Major dilemmas

[thewalrusking]

Well not really, but I have two or three good questions.

I have a 2500+ Barton Athlon xp, and so far it has worked flawlessly. I also have a 6800gt AGP card, this too has worked super and has gotten me plenty of performance. And although the 6800gt is second gen now it certainly is a powerful card. But when I go to upgrade the CPU which in turn requires new mem. motherboard and this causes me to pause.

DO I go halfway at first and buy a top notch CPU with a AGP mboard, or do I go all out and just buy a top notch cpu and a SLI board AND a new graphics card? If I go all out it will cost quite a bit more $400-500 (cost of vid card) more or more if the mboard is more money (which if I go with a decent one could be more than $100.My 2500+ is near the end of its performance life, im not suffering now but I know its getting a little tight. (well i really do suffer since its bottlenecking my vid card.)

So my question is would you (in about 6months) go for a socket 939 AGP board and the bestest cpu I can afford like an fx-55 or 4400+ etc. And then eventually when the 6800GT is through or i have more mollah for a top notch card I get the PCI board.

OR do I just wait (and this part would be on the order of atleast 6months - or a year from now) and buy a PCI-E board along with the cpu and then a new graphics card.

But this also arises a new quick question, should I skip all of this and just wait till the new M2 socket( i think they just renamed it Socket F) and see what benefits arise then?

Thank you.

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

Well not really, but I have two or three good questions.

I have a 2500+ Barton Athlon xp, and so far it has worked flawlessly. I also have a 6800gt AGP card, this too has worked super and has gotten me plenty of performance. And although the 6800gt is second gen now it certainly is a powerful card. But when I go to upgrade the CPU which in turn requires new mem. motherboard and this causes me to pause.

DO I go halfway at first and buy a top notch CPU with a AGP mboard, or do I go all out and just buy a top notch cpu and a SLI board AND a new graphics card? If I go all out it will cost quite a bit more $400-500 (cost of vid card) more or more if the mboard is more money (which if I go with a decent one could be more than $100.My 2500+ is near the end of its performance life, im not suffering now but I know its getting a little tight. (well i really do suffer since its bottlenecking my vid card.)

So my question is would you (in about 6months) go for a socket 939 AGP board and the bestest cpu I can afford like an fx-55 or 4400+ etc. And then eventually when the 6800GT is through or i have more mollah for a top notch card I get the PCI board.

OR do I just wait (and this part would be on the order of atleast 6months - or a year from now) and buy a PCI-E board along with the cpu and then a new graphics card.

But this also arises a new quick question, should I skip all of this and just wait till the new M2 socket( i think they just renamed it Socket F) and see what benefits arise then?

Thank you.

Buy some time. Go into your CURRENT motherboards BIOS, change the FSB from 166MHz to 200MHz. Save settings and restart.

Now u have a 3200+ for free. That will play all your games and new coming games still. Than when u can, front the money for a few GPU, CPU and MBoard. Your ram as long as its PC3200 will still be re-usable...

 

[dmroeder]

SLI is a waste of money IMO

Waiting in the computer world is useless because something newer and better is always around the corner.

You can get a pretty good 939 setup for the price of that f-ing fx-57. But if you like to spend money then by all means, go for the fx and SLI.

 

[thewalrusking]

forgot to mention I am running 512mb of 2700 ram, my cpu is a 166mhz chip, though I know i can overclock it to 200mhz where does my memory go from there, I dont know if it would perform that great overclocked that much.

I think Im going to get a amd 64 4000+ and a very good agp 939 mboard. And then someday when im righer ill just start anew. eh?

 

[endyen]

If you plan on waiting 6 months anyhow, you are getting into socket m time. It's due in may or june.
If you had the cash today, I would recommend the abit AV8 third eye. It's a great board.
You can use a divider on your memory, and overclock the chip. Just manually tell the mobo that your ram is DDR266, then an overclock to 200mhz should be fine. Just so that you know, stats I've read say 92% of attempts to OC 2500s to 3200s speed, are sucessfull. If you are using a stock cooler, a new thermalright or zalman may be a good idea.

 

[thewalrusking]

If you plan on waiting 6 months anyhow, you are getting into socket m time. It's due in may or june.
If you had the cash today, I would recommend the abit AV8 third eye. It's a great board.
You can use a divider on your memory, and overclock the chip. Just manually tell the mobo that your ram is DDR266, then an overclock to 200mhz should be fine. Just so that you know, stats I've read say 92% of attempts to OC 2500s to 3200s speed, are sucessfull. If you are using a stock cooler, a new thermalright or zalman may be a good idea.

Ya that third eye looked nice when i read reviews of it a lil while back, also im running at 2700+ speeds, would go higher but i have to carry out my old PS/2 keyboard everytime and its annoying. Why cant usb keys work?

Anyway can u lend me a link on the overclocking the mem i have never looked in to it. Anyway i have to wait a while anyway due to cash flow so I guess I shouldnt worry too much now, just trying to figure out ahead of time. Thanks a bunch

 

[endyen]

Anyway can u lend me a link on the overclocking the mem i have never looked in to it

Maybe, if you tell me what mobo you have. It would just be the page in the manual though. BTW, you would be underclocking the memory, so you could clock it back to speed.