[qbas]

Well my questíon is which of these are better, Barton 2500+ (about 1850mhz) or Thoroughbred 2600+ (little over 2000Mhz)? What is the difference between Barton and Thoroughbred?

Oh and which would be the most performance wise to upgrade for me?

- my 512mb Secteck DDR PC2100 -> firstly 512mb Kingston Valueram DDR PC2700 and later another 512mb Kingston Valueram DDR PC2700 memory module

- AMD Athlon Thoroughbred XP 1800+ -> AMD Athlon Barton 2500+

- Seagate Barracuda 30 GB (REALLY OLD drive) -> Samsung SpinPoint SP80 120Gt, 7200 RPM 8MB).

Your thoughts please.

[shiyan]

Go for the Barton. When you overclock both, the Barton will be faster.

but about the 3 possible choices, I'd say not the RAM.

between the hard disk and CPU, it's up to you.

if you need more space, then the hard disk is a great upgrade and will speed up your system in different ways than the CPU.

you'll probably feel that upgrade more readily than the CPU upgrade for everyday stuff.

but if you game a lot, then the CPU is better upgrade than the HD.

[Deathknight]

Yeah the 2500+ barton OCs very nicely.

For the other part of your question a memory upgrade would give a nice performance boost, but why stop at pc2700?

[shiyan]

Deathknight: did you change your avatar? starting from a little over a day ago?

[qbas]

Originally posted by Deathknight
Yeah the 2500+ barton OCs very nicely.

For the other part of your question a memory upgrade would give a nice performance boost, but why stop at pc2700?

Because my Mobo doesn't support 1GB only 512 of DDR 400Mhz PC3200, don't know then if my mobo would support PC3000 1GB...my aim is to have 1GB of memory

[cherryp00t]

go with barton and yes he did =d

[USAPGAPRO]

I think the barton will be very good to you. 2500+

[CamH]

Definitely need faster RAM. PC2100 won't take you very far.

[qbas]

Originally posted by CamH
Definitely need faster RAM. PC2100 won't take you very far.

So is 2x512 DDR PC2700 Kingston ValueRam good for upgrading? I have 2x256 Spectek PC2100 CL=2.5 memory modules.

[cherryp00t]

at this stage of the game you should be looking for at least pc3200+ or higher =p

[qbas]

Originally posted by cherryp00t
at this stage of the game you should be looking for at least pc3200+ or higher =p

But i'm not too keen of getting a new mobo, i was thinking of getting either HyperX PC2700 memory modules or HyperX PC3000 memory modules but i'm not sure if my mobo supports HyperX PC3000. I would get PC3200 if my mobo would support more than 512 of those. But i want 1GB of memory

[shiyan]

oh crap... just saw that you have a 1800+ thoroughbred, not a 1800+ palomino... how fast are you running it?

if it is at anything over 2Ghz, then I definitely agree that faster RAM would be better than a faster processor.

about the memory, PC3200 should cost nearly the same as PC2700. If your motherboard does not support PC3200, just run it at PC2700 speeds.

[cherryp00t]

PC3200 is ram it is the same ram as pc2700 which is the same as pc2100.. your board can run all these ram.. but what makes these ram different is that one is rated for a higher speed and can achieve that by default..

if your board is not capable of running pc3200 then you can just run pc3200 at pc2700 speeds no problem.. the reason why you should get pc3200 is because the latest generations of cpu are 200 fsb by default which is pc3200+ ram.. if at anytime you decide to change your mobo you will still have fairly good ram instead of having to fork out more money for new ram

[qbas]

Originally posted by shiyan
oh crap... just saw that you have a 1800+ thoroughbred, not a 1800+ palomino... how fast are you running it?

if it at anything over 2Ghz, then I definitely agree that faster RAM would be better than a faster processor.

Well i have it running at 1780Mhz (142FSB with 12.5x multiplier and 1.625 Vcore), but when i go over 150 my CPU locks down...would that be a memory issue? And when i tried to put FSB to 166 and multiplier to 11x, my computer locked so badly that it said my memory was either damaged or not installed propely so i cleared CMOS and nothing happened again the same thing but then i took memory sticks off and put them back my computer worked again...so i must assume that my memory is really crappy and it won't allow me to go over 150FSB.

But now my comp works again, but i really want to go for 2Ghz but i don't know what should i do...getting better memory? For example HyperX modules?

[cherryp00t]

yes def get new memroy.. hyperx is fine.. corsair/mushkin are good too

[qbas]

Originally posted by cherryp00t
PC3200 is ram it is the same ram as pc2700 which is the same as pc2100.. your board can run all these ram.. but what makes these ram different is that one is rated for a higher speed and can achieve that by default..

if your board is not capable of running pc3200 then you can just run pc3200 at pc2700 speeds no problem.. the reason why you should get pc3200 is because the latest generations of cpu are 200 fsb by default which is pc3200+ ram.. if at anytime you decide to change your mobo you will still have fairly good ram instead of having to fork out more money for new ram

Aah so if i would buy say 2x512MB PC3200 memory modules they would still work but with lower fsb?

[cherryp00t]

yes exactly.. and in the future if you buy a board/chip that can run pc3200 speeds all is NOT lost

[qbas]

Originally posted by cherryp00t
yes exactly.. and in the future if you buy a board/chip that can run pc3200 speeds all is NOT lost

Ok thank you very much . Now i know what memory modules to get....PC3200 .

[qbas]

Ok let's say that i would get firstly one stick of Kingston ValueRam 512MB DDR PC3200 memory module, what much could i increase my FSB then? If i right now have FSB at 142 with 12.5x multiplier. Could PC3200 help me get to 2Ghz? At the moment my temperature is 44celsius (I have 2 fans blowing air to the CPU it seems, my CPU fan and my PSU fan...my PSU has 2 fans).

[shiyan]

hmm... if your Tbred is running at 1780Mhz, then a 2200Mhz Barton would be 23.6% more Mhz, which along with the extra cache should be around 15~21% improvement for your whole system.

If you run the new memory at PC2700 speeds, then that's 28.6% memory improvement from PC2100, but you're already running at 150Mhz, which is around PC2368...

Going from PC2100 to PC3200 is gonna be about 12~20% improvement for the whole system, from PC2100 to PC2700 about 7~13%, and 150Mhz to 166Mhz (PC2700), just 2~4% or so.

Am I wrong guys? (am I missing something?)