PC Upgrade

[SHoK]

Hey guys i was hoping to get your opinion / advice on a upgrade.

Currently im considering a
Athlon XP 3000 (400mhz FSB)
Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro2
1 GiG Corsair PC 3700 / 466 TWINX Kit


I'm thinking i'll get the parts from www.cworld.com.au as they are the cheapest I have found. They have a Athlon XP 3200 cheaper then the XP 3000 but for some reason it doesnt have the 400mhz in brackets next to it so I am not sure which one I am better off with.

I'm open to suggestions on this upgrade, but keep in mind the limit is about $1200.

Thanks.

[hazza]

what parts do u allready have that u dont need to upgrade?

[SHoK]

I only need to upgrade the motherboard, processor and ram. everything else im taking from my old machine, a Ti 4400, 40GB hdd, 52xcd rom etc.

those parts are running on an old motherboard and a Duron 800 and 288mb ram ( PC100 8-/ ) my current motherboard only supports agp 4x and ata66, which slows down my vid card and hdd a fair bit.

so you can see I am in need of an upgrade ;-)

also if you know a better place to order from, let me know, the few places I have checked dont do credit card sales over the net without hassles.

[MisterBishi]

Personally I'd go with an Asus mainboard, I've never liked GigaShite, but there are one or two people on these forums that do.

[DrDivad]

If it's an expensive Gigabyte, it's damn good, if it's a cheap ass one, it sux.

and in my experience asus boards are good, they're all good, just none of 'em are really that great

[KrisEz]

that doesnt even touch the fact that your going to centre this new computer on a dorito!

get a real processor, windows will love you and say you have 2, and im not sure how linux reports HT technology.

and as for gigabyte, anyone who has one and wanted to overclock it would know "sorry we didn't support this mainboard"

[astro]

Well, I've been considering the same sort of upgrade for a little while now. I'm currently running an XP2200 with 512Mb of 333Mhz ram, and i'm thinking of going to an XP2800 and 1Gb of 400Mhz ram, with a MoBo to match.
I think that the 2800 is slightly better on the price-to-performance side of things than the 3000 so that's recommendation number 1.
Picking the right motherboard means that you won't be limited to a 333Mhz Frontside bus, so using something like one of the ASUS A7N8X mobos might be the go (Bishi's right - GigaShit blows). They're stacked with features like 8x AGP support and 400Mhz FSB's, so 6 months down the track if you decide to go up to an XP3200 then all you have to do is buy it and slot it in.
And as for RAM, it's the same story. Buy 400Mhz ram now and you won't need to get it again if you want to upgrade. i'm not too thrilled with corsair, though. I don't really think that there's too much of a difference between that and a "cheaper" variety, so go for "bang for your buck".

The slab of hardware i'd recommend would be something like:

AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (Barton 333MHz FSB)
$235.00 (as opposed to $329.00 for the 3000)

Asus A7N8X-X (400FSB/AGP8X/ Lan/ USB2/ 5.1Sound, nForce2 chipset)
$139.00

2 x Kingston 512MB 400MHZ(PC3200) CL2.5 DDR module
$278.00 (as opposed to $480.00 for a 1Gb Corsair TWINX 400Mhz pack)

Total: $652.00 (all of these prices are from zipcomputers.com.au, buy you can also look at eyo.com.au)

As this price is slightly lower than your $1200 ceiling, you might also want to consider a dvd drive and a bigger hard drive, or you could even afford a newer video card - a Leadtek WinFast A360 ULTRA TDH 128M (GeForceFX 5700) is only $499.00 at zip and is tastily faster than a Ti4400 ;)

[utopian]

Hey if you're not going to be using that RAM, I know a good cause you can donate it to ;)

I'm still running a Duron 800 as well.

[kré]

werd; asus boards = win

i've had enough of gigabyte motherboards to last a lifetime and a half.

also try www.eyo.com.au and www.arc.com.au for parts. not sure what postage costs would be to canberra, but they might be worth a shot, and if you find something cheaper there, that other place you're looking at might be able to match prices for you.

[Spingo]

Originally posted by SHoK
They have a Athlon XP 3200 cheaper then the XP 3000 but for some reason it doesnt have the 400mhz in brackets next to it so I am not sure which one I am better off with.

The Athlon XP 3200 is only available as a 400MHz FSB CPU.

Originally posted by SHoK
those parts are running on an old motherboard and a Duron 800 and 288mb ram ( PC100 8-/ ) my current motherboard only supports agp 4x and ata66, which slows down my vid card and hdd a fair bit.

The difference between AGP4X and AGP8X is next to nothing. This is because with most GPU's, only the frame buffer and a small additional amount of extra data is regularly transferred to and from main memory, and AGP4X has more than enough bandwidth to transfer this info. Likewise the difference between ATA66 and ATA100/133 - Yeah, there's more bandwidth, but the drive generally can't take adavantage of that extra bandwidth. The only way a faster ATA interface speeds things up a bit is when data is going from teh drive cache to your system.

[SHoK]

Hey guys thanks for the advice.

I only chose gigbyte as I went to tomshardware and they reckon its a good board, so I googled it to get more reviews and pretty much all of them said it was a good board. I think the Asus topped alot of benchtests as well, so if I have no reason not to choose this board over the gigabyte.

That board appears too be much better then the gigabyte, thanks for that tip.

I chose the corsair ram as it has a lifetime warranty. Is there much diference between pc3200 and pc3700? The kingston is a hell of alot cheaper.

If i was to get a vid card, which of these 2 is better?

http://www.zipcomputers.com.au/store/view_product.php?product=VGA-LT-FX5600256VIVO

or

http://www.zipcomputers.com.au/store/view_product.php?product=VGA-FX5700ULTRA-LT


That zip site is pretty awesome, thanks for that.
Will i need any extra fans or anything?

[Lurgen]

Scorptec (http://www.scorptec.com.au/) are generally cheaper than ZipComputers, and their staff usually has at least a vague understanding of the things they're selling you.

I've had good experiences with at least 3 Gigabyte motherboards. Abit used to be good, but the newer ones seem to be shite.

[Lurgen]

If i was to get a vid card, which of these 2 is better?

It's fairly safe to say the A360 ULTRA TDH (based on the FX 5700 Ultra) is the better of the two, but at almost double the price are you surprised?

[Colonel Kurtz]

Originally posted by Lurgen
Scorptec (http://www.scorptec.com.au/) are generally cheaper than ZipComputers, and their staff usually has at least a vague understanding of the things they're selling you.

I've had good experiences with at least 3 Gigabyte motherboards. Abit used to be good, but the newer ones seem to be shite.
Scorpion technologies is now a rip off. They never have what you want in stock either. I use their site as a research tool to figure out what I want, and then I bug the shop across the way for the bits, and I always get a better price. (This is in Melbourne).
Shit website, but good prices. Topstar Computers (http://www.topstar.com.au)

[SHoK]

Originally posted by Lurgen
It's fairly safe to say the A360 ULTRA TDH (based on the FX 5700 Ultra) is the better of the two, but at almost double the price are you surprised?

So the RAM difference doesnt matter? the 5600 has 256, the 5700 has 128.

[MisterBishi]

There's very little taking advantage of even 128mb of memory at the moment, although HL2 and Doom 3 will definitely change that.

[SHoK]

On tomshardware in their vga charts III they have a whole bunch of cards benchtested.

the Ti 4400 beats the FX 5700 in alot of tests, not by much in fps.
The FX 5700 does start to win with dx 9 and anisotropic and 4x FSAA.

I found a FX 5900 XT for $335. Would I be better off getting this card? it performs quite well in the benchtests at toms hardware, even though it apparently has a lower clockspeed then a 5200 and above.

With the Ti 4400, i'm not really in desperate need of a new card, so it may be worthwhile waiting for prices coming down at risk of falling into the trap of waiting forever 8-/

again, any advice is appreciated.

[tikdoph]

Originally posted by SHoK
Hey guys thanks for the advice.

I only chose gigbyte as I went to tomshardware and they reckon its a good board, so I googled it to get more reviews and pretty much all of them said it was a good board. I think the Asus topped alot of benchtests as well, so if I have no reason not to choose this board over the gigabyte.

That board appears too be much better then the gigabyte, thanks for that tip.

I chose the corsair ram as it has a lifetime warranty. Is there much diference between pc3200 and pc3700? The kingston is a hell of alot cheaper.

If i was to get a vid card, which of these 2 is better?

http://www.zipcomputers.com.au/store/view_product.php?product=VGA-LT-FX5600256VIVO

or

http://www.zipcomputers.com.au/store/view_product.php?product=VGA-FX5700ULTRA-LT

I just purchased a Leadtek A360 TD 256MB GeForce FX 5700 MyViVo from www.arc.com.au for $307. I think without the ViVo it's $299.