UPGRADE TIME!! (but with what??)

warbelsnap · Sep 24, 2001

Time to upgrade, OC'ed 300 here is about kapoot! Anyway, Im going to get a Athalon 1.4, buuuutt! Whats a good MB brand and type to look for. I dont think Ill be OC'ing this time so that should open the doors for me a little. Also what the heck has happened to the MB? I havent seen very many with ISA slots now! And whats a DNR?

HD------ WHos making the most reliable inexpensive hard drive out there now? ATA 100 is now the way to go from what Ive read. Is WD still making descent drives.

RAM------ The last ram I purchased was from Micron. Do they still make reliable ram?

Graphics card-------- I know from a few years back here on THF that this wasnt a reall good question to ask if you wanted a short answer. But Id like a card that is somewhat fast (not the top speed monster on the market)and compatable with whatever the latest game programing language/style is now most widely used. The last I checked AGP cards had around 8 mb on board and the VODOO 2 was most popular.

Ive have been away from messing with systems for about 3 1/2 to 4 years now, so dont laugh at these questions posted here. The system I have now is a 300a Celery OC'ed to 450, with 128mb PC66, viper 8mb vid-card, and a AWE 32 sound card. Any recommendations or advice will help out greatly.

Warb-the-Snapped

lhgpoobaa · Sep 24, 2001

if your going for an athlon 1.4 you have 2 main choices.
DDR ram or SDR ram.
SDR is older, slower but cheaper.
3 good SDR boards are:
asus a7v133
abit kt7a
iwill kk266

some of the more advanced boards have a raid controller chip, allowing the use of up to 8 IDE devices.

asus puts out a dual SDR/DDR board of average performance, the A7V266.

if you mant max speed with DDR ram, i suggest you wait a little until the newer KT266A based boards come out. this is because current motherboards that run on DDR ram are a bit lackluster in their performance (with the exception of the SiS 735).

ata100 is the current standard. all modern motherboards support it. the drive manufacturer depends on personal taste, but DO get a 7200rpm drive. they are much better than the 5400rpm drives. typical capacity people get today is around 30 to 40Gb.
i have an ibm 60GXP. its fast quiet and cool.

yes, micron still makes decent ram.so too does crucial, corsiar, kingmax, kingston etc
course you have to decide if you want a DDR or SDR system though first!

ISA slots are on the way out. some motherboards do have one isa slot on them. but they are rare. if you have alot of ISA card you will have to upgrade to PCI ones.

Graphics cards: ask 10 people, get 10 opinions. you have 3 chices here, Nvidia ,ATI or possibly Kryo.
Budget graphics cards include, Geforce2MX, radionLe or kryo/kryo2.
current middle of the range cards include the Geforce2 (gts or pro varieties) or the Radeon by ati or the Kryo2. high end cards currently are the Geforce3 and radion2 (7500 or 8500)

and i know how u feel with your system. less than 5 months ago i was struggling with a p2-300.

some other useful tips:
1. get a quality power supply. it doesnt have to be anything really beyond 300-350, but the better quality brands should bive you less hastle and more stability. if you want to overclock you may need more juice.
2. cooling. modern procesors run hot, especially the athon and p4. a decent cooler AND a good airflow through the case is very important, specially in summer. check out toms cooler roundup review

good luck

Religious wars are 2 groups of people fighting over who has the best imaginary friend.

Guest · Sep 24, 2001

Here's what I'd do if I had to buy something today:

Mainboard for non-overclocking: Gigabyte GA-7ZXH(5.1) (unless you want to go DDR)
HDD: Seagate/ WD/ Fujitsu/Samsung/Maxtor *7200rpm* (unless for general purpose storage or non-critical speed, in which case a 5400 would be fine). I would not care too much here on brands, the differences are too small.
RAM: Kingmax PC133 TinyBGA, unless you want to go DDR www.kingmax.com. Yes, Micron still make good Q ram.
Graphics card: virtually any Geforce2 MX400-based card with 32M or 64M onboard. I would opt for Gigabyte or Abit, myself. MX400 cards are the current "mainstream" cards. Avoid MX200 cards. Stripped down performance, big time.

Matisaro · Sep 24, 2001

As far as harddrives are concerned The IBM 60gxp is king of the hill for IDE, it has the lowest access times of ANY harddrive(ide) (source storagereview.com). It also is competitivly priced. (60 gig=150$). 2 of those in a raid0, mmmm nummy. (actually get 3x 40gigs for 300 bucks if you intend to raid0). There are no problems with drive reliablilty(that is the 75gxp from ibm which had some doa issues).

Video, you will want either gf3 or radeon 2, when doing total upgrades I find it is best to get the top of the line stuff unless price is prohibitive. a gf3 runs about 270 these days which is rather affordable(especially since thanks to AMD the processor you used to have to pay 500 for is now 100 bucks). The radeon 2 looks good in prelimiaries(the 8500) but wait for final benchmarks to be released.(all the benchmarks out so far are of the unfinished a12 stepping which has several features disabled which may improve or worsen performance.)

Ack boss coming, got to go.

::runs away::

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

o1die · Sep 24, 2001

Get a good power supply, one recommended by amd. It should have plenty of vents around the cover on 2 or 3 sides, to aid in cooling. Don't be surprised if your cpu runs at about 50 celcius under load, even with extra case fans. As far as motherboards go, as you will see if you scan through several pages of this site, virtually every motherboard has had problems, but many of them are operator related. Asus is one of the few tier one motherboard makers, which is why they tend to have fewer problems. But you will pay more for them. I would wait for their kt266a offering.

Matisaro · Sep 24, 2001

Abit motherboards for tweaking/stability
Asus for stability/value.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

FatBurger · Sep 24, 2001

Sorry, Poobah. I'm gonna have to correct you on a couple of points.

SDR is older, slower but cheaper.

People keep saying this, but it's simply not true. From Crucial (Micron), they are EXACTLY THE SAME PRICE. The boards are different, of course.

asus puts out a dual SDR/DDR board of average performance, the A7V266.

It's actually the A7A266. It has the Ali Magik chipset, in case the original poster cares. Good board.

Good advice though, Poobah.

In memory of all the Americans that died 9/11/01
Rest in peace

Guest · Sep 24, 2001

K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A K7S5A
(SiS735 board)
at least, if you dont intend to overclock; its fast.. fastest board available AFAIK, its stable and problem free as a BX board, and its dirt cheap.

---- Owner of the only Dell computer with an AMD chip

FatBurger · Sep 25, 2001

fastest board available AFAIK

Unless you count the P4X266 boards. But of course that's for P4s/DDR.
Remember that the only manufacturer with an SiS735 out right now is ECS (like you said). Might be better to wait for your preferred mobo maker before picking one up. Just my opinion.
SiS735 looks really nice, though. I'm looking foward to seeing Abit's offering.

In memory of all the Americans that died 9/11/01
Rest in peace

lhgpoobaa · Sep 25, 2001

no problemmo.

RE: a7v266/a7a266 error;
thats called a brain fart. i was thinkin of my a7v133 at the time lol.

RE: SDram DDRram price parity;
i forgot... you lucky americans. Over here in Australia their still is a significant price difference between the two. for example;
at www.auspcmarket.com.au...
apacer 256mb ddr = AU$132
apacer 256mb sdr = AU$88
kingmax 256mb pc150 = AU$90 - 115.
also, for a fun comparison;
samsung PC800 256mb RDRAM = AU$236.5
thats almost twice the price still of DDR.

now i have to do another post. sisters fiance got a 1.4 and a a7a266 and its crappin out and wont install windows. ugh.

Religious wars are 2 groups of people fighting over who has the best imaginary friend.

Guest · Sep 25, 2001

lhgpoobaa, auspcmarket.com.au is the LAST place you wanna get your ram! Major rip-off. There are far better deals online, mate.

Matisaro · Sep 26, 2001

Does crucial ship overseas?

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

Guest · Sep 26, 2001

I have the ECS K7S5A it works well if you don't want to over clock. Has SDR and DDR RAM slots, onboard audio and lan, and you can find it for $60 (US).

One more note Crucial RAM is Micron. In the US the have free shipping ,and thier ram is very cheap (256mb pc2100 35~)

-MIke

Yahiko81 · Sep 26, 2001

Is the ecs k7s5a a stable board? I'm looking for a cheap, super stable, nothing special board, with onboard audio. I'm getting my grandma a computer. She is just going to email and play snood. I need a stable board so she doesn't have any problems. I'm thinking of getting a duron 800 to go with it. Remember I'm wanting cheapest/most stable, not best performing. Thanks guys.

Nice Lizards crunch Trolls cookies.......

Yummy!!

FatBurger · Sep 26, 2001

Every owner I've heard talk about it has said stable is the main thing about it. Even before the drivers were installed, it was running like a rock. I wish I had personal experience with it, but you can't have everything in life, I suppose.

In memory of all the Americans that died 9/11/01
Rest in peace

Matisaro · Sep 27, 2001

I too have heard nothing but good things regarding that mobo's stability.

Go for it if you are not tweaking!

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

dhlucke · Sep 27, 2001

There was a problem with a floppy drive and Win2000, but the bios was updated and the problem was fixed. There is also a bios that can be used for overclocking. It's limited, but it works. I don't own one, but I'm really tempted to buy one. I have been reading up on it in other forums and it seems to be great. So far I have yet to really hear a complaint about it that wasn't user error.

How is that for an opinion?

God Bless America!

dhlucke · Sep 27, 2001

It also has LAN, beyond what you need. Compare that to buying something like a KG7 with a NIC card and a sound card, and you'll save over $120.

God Bless America!

Matisaro · Sep 27, 2001

Yep its a good board, but with that kg7 you can run your cpu at 10X150 or 10.5 x 150 etc etc etc.
Tweakers choose abit.
Performance users with 100 bucks extra choose abit+kt266a or nforce.
Budget users choose sis735.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

Guest · Sep 27, 2001

My k7s5a is very stable; it works great. And i can oc the bus to 146Mhz using CPUCool, and it is still stable. It's a great bargain mobo.

-Mike

Matisaro · Sep 27, 2001

Yeah sis is stable, I would prefer multi AND fsb overclocking and mem timing tweaks I can only get from abit's AWESOME bios's.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

Guest · Sep 27, 2001

I would like an abit mobo too, but have you seen one for $60?

FatBurger · Sep 27, 2001

Hey, you get what you pay for.

I post so you don't have to!
9/11 - RIP

UPGRADE TIME!! (but with what??)

Distinguished

Illustrious

Guest

Guest

Splendid

Illustrious

Splendid

Illustrious

Guest

Guest

Illustrious

Illustrious

Guest

Guest

Splendid

Guest

Guest

Illustrious

Illustrious

Splendid

Polypheme

Polypheme

Splendid

Guest

Guest

Splendid

Guest

Guest

Illustrious

Share this page