found the durons.
Absolute minimum prices are as follows
AMD Duron 950 $77
AMD Duron 900 $54
AMD Duron 850 $47
AMD Duron 800 $35 (I remember paying $90 and thinking it was cheap)
AMD Duron 750 $25
AMD Duron 700 $24
AMD Duron 650 $27
AMD Duron 600 $28

Since those are the absolute lowest prices you will probably end up buying from a site thats about $5-10 more expensive and the shipping on top of that.
www.pricewatch.com is for sure the best place to find computer parts cheap, but make sure you buy from a reputable dealer, you can check on www.resellerratings.com

 

[phsstpok]

I don't know what part of pricewatch you were looking at but I found the durons.
Absolute minimum prices are as follows
AMD Duron 950 $77
AMD Duron 900 $54
AMD Duron 850 $47
AMD Duron 800 $35 (I remember paying $90 and thinking it was cheap)
AMD Duron 750 $25
AMD Duron 700 $24
AMD Duron 650 $27
AMD Duron 600 $28

I didn't give any Duron prices as I was making a case to purchase a Tbird.

These are the lowest Tbird prices from Pricewatch as of 7/18/01 (shipping costs not reflected).

Tbird (100/200mhz)

850 - $63
900 - $65
950 - $63
1000 - $85
1100 - $89
1200 - $88
1300 - $127
1400 - $166

Tbird (133/266mhz)

1000 - $84
1133 - $92
1200 - $88
1333 - $125
1400 - $162

Durons are cheap but a Tbird 950 for around $63 is just too good.

<b>(Always research a vendor before doing business. Try www.resellerratings.com)</b>

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 07/18/01 07:18 PM.</EM></FONT></P>