FSB question!!!

[jester212]

ok i have a ABIT AT7-MAX2 motherboard with the via KT400 chipset and at the moment i have 512 corsair xms low latency ddr pc2700(333) and my Cpu is athlon 2400+ 266FSB. Now my motherboard manual say's that my mobo can take PC3200 which i dont understand how!! So is it worthwhile me getting PC3200 on my current cpu or upgrading to either the 333 or 400 FSB cpu??

Or shall i just go down the 64 bit route?

PS: all i use the pc for is mainly gaming!!

[r1zeek]

Your current ram is 333Mhz, PC3200 (400Mhz) would be useful if you had your FSB that high, if not it will just be overkill.

The most worthwile upgrade would be something like an Athlon 2800+ (Barton) with a 400Mhz FSB and getting some PC3200. Without an FSB of 400, PC3200 would be worthless.

Hope that helps a bit

[mike_w]

PC3200 means that the RAM runs at 200mhz. Generally, RAM should run at the same speed as the CPU FSB - at the moment, you only have a 133 mhz FSB processor. If you put PC3200 RAM, then it would simply change its speed to the CPUs FSB of 133. THis means that you'll be virtually no performance boost. In order to take advantage of PC3200 RAM, you'll either have to overclock your CPU until it gets to 200 FSB, or buy a CPU which runs at 200 FSB at stock.

I recommend getting an Athlon 64 Socket 939, since I don't believe that upgrading to another Athlon XP will give much of a performance boost - certainly not for the amount of money you'll have to spend. Athlon 64 is fast, especially in games, and Socket 939 (rather than Socket 754) is suppsoed to be AMD's main socket for quite a while, letting you upgrade in the future. If you want to future proof it even more, you could wait for PCI Express boards for Athlon 64, which should appear in Q1 of 2005 in the form of nForce4.

[jester212]

Thanks guys well looks like im gonna go down the 64 bit route as the prices are coming down so thanks for all the info guys!

[jester212]

oh one more thing when i go for a new mobo what is better nforce3 or KT800??

[r1zeek]

Aye, if you have the money to spend, i'd say best boost performance wise would be like mike_w says, but a new Athlon is followed closely to that

[iranu]

btw KT400 will not o/c too well i.e only seen max 175fsb, so as said above increase in ram spd is pointless.

Lookin' like a new mobo and chip - price upto you!