Upgrading Tbird 800

[Jetfire]

I've been thinking about upgrading my now old tbird 800 lately, but the options are scarce actually...

Right now I have a Athlon tbird 800 on an ASUS A7V133 MB with 512megs of PC133 RAM

so I'm torn between the powerfull and costly upgrade to move on to athlon XP with DDR (new CPU, New Board, New RAM) or the cheaper replacement of the tbird by the biggest Duron I can find. (my local stores only have Athlon XP or Duron lately)

Which would you recommend and why? Is the gain of changing the CPU from Athlon 800 to Duron 1300 for example worth it?

Jetfire

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[FatBurger]

Are you sure you can't use an XP in your current motherboard? I'm pretty sure you can. That would be the easiest solution at the moment.

<font color=orange>Quarter</font color=orange> <font color=blue>Pounder</font color=blue> <font color=orange>Inside</font color=orange>

 

[tnadrev]

why not just stick a XP in your board and get a better solution (DDR) when you can more easily afford it?
the A7V133 fully supports the Athlon XP
<A HREF="http://www.asus.com.tw/inside/Techref/athlonxp.htm" target="_new">ASUS</A>

Engineering is the science of making life simple, by making it more complicated.

 

[tnadrev]

as long as he has board version >= 1.05 and the latest bios flashed... yes

Engineering is the science of making life simple, by making it more complicated.

 

[Jetfire]

Oups... sorry... the board is actually an A7V with the basic KT133 chipset on it... and I remeber reading that it does not support XP

 

[tnadrev]

you are right... it is not compatible...
well.. i don't think it is really worth upgrading to the duron... so... i say save up a a bit and get the cpu + board + ram... the iwill xp333 is a good choice and should support you pretty well (for upgrades) in the future...

Engineering is the science of making life simple, by making it more complicated.

 

[Guest]

I wouldnt go for the Duron. It will be hardly faster than your Tbird (unless you use many SSE sensitive apps).

You might want to concider an SiS 735 (or 745) board if you are on a budget. I know Matisaro is going to scream bloody hell now, but it seems the latest batches are trouble free. The chipset itself is really great, but many ECS boards built around it had serious quality control issues (like not working at all, most of the time). If you get a working one, it will give you rocksolid performance at an unbeatable price. I know, because I have one, and its as good as my good old BX board.

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[TheAntipop]

I have an A7V and the board supports up to a 12x multiplier so you can very reasonably upgrade to a 1.2 ghz Athlon TBird for a modest amount of money. Though I would definitely wait for the Thoroughbred chips to come out as well as Via KT333a motherboards in a few months. In the meantime, save up your money. (Alternatively you could wait until the T-bred and 333a come out then go for an old AXP and 266a which should get a fair bit cheaper by then). Hope this helps cause its what I'm planning on doing.

Hard work often pays off in time, but laziness always pays off now.