What to buy...?

[f300]

Hi

I'm thinking of upgrading but i'm not sure what to buy.

Barton XP2500+ £70.44
DFI LanParty NFII Ultra-B £108.69
Kingston HyperX 512MB 466MHz (KHX3700K2/512) £83.66
=== £262.79

OR

Intel Pentium 4 2.6GHz 800FSB £132.72
Asus P4C800 £111.63
Kingston HyperX 512MB 500MHz (KHX4000K2/512) £118.80
=== £363.15

I've never really looked at P4 systems before now so i'm not entirely sure about it. I can't decide if the extra £100 is worth the extra performance that the P4 will give.

Other than that, is the memory good or should i be looking at something different? Are there any other motherboards I should consider?

Thanks!

[blockers]

Hi.

Both systems look nice, however i would go for the AMD as it is cheaper, and faster. With the extra you could afford to upgrade other parts, as there is almost £100 different.

The AMD system:
The chip (barton xp2500) is a good choice. However remember that AMD have started to lock the mutliplers on these chips, like Intel. So if you are overclocking bear in mind. I am not sure if other Barton chips are locked or not (such as xp2800) they may be able to overclock better.

DFI LanParty NFII Ultra-B - is this board actually and Socket A board (AMD)? i thought they were just P4's. I would rather have a Abit NF7-S (or an AN7) simply becuase i have heard of them. I am running one now and it is a very good board. (Nforce2, digital sound [close to augidy 2 quality], LAN, SATA) This board is also about £20-30 cheaper than the DFI LanParty.

Kingston HyperX 512MB 466MHz (KHX3700K2/512) - isntead of getting 1x512 why not get 2x256mb and utilise it in Dual Channel DDR. This gives about a 5% performance boost over single channel. With AMD systems 466mhz is overkill really, especially for the xp2500 (333?.) Who not down grade the memory to pc3200 (400mhz) and save yourself some money there and then get some OCZ, or Corsair (if you can afford it.) People find TwinMOSS is very good RAM and overclocks well, Adata is also recommended.

After a brief look at aria.co.uk this i what i came up with:
AMD AthlonXP 2500 [1.83GHZ 333] RET £69.91
ABit NF7-S £79.84
Variety of RAM:
Corsair Twinx 2x256MB XMS3200LL DDR £108.10
TOTAL - £257.85
From overclockers.co.uk:
Adata 256MB DDR PC3200 CAS 2.5 £29.38 (x2 - 58.76) TOTAL - £208.51
TwinMOS 512MB (2x256MB) DDR PC3200 Dual Channel Kit £61.69 TOTAL - £211.44
OCZ 512MB (2x256MB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series DDR CAS2 £122.20 TOTAL - £271.95.

Hope that gives you some options. Dual Channel kits are a bit gimicky really, you only need 2 sticks (they dont even have to been the same speed i dont think - they just dont perform as well.)

Will

[hotpurple]

The twinmos stuff is good

[serlex]

hi
i would go for the P4, because, you can overclock it easier.

get the P4c800-e deluxe, you might be able to OC 2.6 to 3.4ghz or more
cheers

[Nox]

i had the same sort of decision to make a while back - went for the p4 solution. the 2.4 i got clocks to 3.2 with stock cooling.

Nox