If you had 400 quid to spend on new parts...

O

old.D0LLySh33p

Guest
What would they be?

Of course, I'm looking for specific ones...

The list is:

Mobo
Processor
Power supply
Ram

=====

Answers on a postcard pls or you just post below...
 
K

kameleon

Guest
300 Watts ATX Power Supply Amd Approved £15.36
AMD Athlon XP-2800+ Socket A 333 FSB+H/Fan Retail Boxed 127.05
Asus A7N8X Deluxe nForce2+ Soc. A 8xAGP+dual LAN+SerialATA+Firewire+snd+USB2+ DDR Retail 5 74.48
2 x256mb crucial ddr ram £65.98
Sub Total(£) 282.87
VAT(£) 49.51
Total(£) 332.38
 
S

Sibanac

Guest
What kameleon said but take a bigger PSU

400W+, dual fan deal from q-tech or Enermax if you realy have some dosh to burn

and with the leftover cash you can buy me a beer :)
 
O

old.D0LLySh33p

Guest
Thanks ;)

I'm looking to upgrade my PC soonish you see and just wondered how much 300-400 would get me these days...

My current spec is a p3 850 ... nuff said :(
 
W

Wilier

Guest
Definatley get a bigger PSU, and make sure the RAM is 3200.

:)
 
K

Krazeh

Guest
If you're gonna nuy an athlon just go for the 2500+ barton, it'll easily overclock to speeds equivalent to the 3000+ or 3200+ and save you 50 quid over the 2800+. I've got mine running as a 3000+ at default vcore, once I get watercooling i'm gonna up the vcore and up the fsb some more to see what I can get out of it.
I can get 3200+ with air cooling but i'd prefer to have it watercooled to make sure it stays nice and cool.

And as for Ram try and get hold of Geil Golden Dragon PC3500 stuff, it'll run sweet as in an asus an78x deluxe, will clock beautifully to nice and high fsb speeds and is priced to match corsair pc2700 ram.

Edit: For 372.49 + postage you can get the following from microdirect.co.uk:

AMD Athlon XP 2500 [333MHz] Retail inc.fan [3 yr.warr.] Barton core
Asus A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 chipset Skt A 8xAGP +dual LAN +SerialATA +Firewire +snd +USB2 Dual chan. DDR [up to DDR400]
Geil® Golden Dragon 512MB PC3500 Dual Channel DDR Kit[2x256MB]433MHz [4.5ns Cas 2 6-3-3 1T] low latency
550W Enermax quiet dual fan adjustable fan speed PSU with PFC

Or if you went for a 350W Enermax PSU you could get another for 512mb of ram and bring the bundle price to 400 quid
 
D

Deadmanwalking

Guest
I really don't like you anymore.

EVERY man and his dog lap up 2500+ because "They is l337 overclockers!!!1" Just buy higher XP as you can afford. Simple

Edit: Sorry bout that was a tad harsh.. but it gets to me, it really does :(
 
K

Krazeh

Guest
It's got nothing to do with "They is l337 overclockers!!!1". I just don't see the point in throwing perfectly good money away on a cpu when a cheaper one will clock stably to the same speed and perform just as well. I'd much rather take the money I save and use it on other parts such as faster ram.

But hey if you wanna stupidly throw money away then that's upto you I spose, it's your cash to waste.
 
D

Deadmanwalking

Guest
People make the mistake of thinking that an older/slower cpu clocked to the same speeds as a new one is identical to it. It's not.

There is so much more to the chips then faster and slower as im sure you are aware.
 
K

Krazeh

Guest
Yeah there is, but the 2500+ barton isn't really that much older than the newer bartons. As i'm sure you're aware when they produce a batch of cpu's they just take a big chunk of silicon and make as many cpu's as they can out of it , then they test each cpu to see what clock speed it's most stable at. That's the rating it's given when it's sold, it's perfectly possible that a 2500+ and a 3000+ both came from the same silicon wafer, the 3000+ was just more stable in AMD's testing. (very simplified i know but it's the general gist of it)

However just because AMD say the 2500+ should run at that speed doesn't mean the cpu can't run at faster clock speeds, up the vcore to increase stability and give it good cooling to keep the temps down and u can run it as a faster chip quite easily.

Oh and it has been known for cpu suppliers to mark down perfectly good cpus to lower ratings to supply demand, so you never really know what quality your chip is till you try and squeeze more out of it.
 
L

lovedaddy

Guest
I'd agree with dead, if you've got the cash, get the real thing. Theres a reason why they are rated at 2500 or whatever.

Spend 100 quid on water cooler gear, or just get the real deal....
 
H

Happy Go Lucky

Guest
Buy the xp2500+ and bump up the fsb when you need to (ie for games) SIMPLE!

I have to increase the cpu fan speed and vcore when I do this however :/
 
X

xane

Guest
Buy the 2500+ Barton and spend the difference on 1GB PC2700 instead.

Thats more or less what I've done, waiting for the CPU and I'll have:

Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 333Mhz FSB
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
Crucial PC2700 2x 512MB
 
T

throdgrain

Guest
I recently upped my ram to 1024mb 333 FSB from 512 266 fsb, and it has made quite a difference in games, im well pleased.
 
K

kameleon

Guest
noooooo! you want ddr pc 3200 for the asus to enable the twinbank feature
 
W

Will

Guest
Get a Shuttle, Dolly.;)

If you don't want that, look carefully at the motherboard features before you buy. If you'll never use RAID, get the non-RAID version and save £5-15. Again for SATA/Firewire etc etc.

And I'd go with the 2500+ and 1GB RAM if your budget stretches. Games are starting to demand it the extra memory.

PSU...I'd probably go for something over 300W.
 
W

WPKenny

Guest
Originally posted by kameleon
noooooo! you want ddr pc 3200 for the asus to enable the twinbank feature
Click to expand...

This is wrong.

The PC2700 is capable of the FSB that the Barton does. It's plenty. Anything more is a waste of money.

Twinbank is when you have two stick of identical memory side by side and it REALLY doesn't make that much difference to speed.
 
L

lovedaddy

Guest
I'd say:

2500xp athlon
Abit nf7-s
2 & 512mb of TwinMOS DDR (3200)
120 gig SATA Maxtor
ATI 9800 (or wait a little for the 9900 to push price down)
 
K

kameleon

Guest
Originally posted by WPKenny
This is wrong.

The PC2700 is capable of the FSB that the Barton does. It's plenty. Anything more is a waste of money.

Twinbank is when you have two stick of identical memory side by side and it REALLY doesn't make that much difference to speed.
Click to expand...

http://www.nvidia.com/object/twinbank.html

Ive noticed a great deal of difference on my system using the twinbank feature

Hardly a wate of money, if he decides to upgrade the processor at a later date then hes going to have to buy the 400 mhz ram later costing him more money. You should know that you should always go for the best that you can afford, anything else is just a waste of money.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Top Bottom