Upgrade Suggestions?

[pericon]

I'm currently running an AMD Athlon 1.0ghz with about 750mg pc133 ram. Wondering what mobo/processor combo I should be considering. I'd like to use current ram and be able to upgrade to DDR later next year.

The most intense work I do is photo editing (I'm a pro photographer) with a dual monitor setup. Maybe a little light gaming for the kiddies. I also run networked with a couple other machines but don't think that matters a whole lot. Really don't want to spend over $200 but at the same time this upgrade will need to hold me for the next 18 to 24 months. I see that p4 2.66ghz 533fsb processors are going about $160 right now at newegg. Is this overkill? If not, What mobo with dual memory slots would you reccomend? A stable board is most important- I would not know an overclock from a wristwatch. LOL

Thanks for your insights

Eric

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum pericon!

Hmm, a modern P4 board that uses PC133 and also DDR...might be tuff to find.

I know there are some Athlon boards that might fit the bill.

Frankly, the cost of PC100 and PC133 has sorta skyrocketed..you can probably sell that stuff at a profit, lol.

And every other week Officemax sems to have 256m of DDR for like $15 after rebate.

Anyway, this'll bump you back to the top and maybe someone else will have some recommendations.

JP

[MrPurple]

Even if you found a mobo that has both PC100/133 ram and DDR I would stay away. They are not that great and if memory serves me, they have stability issues.

I would just get a decent DDR mobo, they go for about $100, get your self a Barton 2500+ or somethingn like that for about 60, and then dump as much as you can into RAM, you want a min of 256, but I would highly recomend upping to 512, and maybe even higher since you are doing photo editing.

Honesly you are upgrading from tech that is considered to be ancient by most standards, well maybe not ancient but it is old.
So spending 200 or under is a bit on the light side, I would boost that up to 300 and then you can get something decent that will hold you over for 2 or so years.

[John Prophet]

Actually, since you ere eyeing newegg...do a search for motherboards there....choose intel motherboards..then to the left of the page for "cpu socket type" choose "socket 478" and for "memory socket type" choose "184pin ddr and 168pin sdr dimm"

There are some boards there that do the 400/533 bus speed.

They mostly seem to be the all-in-one type boards....but I see the matsonic does have a few more pci slots than the others.

And they all have 4x agp.

Either way it would be a boost from what you have now..ESPECIALLY when you go to ddr....a p4 with sdram is like superbike with a boat anchor tied to it.

JP

[Scott Tiger]

I'd go with MrPurple's suggestions here. Intel's offering are to pricey at the midrange - a 2500+ is an excellent choice. Use the money you saved from not going with the Intel processors to get some nice DDR. I would HIGHLY recommend staying AWAY from running modern processor with outdated RAM (PC100/133). You won't get the performance of the processor that you should and JP was right to say that the cost of that stuff has really skyrocketed lately. I could probably sell it and do alright.

[Uncle Bob]

Go to the Buy/Sell/Trade forum. Omardeth has almost always got
MOBO's & cpu's for sale at good prices.

[pericon]

Thanks all for the replies- all very helpful. Getting ram at low prices reminds me of the after Thanksgiving sales last year at CompUSA and others. Seem to remember ram going for almost free after all the instant and mail-in rebates. Had to get there early tho.
I think I will end up agreeing with the stability comment about dual mem boards. I'm looking at the Barton 2600. Big savings in price about $100. How does the performance compare to a p4 2.0 ghz ? Also, will the 2600xp with 500mg DDR at least double the performance value of what I'm running now?
Then the question becomes what mobo/chipset to choose. Most of the boards I've seen are name brands but I've never heard of Matsonic. If you had to choose, Via or Sis chipsets?

[nurdonsite2]

if ur going amd, the nforce 2 chipset is THE best, fastest, best overclocking, and most stable for amd. and yes and xp 2600+ is WAY better then a p4 2.0 ghz. it is actually compareable to a p4 2.6. also, ASUS, MSI, Epox, ABIT, Gigabyte, shuttle are all great manufacturers. i would recommend that since u are on a tight budget, go with the Shuttle AN35N-Ultra. its only $60 at www.newegg.com. and then get urself a amd barton 2500+. it is a better value then the 2600+ IMO.