Upgrading from cel300a.. need advice

[Michel]

Hi,

i'm planning to feed my current system with a new motherboard, memory and pro. Could you give me some advice?

i'm chosing between a fast athlon (900?) or a fast PIII (866?). I must say that i live in the netherlands and high-end cpu's are very pricy!! (a PIII 866 is even not available yet and an 850 goes for 2499 dutch guilders (that's about 1100 US dollars i think)
well i saved some bucks, so money isn't really an issue, but i'm planning to keep this one for a while so it must be good for the amount of money i am spending.

Should i go for a 866 (133 bus), should i go for the 850 (100 or 133? if i go for 133 will my g400max run at higher agp speed?). Will these overclock well, i don't NEED te overclock but if it works, why not :-)

Or should i drop intel and go for an athlon?(they are cheaper), but i've heard that the athlon chipsets currently available aren't really stable.

What motherboard should i buy with the cpu? (Abit BE6-2??)

I mostly play games (counterstrike!) and a little photoshopping

Thank in advance!!
Michel

my current system:
Celeron300A@450 (need replacing)
AbitBX6 (need replacing)
128MB DIMM (replacing with 1x 256 or 2x 128??)
Matrox G400 MAX (waiting for G800 :-))
Promise u-ata66 controller
20GB + 30GB Maxtor HD's
36x CDROM, 6x32 Aopen DVD, 8x4x32 Plextor rewriter
Diamond MX300
isa isdn card
pci 3com ethernet
IIyama A901HT 19" Diamondtron

[Maggi]

Grab one of the lower clocked 100MHz Coppermines (P3-550E for example), get a decent MoBo, PC133 RAM and OC it to 133MHz FSB ...

Cheers,
Maggi

[Greebe]

I'd suggest the same cept goto a 650e or 700e with Crucial PC133 "7E" mem and crank it up!

[Electric Amish]

I just upgraded my Cel300a system too.

Athlon 700 @ 805
Abit KA7
Mushkin Infineon 256mb PC133 RAM
Matrox G400 (of course )
Maxtor Diamond Max 40 20gb 7200RPM
AOpen 52x CD-Rom
Aureal SQ2500 sound card
E-Tech 56kbps PCI Modem

The Athlon's are definitely less expensive.

amish

[UncleJoe]

Hey Amish ! Whats your experiences with your system ?? Happy or very HAPPY or what ??? I'm just curious because im considering getting allmost similar system to yours . (K7 700,750 or 800 & KA7 etc... ) @ the moment i'm running PIII 450@527 (and it will go up to 558 when i get my crucial 7E mem) and I would like to get some bech results from you just to see if upgrade is worth money .... (There is some rumours about clocked cumines not to last too long and that's why i'm thinkng Athlon (and cumine prices ofcourse )...)

J.

[UncleJoe]

Hey Amish ! Whats your experiences with your system ?? Happy or very HAPPY or what ??? I'm just curious because im considering getting allmost similar system to yours . (K7 700,750 or 800 & KA7 etc... ) @ the moment i'm running PIII 450@527 (and it will go up to 558 when i get my crucial 7E mem) and I would like to get some bech results from you just to see if upgrade is worth money .... (There is some rumours about clocked cumines not to last too long and that's why i'm thinkng Athlon (and cumine prices ofcourse )...)

J.

[UncleJoe]

Hey Amish ! Whats your experiences with your system ?? Happy or very HAPPY or what ??? I'm just curious because im considering getting allmost similar system to yours . (K7 700,750 or 800 & KA7 etc... ) @ the moment i'm running PIII 450@527 (and it will go up to 558 when i get my crucial 7E mem) and I would like to get some bech results from you just to see if upgrade is worth money .... (There is some rumours about clocked cumines not to last too long and that's why i'm thinkng Athlon (and cumine prices ofcourse )...)

J.

[Michel]

Ok, i think i'll get the 700e. (hmm thinking about that, would a 750 run at 1 Gz??)

now for the memory question: should i buy 2 128 pc133 dimms or 1 256 pc133 dimm??
Does it make any difference in performance, or overclockability??

Most important question almost forgotten: Will my MAX run good at higher agp speeds? Now i must force agp1x to have it stable (that's the BX6 & G400 troubles very much people had in the past). Will enabling 1/1 agp-clock-divider in my current system be a good test for that? (i suppose it enables 100 mhz agp?????)

Michel

[This message has been edited by Michel (edited 09 May 2000).]

[The PIT]

Michel get a good Bx motherboard and PIII 650. It may cost more but the technology has matured and theres less bugs.
If like a challenge and more interesting life you can go the via chipset solution. However Via and Amd are supposed to be delivering newer chipsets sometime soon and these maybe more reliable than the past. Intel are supposed to be releasing the 815 chipset soon as well however considering the problems they've had with the 820 etc it maybe worth waiting to see what the reviews make of this.
If you want a general feel how Via chipsets compair with the Intel Bx just read the forums and make you own mind up.

[This message has been edited by The PIT (edited 09 May 2000).]

[cancer]

Michel you don't have to worry to much about apg speeds going beyound spec in most p3 mother boards as they have 1/2 dividers which is fine up to 133FSB. Any higher and you start increasing your agp bus requency too.
tomshardware
firingsquad
anandtech
insanehardware
hardwarecentral
tweakmax
sharkyextreme
All these sites have good recent & achived articles on tested stuff.

Cheers.


------------------
Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.04beta, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @759, 256M PC133 Crucial 7E SDRAM, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.




[This message has been edited by cancer (edited 09 May 2000).]

[Electric Amish]

Uncle Joe-

I'm very happy with my system. I haven't had any problems with the Athlon or KA7. Got the nice memory and have it cranked up to full 133mhz. It really seems fast. I can play Rogue Spear with all options on high in 1280x1024 without even a hiccup. I haven't tried a higher res...

I'm putting one of these together for a friend, too. Except he blew $350 on an Elsa Gladiac GeForce GTS...

I can't wait for that Abit bios that will allow me to change cache divider on the Athlon. I should be able to raise the FSB higher..

amish

[UncleJoe]

Tanks Amish ! And Damn for my triplepost (i was not on my own computer and damn mahcine jammed while i was sending my post) UPS dropped by today and brought my Crucial 7E 128MB memorystick .... Now only new mobo&CPU and ....

J.

[Damien Green]

Athlon systems are great (very fast - now all the latest features with the KX 133 chipset), but you might have to fiddle around for a bit before you get your system working proerally - I'm using an Abit KA7 which apart from the VIA ago chipset identification problem (discussed frequently in the Matrox Hardware forum) is pretty easy to setup. Most of the issues I've had are because I'm running Win 2K which can present some problems with the latest hardware (nor just Athlon systems). The Athlon is a 7th generation chip, and seems to outperform the P3 in almost every review.

[Viper]

Hey Michel!!
AMD Athlons are very fast! But at higher clock speeds the pentium 3s take edge up a bit on them because of the full speed cache. and the athlons 1/3 or 2/5 cache deviders! if your looking for somthing that will last you and you want to save more money go for athlons, a 750 goes for 399Canadian dollar when a 750p3 goes for like 800 canadain the Athlons are a much better deal!! go for ah athlon with a kx133motherbord, abit ka7 sounds really good!

[cjolley]

Ahem,
P3 650@866 = $258
Abit BF6 = $110

In the Intel world, anything over a 650 has a bad price/perf ratio.
Buy 2 mem sticks so the mem controler can interleave them. (I think)

chuck


------------------
ABit BF6, P!!!650@866, 128mb gh@cas3, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@3.0, Pioneer 104s DVD, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Acatel 1000 ADSL@1.5mb/sec, Linksys EtherFast NIC, LG 995e, USB IntelliEye,Matrox G400 MAX!!!!