Maybe someone knows......

[Genom]

OK. As anybody that reads my sig knows, my CPU is getting outdated. I have been looking at a new MB/CPU combo. I have been curious to tryan Athlon solution, but my biggest problem si the MB's out there that I know of arent exactly stellar. I was looking for something with 4 DIMM slots, 5 PCI at least an a AGP. Preferably 6 PCI (I dont need any ISA slots thank god). Does anybody know if such a beast exists? I know on the Intel side of things there's plenty to choose form (No, i820 is NOT an option with it's stupid RDRAM and only 2 slots) so I havce been looking at the VIA chipsets or even stick with my BX since it has worked like a champ so far, and just get a new 700 CPU.

Anyways, if anybody has seen this Athlon MB layout I am looking for, please let me know

------------------
Asus P2B-F, P3-450~556, 512MB PC100 8ns SDRAM, G400MAX (yay!) at 160Mhz, Teac 58S CD-R, Toshiba SM-1002 DVD-ROM, Toshiba 40X SCSI CD-ROM, 8.4GB IDE primary drive, 9GB Micropolis Tomahawk UWSCSI, 9GB IBM U2WSCSI, 18GB U2WSCSI Cheetah, Diamond MX300, 3COM 10/100TX, 3COM Gaming Modem, Adaptec 2940U2W

And a partridge in a pear treeeeeeee.

[Brian R.]

Actually Genom, I think you need additional HD capacity first of all, before you invest in a new processor. =P

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 25 January 2000).]

[CHHAS]

Go for a coppermine on your current BX board

The new VIA chipset has some major memory bandwidth problems, and until AMD comes out with an Athlon with on-die level 2 cache, the Coppermines are IMHO the best option, somthing like a 600 MHz running at 800 maybe ? (should be a realistic OC, but you never know)

------------------
P3 500@560, 192 MB ram, G400 16SH

[Genom]

I sure hope he was being sarcastic! I got 24GB of U2WSCSI and another 9GB of UWSCSI AV drives going there dude. Not to mention the 8.4GB IDE.

If I really need space I got another 8.4 IDE and 2 4GB Hawks that I can pop in, but my case is horribly full, and thats considering I got a SuperMicro 750 case!

------------------
Asus P2B-F, P3-450~556, 512MB PC100 8ns SDRAM, G400MAX (yay!) at 160Mhz, Teac 58S CD-R, Toshiba SM-1002 DVD-ROM, Toshiba 40X SCSI CD-ROM, 8.4GB IDE primary drive, 9GB Micropolis Tomahawk UWSCSI, 9GB IBM U2WSCSI, 18GB U2WSCSI Cheetah, Diamond MX300, 3COM 10/100TX, 3COM Gaming Modem, Adaptec 2940U2W

And a partridge in a pear treeeeeeee.

[Vlip]

Well, Genom, could you please explain us WHY you need 50 GIGS oh HD?
Did you install: Win98 + Win2000 + Linux + Solaris + BeOS +,...?

Vlip (who's happy with "only" 24Gig)

[Himself]

More ram is always good.

A PIII @ 556 is not enough? For what? Perhaps the solution isn't a new cpu, is it just geek-itis or do you actually need a faster cpu for something?

[DK]

The aka beast = Asus P3B-F
Has all what you are aking for.

Derek

[Jorden]

Hmmm, Himself, didn't you read he's got 512Mb of RAM already? I do wonder if Genom's even able to get more in it

Jorden.

[Himself]

J,

Makes as much sense as more HD space. (His mb can take 4 dimms, so if he uses 256MB dimms, why not?)

[paulcs]

While you can't have too much memory, the laws of diminishing returns do apply here.

My processor is never fast enough, and, I suspect, neither is yours. Not with a G400 in the AGP slot. Price drops are coming on Coppermines, and they seem to be good overclockers. Keep your motherboard if at all possible, and if you can afford it, get that 700 MHz PIII.

Overclock it to kingdom come and post your Quake3 scores.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Himself]

Depends, maybe a dual cpu mb would be more suitable, depends on what it's for. For exactly the same reasons why frames per second is not the only reason to buy a video card.

[bigluker]

Okay, this is rediculous. YOU need an upgrade? With 512 megs of RAM you could precache THE ENTIRE GAME YOURE PLAYING!! Also, if you look at bechmarks between say, 600 p3 and 800 p3 and even 1gz kryogen Athlons, there is nearly no difference. Why? Im not sure, but it has something to do with fillrates. Once you get you processor so high, you eventually need to boost the speed of your card to see any difference. Also with about 50 gigs of hard drive space you might as well be Storage Man. The ONLY thing that lacks in your system is coppermine 133 bus. That and a whole shit load of money for 512 megs of pc-133 ram. Just not worth it.

The only thing i can suggest is get a big phat case, get a 700mhz processor, overclock your G400 to 300/400 and find the best cooling you can (liquid nitrogen?). Feel free to contact NASA for parts availability.

[Genom]

Wow. Quite a stir I caused here. Ok, regarding questions posted:

RAM upgrade: I have all 4 slots with 128MB DIMM's, so while I CAN ditch them and get 256's, thats a bit beyond my budget. Also, I have found that I can deal with 384MB of RAM, as of yet I havent needed the extra 128, but I got it relativly cheap, so I jumped on it.

Hard Drive Space: Hate to say this, but yes, I NEED what I got. Why? well, I also do video editing with a bit higher end cards than the Rainbow Runner, and as such use considerably more space. As of yet the editing isnt my main money source, so I cant pump too much into it.

CPU upgrade: Why do I need it? well, part of what I used to do was 3D aniamtion in Lightwave when I was living in Mexico. Sicne I am a Beta tester for NewTek, I have been playing with Lightwave 6 and it is much improved over version 5.6, but a lot os stuff is still very CPU hungry, such as Volumetric lighting, particles, etc. Usuall stuff thats always slow to render. Now, I am not quite ready to go to windows 2000, still hoping the Matrox driver when finalized will support independant resolutions on each monitor like the win98 one does. But if I do go to win2k (and I probably will kinda soon) Dual CPu's is always a consideration, although dual celerons is not, sicne they really do degrade performance wise on rendering quite noticeably over Pentiums since the cache is smaller. And when shaving 5 seconds off a frame sounds measly, consider shaving 5 seconds off 300 frames and then is when ya start wanting a bit more .

Now, I know this used to be my game box, but honestly, I am getting tired of working for other people, and am looking to go at it free-lance again, so I gotta be up to speed to be able to compete, hence my need (not URGENT, but there) for upgardes

Hope that cleared it all up for ya's.

------------------
Asus P2B-F, P3-450~556, 512MB PC100 8ns SDRAM, G400MAX (yay!) at 160Mhz, Teac 58S CD-R, Toshiba SM-1002 DVD-ROM, Toshiba 40X SCSI CD-ROM, 8.4GB IDE primary drive, 9GB Micropolis Tomahawk UWSCSI, 9GB IBM U2WSCSI, 18GB U2WSCSI Cheetah, Diamond MX300, 3COM 10/100TX, 3COM Gaming Modem, Adaptec 2940U2W

And a partridge in a pear treeeeeeee.

[TnT]

With that computer you had more technology than the whole Mexican government =P
You don't need an upgrade but I can understand why you would want one, doing video editing and 3D stuff. Anyways this message was originally supposed to say that Brian R. needs to add a =P in his message.

[Brian R.]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be sarcastic, only envious. I know servers with less HD space. (I thought it was too obvious to need a =P)

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 25 January 2000).]