New Mobo and CPU

[starbuck]

I currently have an ABIT AT7 and XP2200 running at stock speed but want to upgrade.

I want a new mobo and cpu for around £150(up to £200 if really worth it).
I want a combination that is good at stock speed but also has very good potential to overclock(and easy to overclock as I've never overclocked before).

Been looking at an S462 board or an NF7-S.

Anyone got any advice/suggestions on these or any other boards and which processor to go for(wouldn't mind going for an athlon 64 but price too high at the moment). Obviously, I'd like to get something I won't have to upgrade for at least a year(which is where the overclock comes in).

[nindo]

Go Socket A, say the NF7-S and get the Athlon XP-M 2500+ 1.45v, great value as you can really over clock the CPU ( Up to 2.4~2.8 GHz? )

[mike_w]

I second the NF7-S and Mobile Barton 2500+.

[LayZeh]

This is exclusive news, obtained by me from someone who works for nVidia.

Very soon they will be announcing two more flavours of the nVidia nForce2 chipset. Unfortunately i can only get information on one and it's as follows:

All the features of the nForce2 Ultra 400 except the APU (Audio Processing Unit)
Native S-ATA with RAID 1, 0 and 0+1 (Integrated into the south-bridge)
Gigabit Lan

They are the features my contact is certain of and there's others that he hasn't been able to confirm.

I'd guess the new flavours of the chipset will launch to coincide with the next release of the nForce ForceWare driver pack that does include support for these new variations.

Abit did state that the AN7 would be their last nForce2 based motherboard but if demand is high enough and they see their contenders making money in a market where they could quite easily be doing so i'm sure they'll change their mind.

I hope this helps you decide on your new upgrade as for CPU i'd definitely go with the XP-M as suggested by others.

[BUFF]

Definitely go with the XP-M



This is in a DFI Infinity but it is buggy.
The NF7-S V2.0 is a lot more stable - if you are new to o/c go with it - the DFI would drive you up the wall.

[Proplus]

TBH, if I were you, I'd save up a bit more money for a bit more substantial upgrade. Moving from an XP2200+ to a XP-M2500 and then overclocking it wouldn't bring about a huge leap in performance.

Save up a bit more cash, during this time the Athlon64 tech will hopefully mature and a fully working non-buggy WindowsXP 64bit is released, and upgrade then.