need some help

well i have a msi kt-3 ultra with a athlon xp 1800 with 768 megs pc2100 ram. i just bought a ati radeon 9800 pro and i know i know it's gonna bottleneck it. but i still wanted to get it. so i'm jw wat do you people tihnk i should get as a new cpu? wat the highest i can go with this board thanx.

Bad question up in this house!

If anyone replies, they'll tell you either a 1700+, 2100+, or 2500+ because they are all excellent overclockers.

Your board seems to support up to the 3000+ with with the newest BIOS running. If it was me, I'd go for either a 2600+ or 2500+, depending on if you plan on O/C'ing or not. If you plan to O/C, go with the 2500+, because people have easily reached 2.2 Ghz on cheap air cooling. If you don't plan to O/C, go with the 2600+, because the extra 200 Mhz will help you more than the doubled L2 cache on the 2500+. That would definetly make you a happy camper.

The best thing to do, would be to wait until the Athlon64's come out and the AthlonXP and AthlonXP Mobo prices drop a tad. Then you could go out and buy a better overclocking motherboard like the Abit NF7-S, a 2500+, and a nice HSF to throw on top of it. Then O/C and be a happier camper.

Good luck, hope this helped.

i think i hve version 1 of the bios where can i update? i think i was gonna update the bios be4 but i was scared when it gave me warning messages about doing it on my own risk....where do u see my board supports 3000? i thought max was 2100

I'm sorry, I looked up the wrong mobo...

Your cpu supports up to a 2600+, as shown at THIS link. You can download the newest BIOS HERE .

Try using the MSI Windows BIOS flashing utility, located
HERE .

I'm not sure if the utility is compatible with your mobo, but there were no warnings on the download page, so I'm assuming that it will work.

Just in case you are wondering how I found all these, I followed links from this page: MSI KT3 Ultra

It seems your board is now in the "Archives" section of the MSI homepage...time to buy a new board! Pricegrabber has some nForce2 and VIA KT400 boards listed around and below $75.00, so go over yonder and grab ya one before your mobo grows roots!

Good luck, hope this also helps!

i'm scared to flash the bios cuz i heard if i mess up biosican really mess up my comp i'm scared to do it dun really know wat to do...

First of all, you're never going to get anywhere not taking chances! I killed a brand new ATi 9700P by trying to remove the shim surrounding the GPU die...

If you are really scared of flashing your BIOS (which is really easy, you just need to follow the directions VERY carefully!), just go out and buy a new board. But then again you will end up flashing that anyways!

Live and learn brother, that's how the world works. No matter how much caution you put into something, you still might miss out on one little detail and screw something up. But without making that mistake, how will you know what NOT to do next time?

My advice to you is, find some courage and flash the BIOS to it's latest version (or if need be find someone you know who has done it before, and if it's broke, guess who has to buy you a new mobo!), that way you can order that insanely cheap 2600+ and be on your way to glory!

I never used the windows flash, but it seems best for you. that should not be to scary.

just do it!

I've had several boards ove the years, and every update is scary. evertime something could go wrong.
besided, it's only your motherboard. loses 20Gig's of data I recently did is much more severe. got allmost everything back all of it though.

like manhart says, if you ever wan't to do more with your machine you should update your BIOS.

good luck! and believe in your selfs ;-)

ok i falshed the bios and installed the latest bios !!! now wat...lol msi say the limit for my mobo is a 2100+ but i want higher!!! does the newest bios make it handle more? i want faster...lol