kgeissler 0 Posted October 5, 2001 I am going to be upgrading my machine at the end of this month and not sure what I should get. Right now I have an Abit KA7 Slot A MB, with an 800mhz Athlon. About a month ago, I purchased an additional 512MB for it. Now I want a new MB and CPU and not sure if I should get a DDR motherboard and buy all new RAM, or just go with an SDRAM MB and use the RAM I have. I am also wondering about RAID. Right now I have a 5400RPM 13GB drive. It still has plenty of space left on it and it works great. Should I sell it and get 2 7200RPM drives for RAID, or just stick with my 5400RPM drive? I really want to stick with and AMD CPU. I would like to spend no more than $300 on both the MB and the CPU. Any ideas or recommendations? TIA Share this post Link to post
Dirty Harry 0 Posted October 5, 2001 Well its your decision... I'd say accept the concept of sunk cost and go for a KG7-Lite and 256MB (one stick) of standard Corsair/ Crucial/ Mushkin 2100/CAS 2 DDR RAM; and overclock a little bit. Alternatively go for an Athlon 1000-1400 (266 FSB) + a good mobo and keep your RAM. Again- overclock the box a bit. If your current RAM isn't running at 133 Mhz I'd forget about the second option. Also, forget about the raid setup and getting more than 256 MB (DDR) RAM if you are watching a budget, the speed increse from these is marginal in real life (unless you do a lot of video/audio editing perhaps). I would however put the next available $$ on a fast, ATA-100 / 7200 rpm hard drive. Also, you don't mention the video card, thats a very essential component to consider when you try to get most bang for the buck. H. Share this post Link to post
kgeissler 0 Posted October 5, 2001 My video card is a Geforce2 GTS 32mb. Share this post Link to post
pmistry 0 Posted October 5, 2001 If you say your hard disk works great then only upgrade once you fill it. Once you do get a 7200 RPM drive. The new Asus A7A266 motherboards looks like a great performer for good money and is really stable too. Has both SDR/DDR ram sockets so you can upgrade later. http://www.asus.com/products/motherboard/socketa/a7a266/index.html Couple this board with a new 1 Ghz+ 266 FSB Athlon and you're all set. Share this post Link to post
kgeissler 0 Posted October 5, 2001 That Asus looks like a good board. I wonder if it supports the 1.4Ghz Athlon? I wonder if it will support the Athlon XP. Share this post Link to post
Brian Frank 0 Posted October 6, 2001 If it supports Palimino, you'll be okay. It also seems like if your board is socket A, you can still run the Pally (MP,XP) minus the extra enhancements, so it wouldn't be better than its predecessor at the same speed, but it would work. A BIOS flash may be needed. Share this post Link to post
Dirty Harry 0 Posted October 6, 2001 Pricewatch is showing a price difference of 29$ between a 1000 and a 1400 Athlon. Even if its a tad higher where you buy, go for the fastest one, if you have a power supply rated at 300W or above. The Geforce GTS 2 can handle all games out at the moment, upgrading would cost you quite a bit. I'm stuck with that one too, it doesn't feel like making sence to fork out 150 $ for the Geforce 3 right now. Maybe tomorrow. H. Main System: Lian-Li PC 60 USB /Enermax EG365P 350W Power supply KG7-Raid MoBo Athlon 1400@1600, cooled by a Swiftech MC462-A) 256 MB Mushkin Hi Perf. 2100 DDR CAS2-2-2-2 (one stick) IBM 45,0 GB (75 GXP -DTLA 307045) 7200 rpm ATA100 IBM 27,3 GB (34 GXP -DPTA 372730) 7200 rpm ATA66 Asus V-7700 AGP (Geforce 2 GTS), 32 MB DDR SGRAM Advansys SCSI Controller Iomega Jaz drive for Backups Hauppage Win/TV Theater (model 498) PCI Asus 50x CD-R Ricoh 7040A CD-RW (firmware upgraded to a 7060A) Soundblaster Live! 1024 Cambridge Soundworks speakers 3COM Dynalink 3C905C-TX-M Network Card Philips 21' Monitor 21B582BH HP Laserjet 6L HP Deskjet 970 Cxi Canon D660U Scanner Logitech Trackman Marble FX MS Intellimouse Optical USB MS Natural Keyboard Pro Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL router BEFSR41 Motorola Cable Modem Running Windows 2000, Local LAN (three PC's) Share this post Link to post
