Need some advise before purchase

[Guest]

I am about to upgrade my PII400 cpu to either a PIII 800mhz 100fsb or PIII 800 133fsb. My question is this: Since stability is of the utmost importance in my setup(I use DAW for audio recording), can't I just adjust the FSB down to 100mhz if I choose a cpu with 133fsb in case my agp card won't tolerate being oc'd? . If I understand correctly, when I install a cpu that has 133mhzFSB, the system will default to 133 and the agp slot will also go to 96mhz or 100mhz or whatever it is. I have an ABIT be62 rev2 mobo. Eventually I plan to get a Matrox G400 dual head which I think is ok with oc'd agp slot, but in case I have problems I need a way to restore stability. Any suggestions? I hate to buy a cpu with a 100fsb since I would like to move forward as far as possible.

Thanks
Eric

 

[Guest]

Just get a 100 mhz FSB P3 man, also known as E where a 133 mhz FSB P3 is known as an EB. I dont think you understand what FSB is man.

"can't I just adjust the FSB down to 100mhz if I choose a cpu with 133fsb?"

Yes, you could. But do you really want to do that? This is how mhz and FSB works bro. Lets take what CPU I have. I have a P3 700E 100 mhz FSB FCPGA. The core of this CPU is set to 7X. And the FSB is meant for 100 mhz. You take 7x100 to get 700 mhz P3. But in the case of EB this is what happens. Lets take a P3 933EB 133 mhz FSB. It has a clock multiplier of 7X and a FSB of 133 mhz which gives you the 933 mhz. Now if you take the FSB down to 100 mhz on this CPU you are running at 700 mhz and you have just lost 233 mhz that you paid good money for.

If I were you I would just buy a 700E FCPGA Retail and try your hand at overclocking it. If you get a cBO by chance you have a good shot at 933 mhz with it or higher. I have two 700E systems and one is running at 975 and the other is running at 933.

Another thing is that your P2 400 is probably running on PC100 RAM. So if you buy a EB 133 mhz CPU you will need to buy PC133 RAM. Like I said just get a 100 mhz P3 and overclock it. Your PC100 RAM should do about 115 mhz atleast. Maybe 120 to 125 if its pretty good PC100 RAM. Hope this clears things up for you a bit.

 

[Guest]

That does clear my brain up a bit. Thanks. I do have pc100 ram and it does allow up to 108 so far. I get failures at that oc though, so that is why I am concerned about stability. 700mhz is more than enough cpu speed for what I do, the bottle neck is the hd. Sustained throughput is king in audio/video and the best HD only allows about 30mb's per sec, way below what a 700mhz cpu is capable of. I do think I will take your advise go 100fsb and figure on a new graphics card later to pump it up a notch.
Thanks
Eric

 

[Guest]

Something like a SCSI 160 would be very nice. Any SCSI works well for steady throughput though. They can be a might bit expensive (controller + drive), but sounds like it would be worth it for you. Hmm... actually, it would be worth it for me too...

Charles

 

[Guest]

You may want to get a raid controller and second hard drive to set up a raid 0 for striping if you need more hard drive throughput.

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