"kennos" <ken DeleteThis @kennos-dot-com.no-spam.invalid> wrote in message
news:40ff8417$1_6@news.athenanews.com...
> Hi,
> I am upgrading my PC, can you guys enlighten me on which processor to
> chose from. Should I go for AMD Athlon XP 2600 or Intel 2.8E HT???
> Could you please suggest 1) motherboard 2) video card to go with your
> suggestion? I am not a heavy gaming person, I do some home video
> editing and I basically have a limited 
budget ($700).
>
> Thank you for the help 
.
>
> ==============
> Posted through <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb" target="_blank">www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb</a> - free access to hardware
> troubleshooting newsgroups.
Might as well toss this out there:
I upgraded mine fairly recently (2 months ago). Not a complete new system,
an upgrade.
I purchased a Gigabyte Motherboard (GA-7N400Pro2), which is for Athlon XP,
using nForce2 chipset, 4 DIMMs for PC-3200 dual channel RAM, 2 SATA ports,
RAID (on SATA), RAID (on seperate IDE) [okay, basically, you can have 10
drives (HD + CD/DVD) out of the box], Firewire, Gigabit LAN, 5.1 channel
audio (w/ coaxial & optical output attachment 'card' -- it just connects to
the headers on the board).
Then I got an Athlon XP 3000+ / 400MHz bus. I chose it because of the
400MHz bus. While a 3000+ / 333MHz bus is actually 66MHz faster, I figured
a faster bus = faster RAM = faster everything. After all, why would they
call it a 3000+ if it can run 66MHz slower than another thing they call a
3000+ [okay, not a good logic to follow, since it can be wrong], and also
because of its larger 512K L2 cache (larger than the T-Bred).
I got 512MB of RAM. I chose OCZ Performance series, simply because it
seemed good, and it had pretty good latancies (2-3-3-6) for the price (256MB
for $55). Naturally, I wanted dual channel so I got two of them instead of
a dual kit [I don't know if thats a good idea either, I ended up sending one
back because of errors, dunno if it is because of the DIMM itself or because
of the dual channel configuration, I didn't actually bother to do that much
testing, though I should have].
With all this hungry stuff, I needed a new (quieter) Power Supply. I chose
a Coolmax Taurus 450W, single 120MM fan with hi-lo-auto switch (it is
actually the loudest component, and its pretty quiet).
toss in a neat little 3-speed fan (max 21dB), and a $30 heatsink/fan (max
21dB...getting the whole quiet idea?). With shipping it was right around
$460, IIRC (which I think I do).
Anyways, that's all I needed since I was keeping the video card/hard drives
(dual 120GB 8MB cache 7200RPM Seagates [quiet as heck, even with the RAID0
accessing stuff constantly, I still never hear it over my fans....which are
quiet], CD-RW/DVD±RW/DVD-ROM drives (3 of them)/TV tuner -- a must have
,
case, monitor, all the rest of teh stuff (kb/mou/print/scan).
Anyways, for <$500 I was able to achieve this. Shortly thereafetr a friend
desired a new PC (brand new -- needs everything), I was able to build
something very similar for <$1200. And that included an $80 case, and a
$200 video card, a 160GB SATA drive, 17" CRT monitor, and a $120 DVD burner
(~$120 anyways).
Oh, yes, and I didn't bother to read through the rest of the posts which
seems to have started a delightful Intel vs AMD war again, perhaps, but I
did pick up on some things. It seems as if some believe you can't get SATA
on AMD's XP platform, nor can you have dual channel on any AMD platform.
Both of these are wrong. My friend uses the SATA drive solely, so obviously
it is implemented on the board (albeit from a 3rd part controller chip), and
both of us are using dual channel 512MB PC-3200 RAM (although with the bus
having the bandwidth of single channel, this is in theory rather dumb, but
it does give more bandwidth). IIRC, his memory timings are slightly better
than my 2-3-3-6 timings.
To be fair, we must not compare CPUs based on performance. Surely an Intel
3.4EE will trounce anything AMD has to offer, even I as an AMD loyalist must
admit that. But, for the $1000 or so that CPU costs, you could devise
something with dual CPUs from AMD that should be able to trounce the 3.4EE,
simply because AMD is cheaper. Don't compare a 3000+ to a 3GHz, compare teh
3000+ @ $150 to the 2.6GHz (OEM) @ $150 or the 2.4 (Retail) @ $150. Surely,
the 3000+ is more than able to beat a 2.6, and more thoroughly so a 2.4.
Therefore, when buying on a budget don't look for what will necessarily be
the best upgrade path (which right now would be either an AMD Athlon 64, or
a P4 LGA 775 w/ PCI Express), but what's the most bang for the buck. Even a
new P4 LGA 775 w/ PCI Express motherboard will become antiquated when you
find that your 3.2GHz CPU that goes with it is too slow, so that doesn't
make much sense.
Anyways, its 1AM, time for more threads....<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
>> Stay informed about: AMD XP OR INTEL P4 ??? 
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