Options and Benefits

[whirling1]

Hi guys

Right I'm thinking about upgrading my kit and want a bit of advice.

Im looking for motherboard , proc & new memory

What I need to know is there much of a benefit in buying PC2700 over the PC2100 memory? As I can either afford a Athlon XP 2000 with PC 2700 or an Athlon XP 2200 with PC 2100 . Which would give me the better performance? (I use my machine for games , surfing n general stuff)

Also which of these boards would you reccomend (or suggest alternative of simmilar price...but would like on board sound)
I have picked out the Alatron KX400+ or the Asus A7V333A with onboard hardware sound. Any suggestions???

And 1 final question...I've never used DDR Ram...is there any issues i should look out for regarding clock multipliers ??? i.e. do you set FSB to 133 or 266?? and is there any problems with the PCI and AGP buses working with the 333mhz RAM ?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.

 

[whirling1]

Hello!!!!!

Please reply

 

[James-]

Okay.

 

[GDW]

Be patient ....we are thinking

 

[.Cask]

Looks a bit all technical for me, that.

I'd just spend the money on beer instead.

 

[Will]

Option A, the XP 2000 with DDR 2700.

Though if you can wait, hang on till you can get an XP with 166MHz FSB and pair that up with DDR 2700.

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

Try to get a msi m/b .

FSB should be set to 133 in bios, set your ddr ram to this as well.

In a 166Mhz m/b pci & agp still run at 33Mhz, so no problems.

 

[whipped]

What about the EPoX boards. On-board sound and they come in pretty boxes.

 

[Wilier]

Amazingly, Ive just recieved (so Mrs Wil tells me) my new XP2000, Crucial DDR2700 and MSI KT3 Ultra2 raid.

Obviously I havnt tried them yet, cos Im at work on 12 hr days, but I just thought Id let you know.

 

[~YuckFou~]

Thanks for that

 

[djpringle]

Re: Re: Options and Benefits

Originally posted by Wilier
Amazingly, Ive just recieved (so Mrs Wil tells me) my new XP2000, Crucial DDR2700 and MSI KT3 Ultra2 raid.

Obviously I havnt tried them yet, cos Im at work on 12 hr days, but I just thought Id let you know.

Sounds like an afternoon just before nightshift job to me, haul into work if it doesn't quite work out

 

[whirling1]

Can someone clear something up for me?

Taking advice from you guys I've looked at a few MSI boards

and was thinking of the MSI KT3 ULTRA2 (possibly RAID...not decided yet)

Some links ive seen say it can support up to 2200XP (1800mhz)
but The AMD reccomended boards report has it reccomended for a Athlon XP 2700+

Anyone know which is right or have any dealings with this board??

 

[Rubber Bullets]

It could be that those are older reviews, from before the faster chips came out.

BTW I would go for the RAID board. When I bought my mobo I thought about it, and then decided that I didn't want to use a RAID array so I didn't get it. Now I deeply regret it, I still don't want a RAID set up but would like 2 HD on separate controllers and can't. With a RAID board you can have 2 HDs and a CD/RW and a DVD player all on separate controllers thus making all disc copying and data movement much faster. If you put your pagefile on the second HD you should persuade Windows to go a bit faster as well.

Don't make the same mistake I did.

s

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

If you want good on-board sound, it might be worth waiting for nforce 2 , should be out soon.

 

[Xavier]

nForce2 totally 0wns every other motherboard offering out there, I should know (got the ASUSTek A7N8X inside this very PC )...

On the RAID front I'd advise you don't get a raid capable motherboard - it bumps the price up and you could as easily get a dedicated raid card which would save you from buying raid motherboard every time you upgrade and give you more choice

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by whirling1
Can someone clear something up for me?

Taking advice from you guys I've looked at a few MSI boards

and was thinking of the MSI KT3 ULTRA2 (possibly RAID...not decided yet)

Some links ive seen say it can support up to 2200XP (1800mhz)
but The AMD reccomended boards report has it reccomended for a Athlon XP 2700+

Anyone know which is right or have any dealings with this board??

The latest BIOS upgrade added support for both the 2400+ and 2600+ processors.

 

[Insane]

It might be worth buying DDR3200 memory in the long-term, considering how close KT400 is (even tho its benefits is minimal compared to Kt333, but you want to be the cutting edge dont you!?!) just for future-proofing your machine (you dont want to be doing the same upgrade next year do you? )

as Itcheh said, the XP with 166mhz FSB is being released soon, as a stepping block to the Hammer series (if you feel that the upgrade isnt worth it for another 6 months, hold off till the 166fsb XP's are released and theres enough compatible boards out there)

RAID cards are better than on-board raid, means you can move the array quickly and easily between machines with very little fuss, business sense backs this (most servers run the OS off the on-board scsi, then utilise a PCI SCSI RAID card with external array for the data, for "emergency" situations.)
as well as the fact that you can upgrade the RAID controller easier than the motherboard

If nvidia had the smarts to build the Nforce2 with a fully fledged Geforce4 TI 4200, i'd have one pre-ordered right now but they dont

im all brackets today

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by Insane


If nvidia had the smarts to build the Nforce2 with a fully fledged Geforce4 TI 4200, i'd have one pre-ordered right now but they dont

Sadly the resulting price of the mobo would become too much, esp since a number of people already have better cards.

 

[Insane]

Originally posted by Embattle


Sadly the resulting price of the mobo would become too much, esp since a number of people already have better cards.

Thats true, the motherboard would retail at about £200 nearly if they done the Geforce4 TI4200 instead (and because of the memory timing for DDR ram, it wouldn't perform as fast as a normal Geforce4 TI4200 anyhow)
mind if you are a proper gamer, you would have invested in the top of the line kit anyhow, so this would just be a "refresher" to your current stuff, and then your graphics card would be highly rated anyhow (I hope your all running DirectX 8.1 compatible graphics cards these days!!! )

i guess im just getting sick of these motherboard manufacturers who release boards with "on-board 3d graphics" and its some crap Trident had made which resembles the old S3 VirgeDX's capabilities and arnt intelligent to include an AGP slot to allow them to upgrade

Has anybody had a look at those new ATI motherboards with the Radeon chip on-board? i think its the identical chip to the 9000 (or perhaps the 7500?) but i havnt heard anything more about them

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Originally posted by Xavier
nForce2 totally 0wns every other motherboard offering out there, I should know (got the ASUSTek A7N8X inside this very PC )...

On the RAID front I'd advise you don't get a raid capable motherboard - it bumps the price up and you could as easily get a dedicated raid card which would save you from buying raid motherboard every time you upgrade and give you more choice

I am a bit confused.

I was advised not to put in a RAID card, because my VIA chipset supports the PCI bus so badly there wouldn't be much point.

TBH I wasn't going to put a RAID array on it yet, just use it as an extra IDE controller.

Theres so much conflicting advice in the whole computer area, it makes my head spin

s

 

[Embattle]

VIA chipsets did have a problem with RAID controllers but not in the compatibility field. The problem was a lack of performance when using RAID controllers although this has been fixed to some degree by a RAID Performance Patch(RPP) released by VIA http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=66

 

[whirling1]

Originally posted by Xavier
nForce2 totally 0wns every other motherboard offering out there, I should know (got the ASUSTek A7N8X inside this very PC )...

On the RAID front I'd advise you don't get a raid capable motherboard - it bumps the price up and you could as easily get a dedicated raid card which would save you from buying raid motherboard every time you upgrade and give you more choice

? Is the Nforce 2 out now or have you got special privellages?

 

[Embattle]

Its not out yet but its an advantage of being a Hardware editor