Upgrade advice please

[RedPutty]

I have left myself in a somewhat sticky situation re: upgrades and was wondering if anyone can recommend a decent upgrade path.

system main points:

Asus asus a7m-266d (note the D for DUAL )
1700xp modded to MP
512 registered ECC ram.
ti4200

Now, the story is I was intending to mod two XP chips to make them MPs, I could never get them to both work together so for the last year I have had a 1700XP sitting on my desk that wont work in the comp.

This is also the reason for buying registered ram to make the dually system more stable.

My mobo wont take more than a 2400xp as far as I can tell (only 266 FSB) and I can't mix registered and unregistered ram but could really do with more than 512MB.

I could sell the XP and ram but I dont know how easy it would be to e.g sell the ram or how much someone would buy it for.

any ideas how I could upgrade for less than £200?
I thought someone here might have some revolutionary idea....

[Nox]

what are you trying to upgrade? just games speed? system speed? stability? or a bit of everything?

Nox

[RedPutty]

A bit of everything really, one of my main gripes at the moment though is not having enough ram, using vmware and a couple of graphics apps and I am running short.

I'm not too fussed about upgrading the gfx card at the moment, theres no game thats pushing me too. The XMP demo runs a bit slow for me but its not a good enough game to make me upgrade the gfx yet. Probably HL2 will be the game that makes me do that.

I'm tempted to ditch the mobo but I still have that damned ram!

cheers.

[blockers]

What speed is the RAM? (pc2700,pc3200 etc)

People have been getting £20-£35 for their xp1700 (depending how good at overclocking it is.)

[Trickle]

Registered ram from that era isnt going to be faster than 133DDR.

Upgrade path is obvious. Sell the lot and start with new mobo and cpu + gpu. A hyperthreaded P4 on a new mobo is going to perform much better than 2 old athlonMP's on that aging mobo.

[RedPutty]

Oh damn thats a good question, I think it might be pc2100 - does that make sense?

Is there an easy way to check?

I suppose I could sell the cpu and my existing ram on ebay or something - never sold anything on ebay though and the thought of someone claiming it doesnt work after recieving it puts me off a bit.

cheers.,

[unrealrocks]

Sell the board (get quite a bit for that), sell the CPUs and RAM. Then buy an A7N8X or something and a 2600XP w/ PC2700 RAM!

[RedPutty]

Yeah I think you guys are right.

I was trying to look for an easy upgrade path but there isnt really one is there!

[Theo]

I'd agree on selling the board/cpu, however I'd say get yourself an NF7-S V2.0, and a 2500 Barton, along with some TwinMos PC3200. With adequate cooling, you'll be able to overclock your barton to XP3200 speeds (as long as it's not locked). This is a cracking set up, and not to expensive either.

[RedPutty]

What are the chances of getting a locked barton ?

I've been away from the scene for a while.

I did the old celeron 300a->450mhz overclock, next computer I ran dual celerons. This dual XP failure put me right off but at heart I love trying to push configurations to get more out

[BUFF]

Even if the XP2500 you get is multiplier locked you can still up the FSB to 200 = XP3200+

[RedPutty]

I see, interesting thanks.

[RedPutty]

Thats not bad, I can get that setup (NF7, 512mb ram and barton 2500+) for £181 according to my pricing at komplett.

I could then sell on the spare components or maybe pass them down to other family members in a "new" pc for them.

Is it easy to sell computer bits on ebay, does anyone here do it?
thanks.

[RedPutty]

Hello sorry three posts in a row from me.

Will pc3200 ram be able to cope with a FSB of 200? Or do I need to buy faster ram than that.

I see most bartons are locked by now so I would have to count on an FSB overclock I think.

Thanks.

[Lemming]

You have a similar setup to mine I see, I have the same dual athlon mobo, 1.5gb ram and a Ti4200.I recently changed my XP1800s (old chips didnt need modding to run dual) to MP2200s I got cheap from the forum (cost me less than buying new XP2200s!)

When it comes to the best upgrade route I suppose you have to ask yourself which route you want to take....

1. If you want to keep your duallie then I would recommend getting another 512mb registered ram and get 2 cpus. Both of these I would fully expect you to get from either the for sale forums here or at overclockers. The stuff you are after is no longer in great demand so prices can be very good, you dont necessarily need to get 2400s, 2200s will do almost as well. As you have said your GF4 still plays all games going atm and there is no great urgency to upgrade.

2. Change totally to an nforce2 board and overclock the nuts off it.

Costs will be similar and performance will differ depending on what you want to do.

I have my duallie sitting here on an omnicube whilst next to it I have an nforce2 pc with a barton XP2500 at 195fsb. I have been mmm'ing and aa'ing for the last two weeks as to which i should keep (the other goes to the wife to replace her P4 2.4 which is misbehaving). Altho the Barton is faster, there are no games my duallie doesnt run nicely, and with my duallie I can play these games whilst still ripping, recoding and burning a DVD. I typically have a number of apps running in the background whilst gaming and I have yet to have a problem with stability, the same cannot be said of the Barton which I need to be more careful of when gaming.

The choice is not really clear unless you can say what you need the pc for? If it tends to be for one app at a time then I would say change your whole rig, get an nforce2. If ,however, you tend to have lots running at the same time then I think you should give serious consideration to updating your duallie, with a single cpu in it you are not seeing it at anywhere near its best......

FYI my pc is A7M266D, 1.5GB crucial ram PC2100 ecc regd, Ti4200 128mb, 3com network card, audigy 2, liteon 40x CDRW, pioneer 105 DVDRW, pioneer 106s dvd reader, 80GB maxtor ide, 19160N U160 SCSI card, 5x 18GB U160 scsi drives, scsi CDR, 9GB scsi hdd and a floppy It runs call of duty, iL2 FB, AAO, KOTOR and everything else I throw at it quite comfortably whilst still allowing me to do anything else I want at the same time, at this point I have to say Im not willing to lose that just to gain a few more frames per second in a game when I will have to stop everything else I am doing.....

Boils down to horses for courses as the old saying goes, give it some thought