Best processor...

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lalo90e

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I want to buy a new processor for my Gateway 310 Series, I am between the Pentium 4 Northwood socket 478 or the Celeron D 2.8 Prescott. I do some gaming, specially GTA Vice City, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix and some other old games. I currently have a :knock: Celeron 2.6 GHZ Northwood 128K Cache, Barracuda 40GB 5400 RPM ATA 100 hard drive, ATI Radeon 7200 32MB :knock: PCI
256MB DDR 333 MHZ PC3200. I want to have the most frames per second out of this machine.
Any upgrade suggestions will be very nice.
Thanks.
 
you want to upgrade a gateway? i wouldn't waste any more time/money on it, for many reasons. you should chack what your machine can support before you pick out parts, if you are still interested in upgrading. the problem si that serious performance bottlenecks will still be present, with the motherboard and current graphics card. the next best thing to a new machine you can do is to get an i865pe board and an atx case/psu, using your current cpu, ram, gfx card, drives until you've got the cash to upgrade those, too.
 
Now i want to buy another motherboard with an AGP 8X slot, but less than 100 dls. It has to be a microATX, because that´s my case size, and I dont want to spend more money on a new case.
can you help me find a good, less than $100, mPGA478, pentium/celeron mobo?
Thanks.
 
forget about the gateway mobo, case and psu. they'll all need to be replaced with standard parts. you can expect a decent mpga478 board for around $100, i reccomend an i865PE chipset. i know msi, gigabyte, and asus have got numerous socket 478 boards in production now...
 
Is this one good enough?
http://www.soyousa.com/products/proddesc.php?id=295
I don´t know the brand, but perhaps they make very nice boards. I haven´t heard a bad report of them.
If you do find a bad one, please let me know. And the good thing is that is costs only 66 dls in Tiger Direct.
I am planning to buy a cheap 300 W PSU, do you know a good one? It has to be microATX.
By cheap I mean 20 dls or less :haha: Or maybe I get a used one?
And do you know how much costs a Pentium 4 socket 478 512Kb cache with at least 2.6 GHZ????
Thanks :cool:
 
do not buy a soyo product. you need 3 parts to start building a better pc - an i865pe based mobo from asus or gigabyte, a name brand power supply (antec, thermaltake, enermax) of at least 450w, and a full size atx case with good airflow. from there, you can use your existing parts until you can afford to upgrade them. the other choice is to go for a whole new machine, but you'll have to dig up the cash in that case.
 
i'm saying that you need a motheroboard based on either the intel i865 or the i875 chipsets, from a name brand mfg (asus or gigabyte says i). the board you linked is a budget model with a lower performance and a lesser chipset.

next thing is that you should know that a radeon 9600 is a pretty low end card by today's standards. for example, you'll need a 6600gt or higher level card to play farcry or BF2 well. does your gateway currently have a video card?
 
Yes it does. It´s a crappy Radeon 7200 32MB PCI.
At my local retailer the only good mobo is the one i have listed. For me, i think is good enough, and I am planning to upgrade the CPU too. It will be without any doubt a Pentium 4 2.8GHZ 533MHZ FSB 512KB l2 cache. This is a very good CPU. For today standards, it is a crap. But for me, it has very good performance. And with the MSI mobo, i plan to buy DDR400 memory. At least 512Mb, but 768MB is better. I hope this will be my system setup someday:

Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHZ
120GB 7200RPM 8MB cache ATA100 hdd
ATI Radeon 9600PRO 128MB AGP8X
768MB ddr400 RAM
300W or more microATX PSU

This is a nice setup, isn´t it? I know is not a very high end one, but it´s enough for playing Soldier of Fortune 2, Max Payne 1 & 2, Half Life 2 (playable), Wolfenstein, and other games. But no BF2 or Farcry.
 
better make that psu > 400w, and one of quality (antec, enermax, thermaltake all examples)
 
yeah, he'll need at least a 6600gt to play the good stuff. as it stands the specs are already obsolete:
I hope this will be my system setup someday:

Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHZ
120GB 7200RPM 8MB cache ATA100 hdd
ATI Radeon 9600PRO 128MB AGP8X
768MB ddr400 RAM
300W or more microATX PSU
and that 768mb of ddr400 isn't a good pick as it will prevent any dual-channel action. i say go for the 1gb DC, 2 sticks of 512MB DDR400 are like $50 apeice.
 
zephead said:
next thing is that you should know that a radeon 9600 is a pretty low end card by today's standards. for example, you'll need a 6600gt or higher level card to play farcry or BF2 well. does your gateway currently have a video card?


I currently have a Radeon 9600 and I play FarCry with no problems. All video settings are at medium, but to say you can't play w/ a 9600 is just not true. He will save a lot of money with such an old card.
 
i said well, in general terms. sure, you could get farcry going on a 9600 (by cutting back on the eye candy), but considering how fast the gfx industry moves forward...
 
Now i´ve got more cash and I want a FULL upgrade of my machine. I have a full size ATX case with a PSU of 600W. I don´t want a dual core machine, but a very fast single core.
can you help me with this???
 
You don't need a 600w power supply especially if its a cheap one.

check this article out it should point you in the right direction.

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20051014/index.html

the power supply in the article is only 330w but its a solid 330w. A quality power supply is far more important than a cheap power supply with a high output. a mid range computer with two hard drives and a decent video card isn't going to use more than 250w at full load. however a $30 psu that puts out 600w is just a waste of $30 and possibly everything you plug it into.
 
get a 90nm a64, 3000+ or higher, and at least 1GB of dual channel DDR400. also, you'll need a quality name brand power supply. i reccomend the asus a8n motherboard, the sli version is nicely loaded. you'lll want a name brand graphics card based on a 6600gt GPU or higher, with speeds rated at or above the nvidia reference specs. what exactly you get or don't get depends on your budget...
 
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