Hi

I've had my computer for the last 18 months and I'm thinking it's about time I upgrade. I currently have a 1.2Ghz Athlon processor with a 40 Gb hard drive, 512Mb Memory and all the rest of the usual stuff. I'm happy with the hard drive and memory but want to replace my mother board and processor. I'm looking for a Athlon XP 2400+ but that's about all I know as I keep getting bogged down with terminology and I've not got a clue as to which motherboard. All I know there is there are plenty out there, or should I just overclock it (What ever that means???)

Can anyone point me in the right direction

Cheers

Stubarru

Why do you need the upgrade? What is the upgrade for? (gaming? heavy duty processing work? more multitasking etc.)

Depending on why you need the upgrade, it may be just a case of a faster HDD for example or more memory etc..

:)

I agree - your set up doesn't sound like its exactly underpowered. Try optimising your system before just swapping the processor. Perhaps overclocking would be worth a try.

As a comparison I have an old P3 600mhz running near 1ghz with everything overclocked and it runs RTCW, Unreal II etc no probs at all.

Can't see the point in upgrading for the sake of it- save your cash for petrol!

The games I play are a bit slow so I was really trying to get the computer to run a bit quicker.

What is Overclocking and how do you do it?

What graphics card do you have? That could be worth upgrading if it's old. Many games run slow because of older graphics cards rather than older CPU's.

IIRC, Overclocking is a little like chipping your car. You may need to improve the fan/heatsink to cope as the CPU will run at higher temperatures. It may also be possible just to buy a new CPU for little money. That's all I really know. Others will know more than me about PC hardware. Try a search (yahoo etc.) for over clocking and see what comes up.

HTH :)

overclocking a processor is about getting more bang for your buck so to speak. for instance i used to run an old celeron 300 mhz. the 300 part is how fast your processor is. it is worked out using a combination of bus speed (i.e. how fast your motherboard talks to other components) and clock multiplier (i.e. an internal speed inside your processor. in my case the 300 celeron processor had a bus speed of 66Mhz with a clock multiplier of 4.5

now if you multiply 66*4.5 you get 300 (approx). now to overclock your processor you can either increase bus speed, or multiplier or a combination of both (this depends on the processor). with the celeron 300 it was possible to over clock this processor to 450 no probs by increasing the bus speed to 100Mhz and leaving the multiplier alone.

Intel shot themselves in the foot a while back because of this. a PII 450 was about 3 times the price of the celeron 300 but when overclockers got thier hands on the celeron the had a cheap and easy overclock to 450.

Hope this has explained the fundamentals of overclocking. others on here will i am sure can give you a much more in depth explanation of the latest athlon xp overclocking exploits.

cheers

big sinky

If you get AMD get XP2100 best overclocker ;)

Thanks Guys

If its games your bothered about buy a performance graphics card Radeon 9xxx series or GeForce Ti. In my experience these have improved gaming performance much more than a faster processor.

Well i would imagine your current motherboard will support an Athlon XP2100+ so buy one of those for like 60 quid.

Then tell us your graphics cards and buy a good decent card for games like a Radeon 8500 or maybe a Radeon 9100 pro, something less than 100 quid i would imagine but will significantly improve your gaming.

My Graphics Card I have is a Radeon 7200. I got it just after I bought the computer.

Well i would definitely upgrade that for sure.....

Games like Splinter Cell, TOCA, BF1942, UT2003, Unreal 2 etc will really benefit from a better card.

See Tom's Hardware for some benchmarks to decide what merits the cost to you, depends on your gaming needs really.

www.overclockers.co.uk
www.komplett.co.uk
Both good sites for buying.

Console games and computer games are two very different beasts. Chalk and cheese. Each have good points and bad points.

For the amount it looks like you will have to spend, why not buy a PS2 or a XBOX if gaming's your thing?

[Edited by Dracoro - 4/6/2003 1:10:03 PM]