Question on upgrading. Advice please.

[Guest]

Hey everyone, I am about to upgrade my computer (its about time) and wanted some advice. I currently have the following:

300mhz Celeron 300A @ 100mhz FSB (450mhz) on a Abit BX6-2
256megs of PC-100 ram (1-128meg DIMM and 2-64meg DIMM)
Diamond Monster MX300
Voodoo 4 4500 AGP
6 gig Maxtor ATA/33
20 gig Maxtor ATA/33
HP CD-RW 9180i 8x4x32
Kenwood True-x CDROM 50X? (Cannot remember)

I am about to upgrade to the following but would like opinions on what to change/add etc.

Athlon 1.1ghz on a Abit KT7-RAID board
256megs of PC-133 RAM (2-128meg DIMMS)
Diamond Monster MX300 (same)
Asus V7700 Deluxe 64MB DDR GF2 GTS
(Questions here, wondering if I should get a ATA/100 hard drive and get rid of the ATA/33 drives. Input would be helpful)
6 gig Maxtor ATA/33
20 gig Maxtor ATA/33
HP CD-RW 9180i 8x4x32 (same)
Kenwood True-x CDROM 50X? (Cannot remember) (same)


I am open to suggestions on changes etc. I am looking for a good gaming and overall preforming machine. Thanks.

 

[Guest]

i would suggest a kt133a based mb.
but you might want to wait on it until an issue is corrected see here
<A HREF="http://www.overclockers.com/" target="_new">http://www.overclockers.com/</A>
i hesitate to recommend iwill because of past problems with tech support being able to supply me with a bios chip.
(wouldn't answer e-mail...took a MONTH to get a chip, i gave up and have only bought epox or gigabyte since!)

who is more foolish...
the fool, or the fool that takes his advice?

 

[toonces]

looks good. either the abit board or the asus a7v have fanatical followers and are highly recommended. i would ditch the diamond sound card for a creative sbLive!, but if you're happy then, hey... i would recommend upgrading your hard drive(s). you will see SIGNIFICANT gains in performance, especially if you go ata100/7200rpm. and make sure you get a good heatsink/fan combo. if you go for the asus mobo, look at the superorb from thermaltake. if you go abit try something from alpha or globalwin.

<font color=red>booyah, grandma, booyah..</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Specs looks good there. I'd go for the 950/1GHz (as the 1.1 is currently not so good £/MHz) and spend the money elsewhere. If you do a lot of RAM instensive work (e.g. Photoshop), 256mb DIMMS are relatively cheap at the moment, I'd have 2, thankyou :O)

I can recommend GlobalWin Heatsinks over Thermaltake Orbs. I've just built a machine from scratch for a m8...was initially a Duron/700 w/ChromeOrb fan, then swapped CPU for a Tbird 1GHz with a GlobalWin FOP-38. Duron ran at a steady 56 deg C. Tbird ran at 32 deg C, albeit a little noisier. I used an Asus A7V mobo, 256mb PC133, Creative Geforce MX.

If you hammer your HDs a fair bit, it may well be worth upgrading the HDs to IBM GXPs - I used one in the above system - v fast and pretty quiet too.

For reference, I use the same GFX card (Asus V770 64MB) with a Celery/500, and can run quake3 at 1600x1200 high quality, smoothly (!). The Duron/700 ran Quake3 very smoothly in high quality, didn't get much of a chance to test with the 1GHz.


Link for the fan:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_CPU_Coolers_2.html

HTH


Mootin

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by mootin on 01/22/01 12:57 PM.</EM></FONT></P>