Which would be faster?

[Daddyjaxx]

I just built my new rig last week. This freed up my old Dell system that I gave to my dad to replace his Athlon XP 1700. The Dell has a Northwood 2.4 with a 400 FSB in it. Unfortunately, it has the 850 chipset (I think) that requires PC800 RDRAM. If you have seen the price of RDRAM, you would gag...especially since you gotta buy two.

For those that know Dell systems, they are proprietary and cannot be easily upgraded. Even the power supplies are different. Would it make sense to take the CPU out and buy another m/b and some PC2100 or 2700. I have a spare Antec with a 350 p/s I could use. Wouldn't it actually be slower than the current setup? I'm just thinking with a new mobo we can up the RAM limit, have o/c ability, serial ata, raid, etc.

[BioTuned]

you know i might have some pairs pc800 in my shop somewhere.....ill let you know if i find em.....i know for sure i didn't keep any 128mb's....might be either 256 or 512's.....

[batboy]

If you get a mobo with the i865/i875 chipset (like Abit IS7, AI7, or IC7) then you'll have dual channel DDR, SATA, RAID, and other cool features. If you get decent RAM (at least PC2700), then you'll be able to run that 2.4 with the 3:4 memory ratio for even more memory bandwidth. Add a little O/C to the mix and you'll definitely have a faster computer. I would think at least 2.8 gig would be fairly easy.