hey anybody, could you help me out a bit? im thinking of upgrading a couple of things but i'd like to know what kind of performance difference ill see. if its low, i dont think ill upgrade.

currently i have...
T-bird 1.4 ghz
512 PC 100 crucial ram
and all that other junk.

i want to get...
Athlon XP 1800+ (then overclock)
256/512 mb PC 2700 ram
MSI KT3 ultra mobo?

just give me some ballpark percentages for what kind of performance gains ill get. right now i think my main bottleneck is my slowwww ram.

thanks!

My answer to your question and My attitude to upgrades in general

I don't have any hard and fast benchmarks for you, but I do have some advice from someone who has spent a lot of money on their systems over the years.


Well, at home I have:

t-bird 1.33 GHz
512 MB DDR-SDRAM PC2100
Geforce 2 Ultra 64 MB.

At work I have:

Pentium 4 2 GHz
512 MB DDR-SDRAM PC2100
Geforce 4 MX 64 MB.


Lets consider Quake III as a benchmark I thought.

Ok, it does play better on the work system. Definately. But is the difference spectacular? No. Its a tad smoother but that's about it. Unless you are getting real stuttering with a game you love (which I can't believe unless you have like a 3 year old graphics card in there) then I don't really see you getting the performance boost game wise that you really want to see associated with the costs of replacing motherboard, chip, memory, etc.... when 12 months from now that same money will get you something a hell of a lot better.

As a general rule of thumb, everytime I upgrade my motherboard and chip, I like to double my processing power. My last several motherboard and chip upgrades have taken me from processor to processor a little like this, stretching back over the last 5 years or so:

Pentium 200
AMD K6-3 350
AMD Athlon 750
AMD T-bird Athlon 1.33GHz

...So, as you can see, I am pretty much expecting to upgrade to some CPU about 3 GHz or so next time I make the expense of a motherboard and chip, possibly new memory, etc... Now, very likely I would imagine that this time next year there should be 3 GHz Athlon CPUs about. Maybe we shall have moved on to a viable 64-bit platform by then as well. Perhaps. In any case, even with my humble 1.33GHz CPU I expect to get about another 12 months use of it before I start to feel that I am embarrassingly behind the times.

IMHO, so much money is in some cases better spent on other computer upgrades sometimes. There are those that go out and buy the latest and greatest chip and board everytime that one comes out, but I think that unless money is of no object to you (which you seem to indicate that its not, and its certainly not to me at the moment) then there are many other great upgrades you could get, such as:

-Folks with fast internet connections will certainly appreciate MUCH MORE HDD space and a faster CD-RW drive

-A bigger monitor is a great investment for your machine.

-A better sound system, perhaps even encorporating a home hi-fi system with amp, speakers, full surround sound and a new soundcard.

-A printer and/or a scanner ?

-A very powerful new graphics card like a Geforce 4 ti 4600 128MB is approaching the same price as a new mobo and chip (you'd probably have extra money for something else like a Hollywood Plus card or something...)

-Some of the spare bits and bobs you are missing to build all that stuff left over from other upgrades into another machine (A second machine is a great thing to have, especially if its somewhere up to spec with your first one, great for having friends over for LAN games, etc and they don't have to cart over their own machines....)

-A very and powerful case, perhaps one of the cube cases, that can take a big and powerful PSU and is capable of taking perhaps even a dozen HDDs, 4 or 5 CD-ROM type drives, etc.... (Over time you could add SCSI or IDE RAID PCI controller cards to your machine, and build something that has like 1 TB of HDD space and can make multiple copies of CDs at once....)

-A good video capture card and a video recorder to capture all of those old VHS taped movies onto CD before the degrade even further....

....That was only a moment or two, and I could already think of several things that your money might buy you.

IMHO - wait for a system that's around 2.8 GHz - 3.0 GHz or so to upgrade to. Think about where your machine could benefit from the money elsewhere. My machine always has 3-5 HDDs, 3-4 CD rom devices, powerful PSU, etc, and I feel that its much more versitile than the work PC, even although that PC has a more powerful CPU. Clockspeed its everything that makes the machine.

Don't get me wrong, I love to upgrade my machine and do so regularly. But when some people think upgrade they always seem to think sheer processing power, and often neglect other areas of the system that need to be given ample attention as well.

Personally I think that that mobo and chip of yours still has about 12 months in it before Quake V or something forces you to make the leap to something better.

thank you for the exxxxxxxxxxxxxxxttttttttteeeeeeennnnnnnnsiiiiiiiiiiiivvvvvvveeeeee reply, and ill definitley take your advice and wait until AMD releases something spectacular. but i would like a second system... hehe. anyways thanks again!

well my recently rigged system is somewhat similiar to urs

Athlon XP 1800+
MSI KT333 Ultra2
1x 256MB 333 PC2700 Kingston
400W PSU (plucked it frm a P4 Unit)
2x 40GB ATA133 Maxtor HD
SB Vibra 128 (frm old rig)
Elsa Gladiac GF2 MX 400 (planning to get a GF4 MX 440 or a Ti4400, whichever is better or if i have more spare $$$)
56x CD-Rom (planning to add another CD-RW, A 48x12x48)
Nvidia 30.82 Driver (d/l 40.41 now)
Win2K
Directx 8.1
Tweakui (very GOOD program, shuts off all the useless things like menu popup speed, mouse speed n other cool stuff.....)


it works fine n it's bootup was very fast, if u know how 2 set ur BIOS n other things as well


hope u get ur rig up soon!!!