200$ for a mobo+cpu, suggestions?

[treetops]

Im selling all my old snes nes and gameboy games on ebay and it looks like im about to get 200$ or so, so im thinking I might as well upgrade my computer. I know about all the compatability issues form factor etc. But I really dont understand how to tell the quality of a chipset. If anyone has any suggestion as to a good cpu and mobo combo I would greatly appreciate it. I just bought 2gig (800mhz) ddr2 ram for 20$, I'll link if anyone is interested. Now I need a mobo and cpu to match ^_^.

Im looking at these combos

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131234

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103778

and these

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116036

http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=CA4830813

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813136038&Tpk=blood+iron

 

[Blind Dragon]

One thing to watch out for when upgrading a motherboard is the number of IDE slots, since you didn't say you would be upgrading your harddrive, if you have an IDE hard drive that you wanna keep and you have CDrom/DVD player you will need 2 IDE slots, but if you already have a SATA drive then you don't have to worry, that is a decent board though.

 

[treetops]

I updated my first post with more options, how do I know what type of hard drive and cd rom I have?

 

[Blind Dragon]

Just look at the wires coming from the drive to your motherboard, your CD rom and DVD can both run off one IDE which they will, but if your harddrive also needs IDE then you need to pick a different motherboard, or get a new hard drive that uses SATA

IDE looks like this

SATA looks like this

 

[treetops]

Thanks for catching that, I use ide for my rom\dvd and hardrive. The newegg specs don't seem to tell you about the storage devices. I guess I could get another hard drive but I really dont want too, all hard drives do is store stuff and I dont need anymore room. Do they in anyway give a performance gain? The clubit one has 1 ide slot btw.

 

[Blind Dragon]

Thats what I was pointing out, the first MOBO link that you showed only had 1 IDE slot and I would hate for you to get all your stuff and discover that you cant plug in your harddrive.

I would just look for a similar mobo that has an extra IDE slot


Are you set on going with Intel? I found some great AMD deals but all your links are Intel so I'll stick with that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7927158+1297219547&name=2+x+ATA100+4+Dev.+Max

with

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116254

About $28 over, you can get almost the same processor with a smaller cache for $28 less

 

[treetops]

Actualy no, I will go with whatever is the best bang for the buck and is compatible. This mobo looks like it smokes those other ones http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131234 am I correct?

OK it has 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices

So does that mean if I have my own cables I can run 2 ide devices?

Here are the in depth specs
http://www.directron.com/gama770ds3.html

 

[Blind Dragon]

just so you know IDE is also known as PATA

Here would be my AMD choice
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130065

with one of these

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...913+1263016683&name=Heatsink+and+Fan+included

OK it has 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices

So does that mean if I have my own cables I can run 2 ide devices?

No it means it still has 1 PATA or IDE slot, that you can hook 2 devices up on same cable, I wouldn't recommend hooking up your hard drive to the same cable as your CD-ROM. Some people say it degrades performance, some disagree, but I wouldn't do it. Best to put your CD-ROM and DVD drive on same cable


I was going to show you what I just ordered and is supposed to be here tomorrow, would have been in your price range but I must have gotten the last one. The motherboard isn't on their site anymore

 

[treetops]

Well it only has 800 fbs and the other ones have 1333 fbs, I don't know a lot about computers. But it seems to me that the 1333 blows that away, other than the fbs I really dont know what to look for in a mobo\cpu, well besides the cpu speed.

Yeah I know about the ram n all though ^^.

 

[treetops]

Is going form 2 x 512KB to 2 x 1MB l2 cache worth 20$?

 

[Blind Dragon]

well you already bought RAM so you also have to check your motherboard's Memory Standard is DDR2 800

and depending on your computer usage, it could be worth the larger cache

 

[treetops]

People tell me 3.0 ghz 800 fsb beats 2.6 ghz 2000 fsb in a cpu. Hmm, the

mobo is

FSB 2600MHz Hyper Transport (5200 MT/s)

Memory Standard DDR2 1066

I thought the fsb would matter way more.

It states in my ram review its easily clocked to 1066.

Im looking at these 2 cpus to go with that mobo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116254

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103056

I was thinking 1200 fsb beats .4 ghz, I guess Im wrong about that.

To me this mobo of all the ones I looked at looks the best, If I'm wrong can you tell me why?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131234

 

[Blind Dragon]

The last motherboard would be the best if you want to replace your harddrive to SATA instead of IDE

The thinking here is a lower FSB will give you a higher performance/dollar because you will have a higher multiplier

The frequency at which a processor (CPU) operates is determined by applying a clock multiplier to the front side bus (FSB) speed. Using your example, a processor running at 3000 MHz (3ghz) using a 800 MHz FSB. This means there is an internal clock multiplier setting (also called bus/core ratio) of 3.75; the CPU is set to run at 3.75 times frequency of the front side bus: FSB times the multiplier

800 MHz × 3.75 = 3000 MHz. varying either the FSB or the multiplier, different CPU speeds can be achieved.

vs.

processor running at 2600 MHz (2.6ghz) using a 2000 MHZ FSB. This means there is an internal clock multiplier setting (bus/core ratio) of 1.3; the CPU is set to run at 1.3 times frequency of the FSB: FSB times the multiplier

2000 MHz x 1.3 = 2600 MHz.

 

[treetops]

How do you figure out the multiplier the 3.75 or the 1.3? I thought there was no way lower fsb gave better performance, but I really dont know a whole lot about comps. check out this link on the subject of amd vs intel https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic96304.html


Nvm I get it
Im reading it right now

See I get the calculation but I dont know why it is the way it is. Is it because using more fsb drains your cpu speed? Like a bigger hose needs more pressure?

my current system is 533 fsb and 2.5 ghz single core, 4.6 multiplier

4.6x533= 2451

however its half because its a single core. So aside from my ddr to ddr2 ram and l2 cache increase I can expect say 2451 compared to intel+ board of a double score 6000. Hmm I thought the performance gain would be much higher.

You have succesfully taught a man to fish today thanks

 

[Blind Dragon]

k, just a couple of points to put things into perspective, I am really not that good at this aspect of things. But:

Don't confuse system bus with FSB, don't confuse clock speeds with FSB

Hypertransport replaces FSB on the cpu and isn't all about the speed as much as the lower latency (waiting). Think about a tunnel with cars driving in and out. You need to get more cars per hour through there, sure by having a bigger front side bus you can get more cars through at a time, but there not really organized, there will be traffic jams and cars (bits) are going to have to wait for traffic to clear to get through(latency). With Hypertransport there are lanes for the incoming cars and lanes for the outgoing cars which reduces how long they wait.

Another example is if you are familiar with graphics cards - the old agp or pci cards used one big lane to cram the bits through. Now there is pci-e which uses similar technology and bits of information can travel in their lane depending if they are incoming or outgoing.

and 1 more point -> if you are going to over clock you want everything to have a 1:1 ratio -> you can google this to find out what im talking about and get the calculations to figure it out.
There are really a lot more factors that can go into it, and I actually confuse myself after talking about it for a long time.


Edit: also we are talking per $ because if you had unlimited budget of course you would want the best of everything

 

[treetops]

Interesting i will work on my fishing some more. I wont even think of ocing without checking into it. Not even that ram lol. Which mobo did you mean by the last one? Because I did some post editing earlier I just want to make sure. That mobo in the lowest link I put up doesnt support 800 fsb. So what mobo and cpu do you recomend over all?

It would be nice to slap that intel cpu into that amd mobo you recmomended. Up until 3 posts ago I thought I could mix amd and intel.

 

[Blind Dragon]

to oc a intel c2d to a bus of 400MHz X 4 = 1600Mhz FSB you would get your 1:1 ratio with some 800mhz RAM because ddr2 is doublepumped so 800\2 - 400MHz

That would give you the same clock speeds. Just don't confuse clock speeds with transfer rates. It's very confusing and like I said I get confused just talking about it for a while.

If you update your harddrive to there are tons more options because then you can get a motherboard that only has 1 IDE slot. But without doing that, I would say these 2 are the best in my opinion
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&name=2+x+ATA100+4+Dev.+Max&SpeTabStoreType=0

 

[treetops]

Ok and how about with doing that? And what about a cpu?

 

[Blind Dragon]

If you don't mind getting a new HDD.

$80
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131013R
Open box item -> so you may or may not need some cables this is a ridiculously low price for this board though, the lowest price i could find anywhere else was $100. It also is able to run SLI if you ever wanted to run 2 video cards linked together, i did this same one with 1- 8600GT graphics card and will add another card when I need more performance.

with

$110
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103056

 

[treetops]

Yeah clubit cant touch those prices. After my ebay stuff sells I'll definately get one of those 2. Unless you think the prices might change, then I will get them very soon.

By the way for anyone who wants it heres 21$ + 3$ shipping 2 1 gig OCZ Gold ddr2 ram. I tried to add it to hot deals but I had trouble posting it. (this ram requires 2 to 2.2 volts, IIRC instead of 1.7 to 1.8 that many boards provide) just read that fine print oh well I can always return it if need be or just do what the people in th reviews say to make it compatible.

http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=CA4308035


Hey! I found a ide sata cable converter for 2.99+4.95 shipping, there a lot of new ones on ebay for that price, I will get one of those.