I'm planning to upgrade a load of stuff at the end of this month, CPU, mem etc..

I want to know which CPU to buy out of the three below (*RETAIL* inc AMD h/s/f).


The XP 2000+ is obviously the cheapest - £74.26
and the XP 2100+ is only slightly more - £82.50
but the XP 2200+ is £138

I've heard that the XP 2100+ is really bad at overclocking...so should I go for the 2000+, the 2100+ one, or should I splash out for the XP 2200+?

I don't plan to be watercooling or fiddling much with the cpu...but a bit more extra power (i.e. overclocking) for no extra £ would be good.

What do you think?

(BTW - I plan to be running this on a Asus A7V-333 viaKT333 + USB2 + ATA133 ...is that a good choice to go with the above? I know KT400 sucks at the moment)

Generally, one notices that a range of CPUs are of a similar price with only a small different between them. Then, suddenly, one CPU is MUCH more expensive. I usually take the one right behind that (i.e. the fastest before the biggest price hike...)

Basically what I am talking about is getting the greatest utility, the best "bang for buck".

There's no sense in shelling out 30 per cent more just for a few extra megahertz. Maybe one day when I am a rich computer consultant or computer magazine journalist. Similarly, there's no sense in dropping 100Mhz just to save $20.

Based then on that, XP2100 is the best choice. But then I am not an overclocker. Not at all.

If you think that extra money could be better spent on something else then I advise you to do just that. 100Mhz extra might not do you as much good as a Realmagic Hollywood Plus or another 256MB....

XP2000+ vs XP2100+ vs XP2200+

In my opinion I would go with the 2000+. Is the cheapest and it has more overclocking potential "it's been tested at 1834 MHz", while the 2200+ default speed is 1800 MHz and it sucks at overclocking. If you're not an expert in the overclocking business there's plenty of web-site that sell pre-overclocked CPU's for a few more bucks, it's up to you! Good luck with new CPU no matter your choice!

Bah. The 2100+ is only bad at overclocking if it's a TBred-A.

I broke 2GHz with my 2100+, not saying it was stable or anything, but I still got it to boot

I think I'll go with the 2100+ then, unless anything else comes down in price before the end of the month to lower than £100.

Just checked with www.pricewatch.co.uk, www.scan.co.uk and a couple of other online computer shops and it doesn't look like anything has come down to under £100 yet other than the 2100+....

I'm running my 2100+(AGIOA core) at 2200+ speed by overclocking the fsb to 140Mhz (1820Mhz CPU clock). Might attempt the bridge filling connecting unlocking technique at some point on it and try to squeeze a bit more out of it.
No problems with this mild overclock so far. Its all related to yields, with the 2200+ being closer to the limit of the clock speed that the core can run at, its obviously going to have less overclock potential.

Depending on whether your motherboard has the 166fsb (333fsb) support, you could opt for the cheapest XP CPU and then get a faster one sooner. Depends on whether your wanting to build the system then stick by the CPU until its at the end of its life or not.

I f I were interested in trying overclocking I would buy a 1600 or 1800 oem chip to experiment on. I have both chips and running on the same board with the same memory and video card they bench identical results.there is only a 67 mhz diff between each stepping of the amd chips so it takes from a 1600 to an 1800 just to get 133 mhz speed increase which of course is negligible in real world performance. or in benchmarks.