I just bought a ASUS A7V8X-X Motherboard and I wanted to know what would the best AMD processor to get with it and what all do I need to make it run smooth. I heard that you have to buy alot thermal protection for it.

ohh k I still need to know what kind of procesor to buy. I was going to buy a 2700 until I saw that the motherboard can support higher processors. So which one should I buy?

that depends on your budget
if its fairly low (£70) then buy yourself a 2500+, if its higher (£150) buy a 2800+ or even (£300) a 3200+.
Dont bother with a 2600+ or 2700+ - they only hold half the cache of the 2500+ or 2800+
If you are into overclocking and/or silence then get yourself a Zalman CNPS 7000a (check the zalman site but it should fit on your motherboard). If you do go for this (or anyother good cooler) and a 2500+ & some decent RAM then you can easily overclock it to 3200+ simply by putting the FSB up to 200Mhz.

Steg

So if I buy a 2800 I could overclock it to 3200, right? I was wondering what all the 2700 had and now that you have clear that up I shall be looking for a 2800. Thanks alot Steg and Rick.

The real question you have to ask yourself is how much you are willing pay. Do you really want to get the most out of your money? Or the just one of those people who feels that money aint a problem.

Well I am a budget PC shopper like most people. I wouldnt pay $300 for a AMD 1700 not unless it came with a DVD-R and 50-Pack DVD Bundle. You see what I'm saying. I go to Pricewatch.com and a AMD Xp 2800 cost only $118 or could be different but none the less it is reasonable. I would have a hard time trying to buy a processor that cost $259 then one that cost under $230. I also have to calculate the cost of RAM I have one stick of DDR but with this motherboard and what I plan to do is not enough. I need to buy one or two more sticks of DDR. I have a 512MB 266Mhz stick already.

Also do you need the same speed DDR Ram to make it run. I have a PC 2100 512 MB already and want to buy a PC2700 512MB. Would that run a conflict or would it be ohh k? Its going on my Asus A7V8X-X.

Steg, some of the information you provided was incorrect. You can get a 2600+, with the cache of a 2500+/2800+. Take a look for yourself:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=1&submit=Go&description=2600+,barton

Thats a 2600+ Barton.

Wallabe, heres a little price comparason for you to realize whats best bang-for-buck:

2500+ (1.83GHz) = $92
2600+ Barton (1.9GHz) = $99
2800+ (2.08GHz) = $175

All these CPUs have 640KB of cache each. The 2400+ only has 384KB of cache, which will perform notably slower then a 2500.

The 2500 is only 250MHz slower then the 2800+, and costs $83 less. So why would you go spend 175 dollars, when you could spend 92 dollars, on a CPU that will perform almost exactly the same. You could even OC the 2500+ 250MHz with the stock cooler, and there you have a 2800+ The 2600+ is a whole 70MHz faster than the 2500+, and costs $7 more. Not really worth that $7 if you ask me, because thats $7 cheaper a SLK900 would be (SLK900=Best heatsink, runs about $50).

Just thought you should see these figures, before going off and buying a 2800+

If you're into overclocking you can't be into silence at the same time, unless you're a watercooler. A good overclocking heatsink would be a Volcano 12 Extreme.

Don't overestimate the barton. Sure, a 2500+ with a much larger l2 cache, apps that are doing intense memory read/writes will have a good performance boost as opposed to a 2400+, but in raw number crunching, the 2400+ wins by sheer clock speed. L2 cache is not everything. I would rather overclock a tbred-b to 2300mhz then get a barton at 1.9/2ghz

Well the 2400 runs at 2GHz. The 2500 is only 170MHz behind that. You wont notice a diffrence in performance (in real time) when comparing a 2GHz CPU against a 1.83GHz CPU. Not to mention, this 1.83GHz CPU we're talking about has 256KB more cache. Cache still really helps... Not to mention, you could OC a barton/2500+ to 2300MHz easy. They are very good overclockers

I dunno, my 2100+ only OC'ed to 1851 (it was a Palomino, what do you expect?) and it seemed to raise my 3DMarks score quite nicely.

Ofcourse, that was a benchmark. I said real time. You wont notice that the 2500+ takes 2 seconds longer then the 2800+ would.

Also wicka, in another thread not to long ago, you said that Palomino's run cooler then TBreds. Inwhich case, why would you say

Palominos overclocking like sh!t dude...and by sh!t I mean very, very bad.

I got my 2100+ Palo up to 2036MHz with only a few stability problems after a pretty long time running. And it ran at 1936MHz perfectly stable and at great temps. My limiting factor was my RAM though.

Yeah... i overclocked my 1800+ a whopping 100 mHz... hehe...
You can EASILY get the 2500+ up to 2200 mHz... like, easy...

tis true - palaminos didnt overclock very well at all - this is party to do with the fact that palaminos run on a 1.75v core by default and run VERY hot. With the bartons the core voltage dropped down to 1.65 and they ran considerably cooler (and faster )
i hadnt seen anything on the barton 2600+ - soz - i didnt think they were going to do one

Steg

Ohh k look I see you guys are having fun with all this and what not. I have made my mind up to go with the 2800 333Mhz since it goes to the Motherboard And I'm getting 2 Sticks of 2700 DDR 512Mb for the hell of it. ITs really been a pleasure to have you guys discuss all the neat ways to cool a CPU.