[TWY]

My friend has a 1.80A + Abit BD7-RAID.

He's currently asking me whether is it worth it to upgrade to a 2.40B + Asus P4B533-E?

So what do I tell him? Stick with his current rig, buy a better HSF and overclock it? Or go ahead with the configuration he's looking at?

TIA.

[CaptBill]

Go with the Asus P4b533-e and try the 2.66 c1. Most are getting well over 3.0 fairly easy.

[BaldHeadedDork]

I'm going to disagree with the Captain. The original BD7RAID is less than a year old, and is a good board for overclocking. The 1.8A arguably has the most headroom of all the P4 chips, reaching 2.5-2.7GHz with aggressive air cooling.

Yeah, he would probably get a performance bump by upgrading to a "B" Woody. But we're talking about 500MHz tops for an outlay of about $500 in new gear, and the only place he'd see an improvement is on a benchmark score.

I don't know what other equipment he has in his setup, but I know I could find better uses for five bills on my rig.


BHD

[skou]

I agree with BHD, it's not cost- effective to do that massive an upgrade. Have him get a good HSF and show him how to O/C, you'll probably get him addicted here. Which means he will end up getting a new rig.

steve

[TWY]

Ok. Just told him about the replies here. He says he doesn't want to overclock it. So at this point, do I ask him to stick with his 1.80A or go ahead with either a 2.40B or 2.66?

[BaldHeadedDork]

Depends on what he wants to do with his system.

Where is he running into performace problems? I don't know what else he has in his rig, but I can't think of a single desktop program that won't run well on a 1.8GHz proc. If you do digital video editing or play hardcore flight simulators, you'll save some time or pick up a few FPS by going to a 2.4-2.6GHz system. But that's it.

If he's asking if its worth upgrading, that tells me he's not having a specific problem but fears he might be missing out on something. I think that's a lousy reason to upgrade, but it his money.

Might I suggest, however, that $500 spent on a decent 21" monitor or a top of the line speaker setup will be an improvement he'll notice every time he uses his computer. Same for a good set of game controllers, or a wicked chair like a Herman Miller Aeron.

Just a thought...


BHD