now is the time to upgrade.

Yes I want ASUS and don't bother give me any other names unless there is a damn good reason :)

but the thing which i can't deside on is Intel P4PE or nVidia A7N8X.

Now I have:
BIOS: ASUS - 0
Processor: Intel Pentium II, MMX, ~400MHz
Memory: 256MB RAM
HD: 2x 9Gb SCSI
CD: SCSI CD-Writter
video: nVidia TnT (need to upgrade this one too :))

thank you for any suggestions.

I have the A7N8X and IMHO it is the best athlon board you can buy. Its on board sound is a s good as if not better than the SB Live I used to use and if you stick decent memory like the corsair XMS PC2700 or higher and a 333FSB athlon in it flys.

With the ATI 9700 pro in mine which caused all sorts of problems on a KT400 board the whole system is rock solid. Its also a bit quick with a 3D Mark of over 15,500 :)

Steve

Not seen an nForce board at work yet but we've used a number of P4PE series boards now.

Very solid, the Deluxe models with RAID, Gigabit LAN are certainly feature packed.

Tough call.

There is no point in buying Corsair XMS2700, as it is merely PC2100(DDR266) RAM of good quality guaranteed to run at PC2700(DDR333) speed. You would be off your tree to buy that stuff nowadays.
If you ain't going to be playing with the fsb's, be it with or without a PCI/AGP bus lock, then some PROPER PC2700 Ram from say Crucial will be spot on for you, otherwise, invest some stupid money in some Corsair XMS 3200-C2 Ram or even XMS3500 Ram. I have 2 512mb modules of their XMS3200 and love them, but completely stupid money

Cheers,

Nick :)

Ok so XMS 2700 CAS 2 is a little low spec but given that the best bet for a FSB 333 Athlon is to run at sync speed its a resonably priced option..........

Must admit that I brought 2 x 512mb of XMS3500 for the XP2700 I run but I run that at quite agressive speeds but at sync with the FSB of the processor as this seems to be stable and quicker than running at 400FSB.

Steve

Im stuck between 3200 or 3500, How high would the FSB be to utilise either?(P4 2.8/3.06 cpu)

Si

hmmm not much help so far guys :)

it seems that the CPU will decide = price -> higher spec as i need to fit in a badget...

keep it coming

Ok my 2p worth (again)

I looked at the P4 route and the Athlon route a couple of months ago. I decided on the Athlon as I could buy the spec I wanted for quite alot less than if I'd gone down the P4 route and in real terms the speed difference is minimal.

With the cash you save on the processor stick 2 x 256 XMS 3200 Cas 2 DIMMS in the Nforce 2 board and run them as Dual Channel and buy a decent GFX card like the ATI 9700 pro. If you cant afford the processor them drop down to a XP2200 but keep the high end gfx card. If you look at some of the review sites the ATI cards are by far the quickest (at the moment) and dont seem to be as processor bound as some of the GeForce cards.

Super_si the FSB on the current P4 is 533 at the processor but 133 at chipset (If I remeber right). For the cost difference go for the XMS 3200 Cas 2 as you should be able to easily run them at very agressive speeds.

Steve

[Edited by J1nxy - 12/30/2002 8:05:14 AM]

Well ive been looking at the P4PE, and still am. It seems to shine on most Bench test ive seen comparing similar boards.

Ultimatly it depends on price mate.

Next intel cuts cpu prices are March time, the chipsets have just being price cut yesterday

Si

But for a non technical user, overclocked to buggery ram is of no use or importance. If you aren't planning on tweaking the hell out of it, yet want it to run quickly in stock form, then normally rated PC2700 or PC3200 RAM will be fine for you. Corsair XMS 3200 Ram is still PC2700 (DDR333) tested at PC3200 (DDR400) speeds, for those that don't know. But do get a pair of whatever RAM you buy to take advantage of the Dual Channel DDR facilities of that chipset

Cheers,

Nick :)

The biggest advantage with the Corsair stuff is that its easy to get in Cas 2 which the Nforce board detects on its own and makes a big difference in performance. But if the buying the XMS memory means you cant afford the GFX card drop the memory to normal PC2700 stuff and buy the GFX card as that'll make the biggest difference.

btw I am assuming that you wanna play games...........

Steve

now this as a debate ;)

OK - I don't need something which is a BIT faster then the other or I wont be overclocking like mad.

Using it for games (a lot) so needs to be fast and good graphics, but always trying something new (software).

So, I want to get the best I can afford so I dont need to upgrade in the next couple of month again.

BTW happy New Year you all gits...........