Value for money

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Hi!
Current set up,
Gigabute GA-7VA C MB
AMD Athlon TH (Thoroughbred) XP 2000+
Frequency 1674 MHz
512 MB of RAM
-------------------------------------------------
Tried setting the CPU clock frequency to max (165), but if I set the
Frontside Bus Frq. higher then 133 the comp will not start.
---------------------------------------------------
So, Which MB CPU combination better then the current one, would yield
value for money?
(I will buy an extra 512 Mb of Ram as well)
By value for money I mean at least 25% speed improvement.

I am not partial to AMD, and the comp, is used solely for database
work, NO GAMES.

Not really interested in overclocking, I just tried to get more ummph
out of what I have now.

Thank's


--
marcus25

 

[edg]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 06:37:17 +0100, marcus25
<marcus25.1vt2bx@hardwarebanter.com> wrote:

>
>Hi!
>Current set up,
>Gigabute GA-7VA C MB
>AMD Athlon TH (Thoroughbred) XP 2000+
>Frequency 1674 MHz
>512 MB of RAM
>-------------------------------------------------
>Tried setting the CPU clock frequency to max (165), but if I set the
>Frontside Bus Frq. higher then 133 the comp will not start.
>---------------------------------------------------
>So, Which MB CPU combination better then the current one, would yield
>value for money?
>(I will buy an extra 512 Mb of Ram as well)
>By value for money I mean at least 25% speed improvement.
>
>I am not partial to AMD, and the comp, is used solely for database
>work, NO GAMES.
>
>Not really interested in overclocking, I just tried to get more ummph
>out of what I have now.
>
>Thank's


Try something more reasonable like 137 or 140 * 12.5 , and raise the
vcore a step or two.

IIRC, I had my XP 2000+ at140x12.5, 1.75v.

Ed

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

marcus25 wrote:
> Hi!
> Current set up,
> Gigabute GA-7VA C MB
> AMD Athlon TH (Thoroughbred) XP 2000+
> Frequency 1674 MHz
> 512 MB of RAM
> -------------------------------------------------
> Tried setting the CPU clock frequency to max (165), but if I set the
> Frontside Bus Frq. higher then 133 the comp will not start.
> ---------------------------------------------------
> So, Which MB CPU combination better then the current one, would yield
> value for money?
> (I will buy an extra 512 Mb of Ram as well)
> By value for money I mean at least 25% speed improvement.
>
> I am not partial to AMD, and the comp, is used solely for database
> work, NO GAMES.

I'm not sure what would get you 25% better database scores specifically,
but in the general case, I'm sure an Athlon 64 3000+ will get you at
least 25% better performance.

Databases are heavily dependent on RAM and disk, so I'd say find a
motherboard that will let you put about 2GB of RAM on it.

RAM is going to be the thing that you're updating most often for
databases. Therefore, I'd say wait about six months when the next AMD
socket platform, I think it's called Socket-M2, comes out. The AMD core
will remain essentially the same, but this time it will support DDR2
rather than DDR. There's likely to be more increases of RAM size under
DDR2 being the newer platform, rather than with DDR which is the
outgoing standard.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

marcus25 wrote:
> Hi!
> Current set up,
> Gigabute GA-7VA C MB
> AMD Athlon TH (Thoroughbred) XP 2000+
> Frequency 1674 MHz
> 512 MB of RAM
> -------------------------------------------------
> Tried setting the CPU clock frequency to max (165), but if I set the
> Frontside Bus Frq. higher then 133 the comp will not start.
> ---------------------------------------------------
> So, Which MB CPU combination better then the current one, would yield
> value for money?
> (I will buy an extra 512 Mb of Ram as well)
> By value for money I mean at least 25% speed improvement.
>
> I am not partial to AMD, and the comp, is used solely for database
> work, NO GAMES.

Database work? Looks like *perhaps* you would mainly benefit from
a boost in peripheral resources -- lots and lots of memory (do not
be shy, go to 1 or 2 GB), and hard drives -- get faster drives,
perhaps two or three, and check the possible configuration options
of the database system that you're using (you could dedicate
partitions on *separate* drives for different "parallelizable"
sections of the storage work -- I know of some database systems
that allow you to do that; not sure which type of database you're
talking about... I hope you're talking about a *real* database
and not toys like Access or MySQL ).

Even if the database system doesn't have "parallelizable" disk
storage options, you could still benefit from getting one or
two more drives and a hardware-RAID card -- in that case, perhaps
a new motherboard that has on-board RAID could help.

Anyway, maybe -- just *maybe* -- a dual-core would help; those
AMD64 X2 are quite appealing, to be honest. But really, only if
your database work is *truly* intense AND if you *really* have
tons of memory -- if not, then definitely, your bottleneck is
some place other than the CPU.

HTH,

Carlos
--

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 06:37:17 +0100, marcus25
<marcus25.1vt2bx@hardwarebanter.com> wrote:

>
>Hi!
>Current set up,
>Gigabute GA-7VA C MB
>AMD Athlon TH (Thoroughbred) XP 2000+
>Frequency 1674 MHz
>512 MB of RAM
>-------------------------------------------------
>Tried setting the CPU clock frequency to max (165), but if I set the
>Frontside Bus Frq. higher then 133 the comp will not start.
>---------------------------------------------------

You might try manually slacking memory timings off a touch when you push
the FSB speed up.

>So, Which MB CPU combination better then the current one, would yield
>value for money?
>(I will buy an extra 512 Mb of Ram as well)
>By value for money I mean at least 25% speed improvement.

Unless it's a quality PC3200 DIMM you have there, it's not going to work
optimally in a newer system, especially if you go dual channel... which IMO
is the only way to go. Memory is inexpensive now anyway so it'd be dumb to
lower memory performance just so you can reuse an old DIMM.

>I am not partial to AMD, and the comp, is used solely for database
>work, NO GAMES.

What's up with AMD - what's not to like? With the low latency and high
bandwidth of a dual channel memory Athlon64, it's going to work well for
your database stuff. For me the performance/price sweet spot just now is
the Athlon64 3500+, with the 3700+ also coming down into the right price
range. For a mbrd I've had good luck with the MSI nForce3 and nForce4 ones
though I'd take care to get one with a 2nd network interface in addition to
the nForce integrated one, which has a problem in some situations.

>Not really interested in overclocking, I just tried to get more ummph
>out of what I have now.

It's going to be difficult to reuse much of what you have now - case
ventilation has improved in the past two years and power supplies now need
a min of ~22amps on the 12V - check your current one to see what it puts
out but my guess is it'll be 18amps at best, which is a bit low.

--
Rgds, George Macdonald