Budget based upgrade question.

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ofhs93

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Mar 23, 2006
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Ok...budget based upgrade question. Below is my current setup.

Northwood 2.6c 533FSB
500w PSU
6600GT AGP
512MB pc2700
all on a OEM mATX MSI board put together for Medion...therefore the Bios is basically nuetered.

I added the PSU and 6600GT to keep things moving along about a year ago.

Would it be worth it to spend a little money on a non OEM 478 board so that I can overclock the 2.6 and get a little more life out of this system. I already plan on upgrading the memory to at least 1gig (that's the next question)

As far as the memory is concerned. What are your opinions on the longevity of PC4000 memory. I was contimplating spending a little extra and getting 2gigs of PC4000 for this box (therefore hoping to extend it's life a little more as well) and hoping that I would be able to then move that into a new (budget) machine say in 1.5-2 years.

I'm basically happy with my current setup's performance outside of the obvious need for more memory due to current games. But I also know that I may start bumping up against the limits of the 2.6 in the next year and wonder if it's worth $40-50 for a new MB that would allow me to overclock it.

Be gentle please. I'm in the industry but have 1 income and 2 kids and a wife so system upgrade money is hard to come by.

If either of the above senarios make sense then suggestions on mobo models that nicely support OCing would be helpful.

Thanks
 
You are not gonna get too far with this setup. If you get a new mobo you can try to overclock, but you may no get past 3.0Ghz who knows. You probably don't want to hear this but you may be better off waiting and saving up for a newer system.

what mobo pc model# do you have? Does it support 800fsb? You may find a good deal on a 775 or amd system. good luck. I did something similar. Went from 2.6 400fsb, OC'd wasn't enough for me, bought mobo. bought new cpu 3.2 prescott

by that time I had the bug, so I oc'd that to 3.7 and got a 6800GT and that's what I have now.

 
Shmuckety said:
You are not gonna get too far with this setup. If you get a new mobo you can try to overclock, but you may no get past 3.0Ghz who knows. You probably don't want to hear this but you may be better off waiting and saving up for a newer system.

what mobo pc model# do you have? Does it support 800fsb? You may find a good deal on a 775 or amd system. good luck. I did something similar. Went from 2.6 400fsb, OC'd wasn't enough for me, bought mobo. bought new cpu 3.2 prescott

by that time I had the bug, so I oc'd that to 3.7 and got a 6800GT and that's what I have now.

Click to expand...

Well I have been doing a lot of searching the last 2 days and I think I have made up my mind.

I'm going to go with the G.Skillz DDR500 2x1gig kit that the Egg has for $157 In the hopes that I will be able to take that memory and put it into my next rig in say 18-24 months from now.

If I'm still not happy with the performance then I'll spend another $50 and pickup an Asus P4S8X-MX board that will let me lock the PCI and AGP and OC the FSB in 1Mhz increments. The 2.6c 533FSB Northwoods look like thier usually pretty good little OCers. I should be able to at least 3.2 out of it with some better cooling.

For $200 it SEEMS like a fairly decent solution to get me another 24ish months.

The current board is a nuetered MSI OEM board that only supports 533FSB. I guess if I went to the Asus board and was not happy with the OCing results using the 2.6c 533 then I could look at 800FSB CPU options. I'm not sure what kind of prices they are running around now.

Any thoughts?
 
Well it sounds like a decent plan. ddr500 is not really neccessary for your current processor because even if you OC to like 3.3ghz it will only be running at pc2700 if I'm not multiplying wrong. :confused: But I don't think it costs much more anyway.

Like I said before I did something similar and its working fine. So go for it. 3.2 800fsb prescott costs about $250 right now.

 
ofhs93 said:
I'm going to go with the G.Skillz DDR500 2x1gig kit that the Egg has for $157 In the hopes that I will be able to take that memory and put it into my next rig in say 18-24 months from now.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't count on this, since Intel has already completly stepped away from DDR in favor of DDR2 and AMD is in the process of doing the same, if you bank on using your RAM in your next system you'll be commiting yourself to 2006 technology in 2008.

I'm not saying you shouldn't get the RAM for your current upgrade, I'm just saying I wouldn't put too much stock in the fact that you'll get to use it in another system.
 
meatycheesyboy said:
I wouldn't count on this, since Intel has already completly stepped away from DDR in favor of DDR2 and AMD is in the process of doing the same, if you bank on using your RAM in your next system you'll be commiting yourself to 2006 technology in 2008.

I'm not saying you shouldn't get the RAM for your current upgrade, I'm just saying I wouldn't put too much stock in the fact that you'll get to use it in another system.
Click to expand...


Point taken. Although the way things tend to work for me I'll only be able to afford what is considered a top of the line current processor in 18-24 months ;) For what I tend to use the machine for the video card and amount of memory I think is going to be more important than pure horsepower. The next upgrade will require a case, MB, Vid Card AND proc. I just don't have the funds to make that jump right now. When that Time comes I'll probably look into finding a deal on some OEM or barebones box and just add a Vid card and memory....and start the same process I'm in now all over again ;)
 
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