New to AMD...need some advice...

Hey...

I'm new to amd...planning to upgrade my comp...i was planning to buy a 1.2 celly...but my friend told me that a 1600 XP is faster...
Here are where the questions come up...

i found a mobo thats really cheap and has great reviews...its the ECS K7S5A...is this a good mobo??...and does it support the XP's??...

Also...it has intregrated lan and sound...does this slow down the motherboard??...can i not use the integrated sound and use something like a live 5.1 that i have??

Thx a lot...

is it really 266 FSB??...i see some people saying they o/c to like something around 140...but isn't that a little less??....whats the deal with that??...how does the amd FSB work?

For the integrated sound and network, there tends to be BIOS options and/or jumpers on the motherboard so you can diable them. Then you can use whatever sound/network you want.

I don't know if that board supports the XP processors, but check for the latest BIOS for it. If should have notes what it does, and it might say that it adds XP support.

The 266MHz FSB is actually a DDR thing. DDR stands for "Double Data Rate." Basically the board really has a 133Mhz FSB (front side bus) but because the chipset supports DDR, it can send and recieve on both the rising and falling edge of the clock cycle. Which means it can do 133MHz twice per clock cycle, or 266MHz (God bless my A+ book!) You'll probably also have to get DDR SDRAM for it, instead of the standard SDR SDRAM.

My bad, the ECS K7S5A has slots for either DDR or SDR. If you can afford it, I'd suggest DDR over SDR. That way you'll be taking advantage of the full potential of the board. But if you do decide to go with SDR, get some PC133, which will utilize the 133FSB.

The ECS K7S5A is an average 'budget board' however it does not have enough features and is not of high enough quality to be a great mobo for overclocking imho

*Moved to "AMD ECS Boards"*

I agree that this is not a classic "overclockers" motherboard. However, it is inexpensive, has some good extras (lan and modem) and I have had good luck with mine.

I have a Duron 750 running at 1 gig, 7.5 x 133 fsb. This was the cheapest overclock for me, because I am using left over SDRAM and the cheapest case my local shop had ($35 with psu).

Obviously, with an XP, you would need a better psu. I bet you could up the fsb a little with an XP as well, as long as you get the overclock bios from ocworkbench... Playing with the multiplier requires unlocking the XP anyway, and I don't have enough guts for that yet, so I wouldn't suggest it for someone that is new...