upgrade?

i have a asus a7n8x-x mother board with a athlon xp 2200, a geforce 5900 card, 512 mb of pc 3200 and 256 mb of 2700 ddr ram. what do you guys think i should upgrade, i thought about getting a xp mobile 2600 and another stick of pc-3200, or should i get a dual proccessor setup going? what will give me the best preformance without spending in excess of 400?

Get a matching stick of PC3200 & a Mobile 2400+ 35watter, it'll OC within very close (2.4-2.5Ghz) to the 2500+ & 2600+ models & runs cooler. That should only set you back about $175.00 Then you can pocket the extra money you saved towards an upgrade to a Socket 939 MoBo & CPU come Spring of next year when the performance & prices have improved a bit more. Then the 2400+ Mobile & your old MoBo would be an excellent start for a Media PC/HTPC set-up as it'll run cool & quiet on low voltage as you won't need to OC it much if any for that application.

Regards, Balrog

heat isn't a problem, i have a proffesional squirrel cage on the side of my computer. i want to play games untill i can afford to buy the 64 bit stuff, does a 2600 mobile overclock the best or does a 3200 mobile overclock better? and should i get a new board?

2600+ seems to be the chip of choice with the 2400+ 35watter next, you won't see much higher OCs for your money with the 2600+ from what I've seen.

I'm not familiar with your MoBo what multis, voltages & settings are available in your BIOS?

Regards, Balrog

any where from 9 to 13 or 13.5 for the multis, 133/166/200 for the front system bus and many voltage setting i have my 2200 running at 1.7 now

200FSB X 13 = 2.6Ghz which is about as high an OC that your likely to get out of a Mobile on air cooling. I know many that run 200FSB as they feel their rigs are snappier & more stable then say running a higher FSB & lower multi, plus this allows many to run their RAM at CAS2.0 which also helps the performance. Sounds to me like it might be worth a try with just the Mobile to start with & see what you get, you can always get a new MoBo later.

Regards, Balrog

I think if you want the most out of the chip get the axp 2600+m I have bought 3 and I'm very happy with them, but if you just want something to hold you off until you upgrade to the 2400+m just know that they don't oc as much as they did before, but the most important thing is to get it running with high fsb, the axp gets a pretty nice boost from high fsb. You could also get another stick of 512mb pc3200 from the same brand at least and take the pc2700 out it's going to hold your fsb back. Dual are only necessary if you want to be able to multitask or if a software you use supports multithreading.