Alright, some real world problem regarding upgrades.

[warlock110]

I have a P3 933mhz running right now, and i'm quite happy with it, 2 years ago i built this rig with the dam P3 for 1300 dollars (now it's worth about 100 bucks i would say). Any how, i don't know how many of u in here are Chinese but Chinese new year is comming up and look like i'll get some money. There are a couple of system that i've looked at and look like it's down to this.

AMD duron 1.8 + ECS mobo for 50 bucks + 50 bucks for 512 DDR 2700 RAM = 100 (no OC)

Intel Celeron 2.5 + ECS mobo for 70 bucks + same ram = 120 (no OC)

Intel P4 2.66B + ECS mobo for 180 + 512 3200 DDR ram for 80 = 260 (no OC)

AMD 2500 Barton + albatron mobo (this one has nforce 2 chipset and can hit 3200+ with OC) for 120 + 512 3200 DDR ram for 80 = 200 (OCable)

I will be using this with a new case (probably about 30 bucks with some 400W no name PSU) (i simply can't afford brand name PSU but since i won't be hooking up alot of device it shoud be alright).
This rig will mainly do video encoding, play some games, and surf the net (keep in mind that i'm not a gammer so gaming is not important, as long as the new games function on my machines i'm ok with it).
So i guess my question is, what's the good rig for the money and how does it compare to my P3 right now? hehe to be honest i like my P3 better than my friend's AMD XP 2000, it simply runs alot smoother and the dam AMD rig from my friend can barely beat me at encoding.

thanks for the help, hopefully i get enough cash this new year to upgrade :)

[jazztrumpet216]

Do not get the Celeron system. If you're looking for a lower-priced system, the Duron will beat the Celeron hands down. The only way you'd get somewhat good performance out of it would be to OC it.

I would go with the 2.66B and overclock it, but since you said you don't want to, then I would go with the Barton. At some point in the future you will probably want to look at upgrading the power supply if you overclock anything anyway. You'd be surprised at the difference a brand name power supply makes when overclocking.

[warlock110]

it's not that i don't wanna, it's just that the ECS mobo is going to be a huge problem since it's most likely don't have any setting in the bios.

[repo man11]

Out of the possible combinations listed, how about combining the Duron with the Albatron board, and buying a good PSU with the difference?

[warlock110]

hehe i can't, i wanna shop at the local fry and it seems that those are the only combo the offer, it seems that Fry is saling the CPU at regular price and they throw in the mobo for free :) you guys thinks that those combos are cheap? or should i go with some other cheap stuff that can give me some real performance over the P3 i have? thanks.

[barton2500]

If you want best price performance, Celeron is a good choice (although Durons are slightly faster in some benchies, but slower in video encoding i think). And if you reuse SDRAM for Celeron 2.5.....it is very cost effective, although it will hamper performance, so Duron with DDR ram is faster. But you can always get a Duron/Athlon with a motherboard that supports DDR and SDRAM, and that would be cheap, and you can reuse SDRAM but upgrade to DDR if it is not fast enough.

I'm thinking about the upgrades too...see my post.

I would go with AthlonXP+SDRAM ........ it is about the same price but should be faster in most things than it....see http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-26.html

Now if you are sure about getting DDR...go with P4 2.4C/2.6C(better than 2.66B) and get a nice motherboard such as P4P800/Abit IS7/IC7 or P4R800-VM (if you need integrated graphics, but i'm not sure on overclockability). That is pretty close to high end if you OC.

[Zuzzz]

Go with the Barton or 2.66B-P4. The Celerons and Durons lack a huge amount of performance. IF at all possible get the P4 or the Barton.

Z

PS: that Barton should out perform the P4 but a good margin. . if performance is what you are looking for.

[ChillPhatCat]

I have to go with the Barton on acount of cost efficiency and that it will outperform the rest of those chips hands down. If you were getting a P4C system with a good board I'd go for that... on account of video editing potential... a 2.66B at stock speed just isn't as tempting.

[ptwearnhardtfan]

I like the Barton combo. That's an excellent chip. For the price, it's a great performer.

[barton2500]

Note: Without overclocking, Barton2500 is slower than 2.4C for the most part. The 2500 rating is for comparison with the Athlon T-birds, so it is 2.5 x as fast as Athlon 1000. The only way it is faster than a P4 2.4 Ghz is if you compare to a P4 2.4A(FSB400) or P4 2.4B(FSB533). It is slower than P4 2.4C(FSB800) If you compare AthlonXP 2500 with P4 2.66 it is still slower. If you decide to overclock modestly, you get 2.2 Ghz with Athlon XP2500, which equates to the Athlon XP3200. The P4 2.4 becomes a 3.2 Ghz. It's become a well known fact that the XP3200 does not keep up with the P4 3.2 Ghz, especially overclocked P4 2.4C that has higher FSB than a stock 3.2 Ghz. And for video encoding, the P4 wins hands down. P4 3.2 Ghz takes 175.1 sec vs AthlonXP3200 224.9 sec..clear winner P4.

The only way you AthlonXP2500 *wins* is the lower price, which is why my rigs are AthlonXPs.

[barton2500]

If you want to consider the Celeron and Duron..Duron is the better option. Duron 1.8 Ghz should beat Celeron 2.5 Ghz..see http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1927&p=6
XP1700 is on par with the Celeron 2.4 Ghz..so any AthlonXP faster than 1700 will be faster. I would get the cheapest AthlonXP you can find.

[warlock110]

Thanks for the link guys, after looking at them here are some of the comparision results i've found
AMD throughbred will encode faster than AMD barton (my guess is that because they have more clock to them compare to the barton)
Celeron can barely beat duron at encoding when the cely is 1Ghz more than the duron
With this there's another combo that i've found that might suilt my need, the XP 2400 with the ECS mobo for 70 bucks, that'll surely speed up my encoding with regard to my P3 :)

[barton2500]

ya XP 2400 is your best bet..
but i don't recommend ECS...just get a Asus A7V8X-X or A7N8X-X..they're selling for $80 Cdn and $97 Cdn wheras as K75SA-Pro is $60 Cdn....so it's worth $20 more just to get Asus A7V8X-X. ECS boards aren't reliable.

If you are going with DDR RAM..you might consider getting NForce2 board so that you can run your RAM in dual channel. I have A7N8X and it is a great board.

[warlock110]

do you know any board that's cheaper? i don't want onboard audio or video or anything, just plain mobo will be fine, hehe i like using PCI audio and probably get a decent AGP slot video card.
The XP 2400 at fry i was talking about is the K7VTA3 ECS mobo + the chip for only 70 bucks :)

[warlock110]

neither way i'm gonna wait till feb, cuzz that's after the new year, and that's when tax money are getting refund. And also Intel is launching their prescott chips, hopefully it'll take an impact on the market price :) hehe this is perhaps one of the best chance i can have to upgrade my computer.

[Quailane]

Dude, get a biostar M7NCD, an nforce2 board with full overclocking options for $53 at newegg http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-138-216&catalog=22&depa=1 , and a 1.4Ghz duron that is guaranteed to overclock a lot. The duron is about $37 at newegg http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-104-158&catalog=343&depa=1 .

And dude, you can't buy a motherboard that doesn't have integrated audio. It is way better than your pci card is my bet.

[jazztrumpet216]

Originally posted by Quailane
Dude, get a biostar M7NCD, an nforce2 board with full overclocking options for $53 at newegg http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-138-216&catalog=22&depa=1 , and a 1.4Ghz duron that is guaranteed to overclock a lot. The duron is about $37 at newegg http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-104-158&catalog=343&depa=1 .

And dude, you can't buy a motherboard that doesn't have integrated audio. It is way better than your pci card is my bet.

He's in China. He can't go to Newegg, they don't ship to China.

Also, it really depends on the motherboard audio and PCI card in question. I think my TB Santa Cruz is probably better than some of the integrated options, but not others. Some of those integrated options on the nforce 2 boards could beat the Santa Cruz hands-down, though.

[Quailane]

Try looking at the biostar M7NCG at newegg for $65. It has full overclocking options and the integrated video costs at least $60 as a separate card. It does very well with today's games.

[warlock110]

hehe i'm not in china, i'm just talking about chinese new year next week, and as a kid i get money on those occations. ok now back to the subject. Is the intergraded audio that good? cuzz if it is then i rather have that than buying a new Audigy 1 for my rig. And also how would that intergraded audio effect my system, does it take any resources out of my CPU at all? Thanks.

PS: my bad, i wrote video instead of audio :)

[Quailane]

The integrated video uses 128 bit memory interface and up to 128mb of ram. It uses the geforce4 mx video, but if you can bump up your memory and/or fsb, you should do a lot better than that. Using the integrated video, I get very playable frame rates in all the games I play with 1024x768 res and medium dtails on everything. Most recent game is call of duty. The onboard sound uses negligible amounts of the cpu, less than 1%. Most pci card sound except the audigy use the cpu to do sound work anyway.

[barton2500]

You should go with an NForce2 board if you are overclocking. VIA chipsets don't have PCI/AGP lock so you can't raise FSB if you get a locked processor; so I recommend A7N8X if you want to run memory in dual channel or A7N8X-X if single channel memory is fine.

[repo man11]

Originally posted by barton2500
You should go with an NForce2 board if you are overclocking. VIA chipsets don't have PCI/AGP lock so you can't raise FSB if you get a locked processor; so I recommend A7N8X if you want to run memory in dual channel or A7N8X-X if single channel memory is fine.

This has gotten to be a popular myth. No, Via chipsets do not have a PCI/AGP lock. It does not prevent you from overclocking the FSB.
I'm still using a KT333, which only has a 1/5 divisor, and it is running comfortably at 214 FSB. Yes, that gives me a 42 MHz PCI bus, which all of my components have been running at for quite some time.

The KT600 has a 1/6 divisor. You could reach 230 FSB, and still only be at 38 MHz PCI. I have yet to run into any drives or other parts that won't run at 38.

Nforce chipsets are good, in spite of their unfortunate habit of scrambling the BIOS. But the lack of a PCI lock does not prevent increasing the FSB on Via motherboards.

If I were going to buy a new Socket A Nforce motherboard, it would almost certainly be an NF7-S. The A7N8X would be my second choice.

[UPCguy21]

Definitely don't go with the ECS. In the last year, I've had problems with 4 of them. I am a soyo fan myself. They've been very good boards for me. As for the integrated audio, my kt400 has it, but since I already had a creative soundblaster live! 5.1, I use it, but I have used my integrated audio, and it does not sound bad. It supports eax I'm fairly certain. If you want to go with a barton, tigerdirect.com did have a sale, maybe it's still on, where you could get a kt400 soyo mobo with clear side cheiftec case for less than 150. Then maybe a 2500, or newegg has 2800's for like 140 I think. Just a few ideas for you.

[warlock110]

Originally posted by repo man11


This has gotten to be a popular myth. No, Via chipsets do not have a PCI/AGP lock. It does not prevent you from overclocking the FSB.
I'm still using a KT333, which only has a 1/5 divisor, and it is running comfortably at 214 FSB. Yes, that gives me a 42 MHz PCI bus, which all of my components have been running at for quite some time.

The KT600 has a 1/6 divisor. You could reach 230 FSB, and still only be at 38 MHz PCI. I have yet to run into any drives or other parts that won't run at 38.

Nforce chipsets are good, in spite of their unfortunate habit of scrambling the BIOS. But the lack of a PCI lock does not prevent increasing the FSB on Via motherboards.

If I were going to buy a new Socket A Nforce motherboard, it would almost certainly be an NF7-S. The A7N8X would be my second choice.


yep, people has OC with the Via chipset, it's just that the PCI goes out of wack after hitting high FSB. But that's ok, i'm not an extreme OCer, just 200 FSB would be ok for me, or even less it still cool, btw do u guys knows what's the limit for PCI speed? 33 is normal, repo man11 got 42 which is a little too high, i'm just guessing here but it seems 35-37 is the range. and also because the XP 2400 throughbred has 266 FSB, double pump made the FSB originaly 133, looks like i won't be hitting anywhere near 200FSB with that, so wut's the divider of the via chipset under 200FSB? looks like 1/4 to me. hehe it's still cool though, if i run my FSB at 140 i still get 2100mhz, and PCI is only 35, at 35 i hope it's would work, hopefully my calculation is correct :).

[repo man11]

A locked 2400 will be a problem, because of the high multiplier. Now that the CPU's are locked again, and there is no easy way to unlock them yet (that I know of) stepping up to a 2500+ with its 11x multiplier is a good choice. According to other threads, they can generally do 11x200 at default voltage!

As far as out of spec PCI, and how high is too high? Generally, when you hit the limit of one of your parts. In my case, going to 43 MHz PCI resulted in a noticeable slowdown in hardrive performance. So 214 is it for me.

[warlock110]

oopps i forgot that those CPU are locked (dumb me hehe) but can u explain why it's a problem when the FSB is high? (i keep getting this from the board but never quite understand why high multiplier is bad :(

[barton2500]

even 200 FSB on a KT400 wouldn't work, but on KT600 would.
Problem is that KT400 has a PCI divider of 1/5 when FSB is 333. So that means running FSB on KT400 results in PCI speed of 40 MHz..that is certainly going to cause problems...in particular, hard drive corruption. Even at PCI speed 35 Mhz, I had problems on my A7V8X-X. Windows XP on my WD 40 Gb drive corrupted and couldn't start.

[warlock110]

but the XP 2400 has really high multiplier, therefore not alot of FSB is needed. and it's only at 266FSB, so it's 1/4.

[barton2500]

I have Thorton XP2400 that won't even run FSB292 for 2.2 Ghz stably. I think you're better off with XP2500 and it's lower multiplier.

IMO, if you OC less than 10%, it's not worth overclocking. Now with the XP2500 at 1.83 Ghz, possibly hitting 2.2, that's worth overclocking. 11x200 is doable on NF2 and KT600 boards. On my A7V8X-X I have 13.5x166. Lucky it wasn't locked, otherwise I'd be screwed.

[warlock110]

oh, i know i won't get alot out of it, but look at it this way

XP 2400 + ECS mobo = 70 bucks (US dollars), (get some ok heat sink like the Aero 7 Lite u planning to get, or as the matter of fact any heatsink around 30 bucks (decent ones) making it tottal 100 us dollars. and i can find PC 2700 ram for really cheap now (about 50 bucks for 512 MB of PC 2700 AR.
This total at 150 and should run at 2.1Ghz easily with 512MB of DDR 2700 RAM

XP 2500 + Asus, or abit or any mobo with nforce 2 that would run around (55-70 bucks) i take the benefit of a doub and put 60 for the mobo, 85 for the chip + 60 for mobo = 145. Same heat sink as above put me in for another 30 dollars, and finally i need PC 3200 RAM to OC, and 512 runs at 80 bucks. And because i'm getting these prices online (local stores has them for wayyy too expensive) bringing this total to 255+ shipping.
At 255 dollars + shipping, this runs at 2.2 Ghz, with a much better FSB

I'm a little tight on the budget so i would have to think about it. How much of a performace gain would u say that the barton system would give me? i'm guessing about 10% or may 20% more than the Tbred system. but it's costing me 100 dollars :(

BTW did u find good reviews on Aero 7 Lite that u wanna buy? what makes u decided to use blower instead of the regular fans, most people on this board are leaning toward the thermal right all cooper heatsink with a regular fan. i'm just wondering cuzz i have no knowledge in the heatsink department, espeically the blowers fans since i have never had one.

[johnflyons]

ECS= NIGHMARE

[johnflyons]

SORRY......ECS= NIGHTMARE

[barton2500]

Aero 7 Lite is a good cooler..see http://overclockersclub.com/reviews/coolermasteraero7lite4.php
It is a lot cheaper than top of the line products like CoolerMasterJet 7 too.

I think 150 FSB on the ECS board is risky. Assuming a divider of 1/5, you get PCI 30 Mhz, AGP 60 Mhz. If using 1/4, PCI 37.5 Mhz, AGP 75 Mhz. Better to stick to PCI/AGP specs for stability.

If you are going ECS+XP2400...don't bother OCing..that 250 Mhz gain isn't going to be guaranteed, and the gain is a mere 10%. You may as well run a more stable system and keep waranty.

$70 for ECS board +XP2400 is a good deal. If you are lucky and get unlocked processor, you'd have a pretty nice setup. The Barton setup would likely get you 2.2 Ghz with less problems. so 2.2 Ghz vs 2.0 Ghz is about 10% difference, so the price difference of $100 isn't worth it.

Thermalright heat sinks are great too..see SLK947 and SLK900A at http://www.overclockers.com/articles847/
http://www.overclockers.com/articles806/
But they cost $70 and $75 CDN at www.ncix.com whereas it is $46 for the Aero 7 Lite. But obviously you can get better deals than this, and I've Aero 7 Lite to cost around $30.

[warlock110]

aero 7 lite is only 19 dollars at zoomzipfly.com with free 2nd day shipping :) nice price :) it's in US dollars.

[barton2500]

If your XP2400 comes with a cooler, use that; otherwise, I recommend the Aero 7 Lite.