Buying new CPU

I have one the first releases of the 8RDA+ and is currently running a 1700+ at 2.3 Ghz
I am thinking about purchasing a 333 FSB Barton 2500+ or 2600+
Just to quick questions :
Are these processors unlocked ? (I dont want to go through the hassle of unlocking them)
What king of speed may I reach (2.5 Ghz like the new 1700+ ? If it's below I guess there is no point for me to upgrade now...)

IMHO, you don't really have much of a reason to upgrade. The difference between 2.3ghz and 2.5ghz is minimal at best, and you probably wouldn't even run at 2.5ghz for everyday usage. The two processors that you mentioned have a high likelihood of not even reaching 2.5ghz anyways. I'd suggest saving your money and putting it elsewhere.

My system is quite a good performing watercolling rig so I guess I would reach 2.5
But as you say there is not much reason tu upgrade for the moment : )
It's just that I am running a few CPU inetnsive applications and this could help (But just a bit)
Maybe I should save for a dual Athlon 64 system (Though again I doubt I really need a dual system !)
Thanks

Besides the CPU, there are other things that can substantially improve the system performance (from HD) which one can readily feel a big difference, than by pushing CPU from 2.2 to 2.5 GHz.

In case you are not running RAID 0 yet on your system, ...

hitechjb1 said:

Instead of just pushing CPU MHz, why not considering this:

Get a $20 RAID card (e.g. from Silicon Image), or if you have a motherboard with built-in RAID or SATA RAID (SATA needs a pair of converter to work w/ traditional parallel IDE drives), hook up two hard drives (preferably those w/ 8 MB cache, HD w/ 2 MB cache should be OK too) and set up RAID 0, you should be able to actually see and feel a big improvement from daily usage. Files (especially big one) would be open up much faster, applications would be launched faster and run smoother, ...

One would not see and feel a difference when clocking a CPU from 2.2/2.3 GHz to 2.5 GHz, but the improvement felt by adding a RAID 0 is like changing a CPU from 1 GHz to 2 GHz.

PS: when using RAID 0, make sure backing the file systems. A hard drive failure or broken RAID stripe will cause loss of all data in both drives.

Click to expand...

I thought quite a lot about it...
Still scared that one drive fails and then I loose everything... Your risk is 2 times higher...
But i acknowledge it could be quite good... I still hesitate...

As always, one would need to backup the system, especailly the data regularly, .... I have been running RAID 0 since KT133A, and at that time, RAID bios was not that reliable and had known problems and conflicts with some motherboard bios, sound cards, ... But these problems have been fixed long time ago, ...

Nowadays, newer HD's are pretty reliable if used properly, apart from uncoverable crashes originated from user overclocking errors, such as pushing system without check and control, an unlocked PCI bus, .... But anyway, one should not push and test overclocking with system with crucial data w/o backup.

Further, if one wants to have real-time backup in additional to regular backup, one could run RAID 0 + 1 or RAID 0 + redundancy.

Heh. Apps running smoother because of raid 0. Cute.