P-3 Upgrade Question (Advice needed)

[cputnam]

I currently have a Gateway G6-400 (i.e. Pentium II 400mz) and am considering upgrading to a P-3. The fastest that my mobo will accept is a P-3 550mz.

In checking around, there's about a $100 difference between a 500 and 550.

Will there be that much noticable difference in performance between the two?

[paulcs]

If your using a G400, the difference will show up in your benchmarks. Whether or not it will be very noticable, $100.00 noticible, in real world situations is another story. If an additional 5-6 frames per second is important to you, and if you're a big on-line game player, it just might be, than go with the 550.

500 MHz is nothing to sneeze at however. Nor is $100.00. You can buy a new soundcard with the extra money.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Brian R.]

I doubt you can do that with a Gateway. Stock fsb only is what I have seen.

[cputnam]

Correct - Gateway uses Intel mobo's, which don't have the ability to be overclocked (something that I don't intend to do anyway).

I'm not much into online gaming, so that's not important.

Part of the reason for upgrading is that some of the applic's I use (MS PhotoDraw 2000) would benefit greatly from the speed increase.

From a gaming standpoint, in order to get Quake III to run at a decent clip, I need to set it to the "fastest" setting. FYI, running a Matrox G400SH...

[LAMFDTK]

Buy the 500 and a NEW mobo !!! then Clock away....

------------------
PIII-450@504, 128 HDSRAM, Asus P3BF, G400/32, SBLive!,Brand stinkin' new Sony G400 19", (no Dual head) Nokia 447Xi 17",AOPEN DVD-1040 10x slot,PLEXTOR 8x4x32 ATAPI CD-RW, and some fish,

[paulcs]

You have to be careful about upgrading motherboards in systems built by large manufacturers. Make sure you don't have a proprietary case and motherboard. (You should see some of the things Dell has Intel and Palo Alto do.) You want to make sure your case will accept a standard ATX form factor motherboard and has all the standard ATX power supply and front panel connectors.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[ALBPM]

I know that DELL uses proprietary connectors for the Power, reset and LEDS. I had hoped to use my old DELL case but had to buy a new one.
You may want to consider a new case and power supply because DELL and Gateway use 235W power supplies and a 250W or higher would be better.

The P3-500 would be a better choice for overclocking than a P3-550.

Paul

[Maggi]

grab the 500 and bump it up to 560 (112Mhz FSB) ...

[cputnam]

Well...I opted for the P3 550 (as per my previous post, I'm not one to consider overclocking - I use my system, not only for games, but for work also - if I fry my 'puter, I'm in deep linguini...).

15 minutes to swap the buggers and volla! The hardest part was finding the fan connector on the mobo. Gateway's spec's showed it one place, and it was at the opposite end. No big deal.

The processor upgrade seems to have improved the quality of the G400.

Thanks for the input!

[paulcs]

150 MHz is a nice big jump. It should improve the performance of your other devices as well.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net