looking for mobo/cpu advise

benjmn33

New member
I'm running a dual P3 450 on w2k with a tascam us 122 and it's time for an upgrade.
My budget is low so i'm going to keep my case and system drive and so on.
I can't afford to go AMD 64 or P4.
Anybody got some "tested" suggestions for mobo/cpu (AMD).

Thanks
Benjmn33
 
what is your budget?

i don't know if it really worth upgrading if you aren't going to a P4 or an athlon 64. anything lower and i dont' know if you'd see any better performance. I'm not too faimiliar with your current cpu but i don't know if there's much higher before you have to go to a p4 or athlon. i guess there is a celeron or a sempron but like i said, the upgrade may not be worth it. how much RAM do you have?
 
"I'm running a P3 450 " thats 450 megahertz - I do believe I will see an improvement with an athalon xp or semptron. I got 512 RAM (pc100) but I will have to buy new with the upgrade.

I know there are some of you running systems like I'm looking for - I need to know what works for you.
 
minofifa said:
what is your budget?

i don't know if it really worth upgrading if you aren't going to a P4 or an athlon 64. anything lower and i dont' know if you'd see any better performance. I'm not too faimiliar with your current cpu but i don't know if there's much higher before you have to go to a p4 or athlon. i guess there is a celeron or a sempron but like i said, the upgrade may not be worth it. how much RAM do you have?
LOL!I would think almost anything would be an improvement!
 
$300 can get you into a new motherboard, an AMD XP3000+ 64 bit processor, and at least 512 megs of RAM:) Kepp in mind though, that you will also need a new power supply:(
 
Believe me the thought has crossed my mind but I really don't need a haus.
My track count normally dosen't get over 10. I been running for a long time on the dual 450 so I'v learned to commit to my changes so I can run fewer plug-ins.
You got ay suggestions on the board. If I found a really good deal I'd be all over it
And in my research I'm finding that I also want a 10,000 rpm SATA drive.

Can anybody give me the scoop on XP Vs. Sempron, I'm finding some very nondescriptive info ( or i'm stupid )( or lazy ).
 
Okay, not really "tested" yet, but I'll tell you what I just put together. All prices at newegg.com:

AMD AthlonXP 2800+ Barton, 2.08 gHz = ~$80-90
Abit KW7 motherboard w/ SATA, 4 gb RAM max, S/PDIF out = ~ $60

plus: USB/Firewire card = $10-20 (the uplevel KW7-G mobo includes Firewire but unknown price)

cheers

Billy S.
 
EPoX EP-8RDA+PRO = $65
AMD Mobile Athlon XP-M 2400+ = $80
crucial 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM x 2 = $85
THERMALTAKE Silent PurePower 420W Power Supply = $59 (might not need)

You might need a new video card, as your AGP slot might be old school. If so, and you don't have any gaming desires, then you could get by with a fanless GeForce MX400 card for $30-$40 (or equivelant).

[edit]
The mobile Athlon, in case you're unaware, runs fine in desktop motherboards. I've got the mobile 2400+ overclocked to 3000+ speeds and it still runs cooler than my old XP 2000 did.
 
Gigabyte makes some good inexpensive motherboards. Going Athlon would definately be an improvement but then you might be looking at the same situation shortly. On the other hand, the lower end 64's are not that much more and I would say they are a significant advancement over the standard Athlon.
 
Thanks for all the help everyone, It has made my research much easier thusfar.

I still don't think I will make the price jump to 64 but I do appriciate it's place in the market. I like to keep up with the Leroy's - they live in the Jones' garage. The price drop and the fact that I'm not "for hire" allows me a good buffer from "the New New."

Elevate thanks for the info about the mobile chips - I'didn't even think of it. I have seen some deals on good boards for them.

thanks again
 
What's the deal with power supplys? Do P4 and athlons have different voltages? Is it just a wattage thing?
 
I just mentioned a power supply because given that your computer is a bit on the old side, it may not have enough juice for a more modern rig. If it's 400+ watts though, it should be fine.
 
Actually, based on elevate's other hardware recommendations, even a good 300 watt power supply would be fine. One of my systems (at work) is an Athlon64-3000+ system with dvd burner, 1gig ram, and 2 hard drives, and it's been running fine for several months. (but it sure doesn't hurt to have the extra power headroom). It's in an Antec Aria case. The important thing is that, depending on the motherboard, your power supply will probably need to have that extra "12V auxiliary" connector.

MrBoogie
 
Looking both ways, quick post, bye........

benjmn33 said:
Thanks for all the help everyone, It has made my research much easier thusfar.

I still don't think I will make the price jump to 64 but I do appriciate it's place in the market. I like to keep up with the Leroy's - they live in the Jones' garage. The price drop and the fact that I'm not "for hire" allows me a good buffer from "the New New."

Elevate thanks for the info about the mobile chips - I'didn't even think of it. I have seen some deals on good boards for them.

thanks again


How much floating point processing do you do? (like reverb plugins and stuff)


The athlon is better than the pentium, and the athlon 64 is much better than the pentium, in BENCHMARKS, on floating point.

Since you have a dual processor system, I would boost it to 1 gig ram and a 8meg ram cache hard drive. I think that would make you happy for the least amount of money. Partial upgrades usually don't work in my experience, and I won't reccomend them anymore. Do this and then save for the next gen of dual core processors.

Most of the time your system is waiting on the harddrive, memory, etc. Check your cpu utilization, 512 is only 256 per processor, not a lot with 2000.

is your system optimized (like swapfile, virt memory and sector size on the harddrive).

Try www.tomshardware.com , there is a wealth of info on drives and processors there. also www.videoguys.com, there is an article there about optimizing a system for video, has a lot in commen with what you want to do.

A new mb, cpu, ram, and drive and power supply and you are not far from a whole new system with warranty. If you get a new cpu and mb, you may just be able to wait faster.

good luck
jon


ps
be careful if you upgrade to xp, I think you will need xp pro to support dual processors, and I think it will have to be an upgrade, not new install. Check first cause this was the way it was when xp was introduced and it may have changed. The dual core cpu's are seen as 2 processors so I don't know what it does now, for sure.
 
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