Upgrade Help

[Guest]

Got a buy.com certificate and am going to upgrade my system. I need the whole works. I decided on a AMD Duron 700mhz. I need to know what moboard will work (I read about the KT7 raid, but at Buy.com, i don;t thinks that one of my choices. I also need a case and power supply, will 250 w do it and how many slots. Also some have said the amd duron is memory hungry especially with cheap memory, will a pny pc133 128mb do the trick. Hear are my choices for mo boards and what do all the numbers behind mean, I know atx, 768MB (is that how much ram it can take)4 PCI slots, 1 ISA, what is 1sh, AGP, and 100MHZ???

????mfg
VIA SOCK7 UPTO 768MB 2MB CACHE ATX 4PCI 1ISA 1SH AGP UDMA66 100MHZ $80

Gigabyte
VIA AP133 FCPGA UPTO 768MB ATX 4PCI 1ISA 1SH AGP4X ATA66 133MHZ FS
Platform: PC Media: Component
Our Price: $85.95
Usually Ships in 24-48 Hours

AMD 751 SLOTA UPTO 768MB ATX 4PCI 1ISA 1SH AGP ATA66 200MHZ FSB
Platform: PC Media: Component
Our Price: $89.95

Tyan
VIA SOCK7 UPTO 768MB 2MB CACHE ATX 4PCI 1ISA 1SH AGP UDMA66 100MHZ

?????mfg
VIA KT133 SOCKA UPTO 1.5GB ATX 5PCI AGP4X AMR UDMA66 200MHZ FSB $139

Any thoughts woud be great. Also any suggestions on web sites that have step by step motherboard and chip upgrades?????

 

[girish]

why do you need any ISA slots now? dont go into too may details. think of what you really need, and then decide the motherboard. in general, as of today, Asus A7V and Abit K7T are the only better choices.

as far as power supply is concerned, dont go for anything less than 300 W. and dont even go for cheaper memory, hunger for memory does not depend on its cost, but performance does depend on its quality.

girish

 

[Guest]

I assume that since you have a gift certificate, you are not going to get something else at another place. I don't know as I'd take any of their choices...but I don't have a gift certificate!

If you're going to get a Duron, it will only fit in a socket A motherboard (presumably <b>SOCKA</b> in buy.com's description). It looks like they have a couple of these.

I don't know anything about them, but you might want to get the models and see whether they are reviewed at some place like <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com</A>.

I also looked up buy.com at <A HREF="http://www.resellerratings.com" target="_new">http://www.resellerratings.com</A>. They have a 4.6 out of 7 rating which, while not bad, tells me there are probably some pitfalls to look for regarding sales/service, etc. You might want to check out this site to get an ideal of what to keep an eye out for.

Mike

 

[Flyboy]

If your going with the Duron, then it looks like your already narrowed down to two mobos. You were asking what some of the lingo means:

ATX: A standard form factor for mobos...basically ensures that your board will fit in the chassis.

768Mb: You are correct in that it can support up to 768Mb of SDRAM. (Probably 3 dimm slots each supporting a single 256Mb SDRAM module)

1sh: I believe that refers to the SHARING of a PCI and ISA slot. You cant use both the PCI and ISA slots that are shared. I can't see why you would ever want to go with ISA anyway...pretty much obselete anymore.

AGP: Advanced Graphics Port...Supports higher performance video cards. Definitely a MUST nowadays. Try to go for the AGP4X. The 4X basically has twice the throughput (1028Mb/s vs. 512Mb/s) capacity as AGP2X. Currently, I don't believe the videocards today actually take full advantage of this so the AGP4X will not likely show significant improvement over AGP2X; however, this may change in the future so try to get the 4X. Your doing an upgrade, so it's very unlikely that your card supports AGP4X anyway.

100Mhz refers to the support Front Side Bus speeds (FSB). If you buy a processor that is meant to run on a 133Mhz FSB, then make sure you buy a 133FSB mobo, otherwise you'll be running your processor much slower than intended. Don't quote me on this, but I don't think the Duron 700Mhz is meant to run on a 133Mhz FSB. Maybe one of the other geeks can help me out in this area. Not sure myself.

PCI: Peripheral Configuration Interface: Used for add-on cards like soundcards, modems, network cards, and videocards (unless you have an AGP video card), etc.

ISA: Industry Standard Adapter: Very old interface...similar to PCI but half the bandwidth. Don't use this unless you have an older card (Legacy).

Hope this helps.