Upgrading CPU & Mobo

[esky]

I'm want to upgrade my CPU, which of course entails a new mobo as well, and in turn that requires new ram.. yay.

Currently running an Athlon 1800.

Either way, I'd like some recommendations on a sub-$200 CPU, and a mobo to go with it. What exactly should I be looking for in a mobo anyway? I have a 9800 XT that will need to plug into it, and like 3 or 4 PCI cards. What would be a recommended PSU power for this setup anyway? Will the one I have now for the 1800 also work equally well with a more powerful processor? (will find out what it is, tho I believe it's 300).

So other than the mobo question, is the 64bit athlon the way to go? Seems like a P4 has a better cache and and ~1ghz faster clock for a similar price... while I know clock speed is hardly the deciding factor, will a 64 bit athlon give me better results in games than a 'faster' P4? How do they compare in performance...

 

[ohnnyj]

First step is to get an A64, they are much better for gaming. For under $300 I think you can get a 3200+ but make sure you get the 90nm Winchester core like this one. Then pick up a decent mobo, if you aren't into SLI or overclocking you can get by with a Chaintech nForce4 Ultra board for under $100 but I would recommend a DFI at only $40 more. Then as for memory, once again if not into overclocking just get some Corsair Value Select, rock solid memory for a very good price (under $100 for 1GB). As for PSU, the wattage really means nothing, if it is from a no name company I wouldn't expect much from it. Get a decent Antec or Enermax above 400 Watts and you should be good to go.

 

[delusion_2005]

Since you want good results for gaming don't go with the p4, just get a amd64 3200+ 939 socket which has hyper transporting.

 

[twentyINCHwheel]

Agreed, get an A64...

However, if you still want to use your 9800XT, you're going to want to get an nForce3 mobo. nForce3 mobos still have AGP, whereas nForce4 mobos are PCI-Express.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[pigwalk]

There are a couple A64 3200 winchester/Nforce3 Mobo combos on pricewatch for around 260 bucks and the prices are dropping every day.

-wil

 

[esky]

So with an nForce3 will I be able to upgrade to a PCI-Express card?

What's the big deal with which mobo I pick anyway though? Do certain mobos just literally die on you? Otherwise, why does it matter if I spend under $100 as opposed to over $100?

 

[scottatwittenberg]

So with an nForce3 will I be able to upgrade to a PCI-Express card?

What's the big deal with which mobo I pick anyway though? Do certain mobos just literally die on you? Otherwise, why does it matter if I spend under $100 as opposed to over $100?

.
mostly overclocking abilities.. tweaking features... stuff like that.. theoretically you can get some cheap ass ecs or asrock or osmething and be fine.. but generally you want to be able to tweak it and overclock at least a little..

 

[Epicenter]

The Athlon 64 processors have a far more efficient core design than the Pentium 4. For this reason, despite running 1 GHz or more lower clockrate, they outperform the Pentium 4 in most tests in the same price bracket. At the same clock speed, an Athlon 64 stomps a Pentium 4 into the ground. The 64-bit compatibility is icing on the cake in that when XP-64bit is out (within this month!) you can start using it and some very nice 64-bit versions of stressful applications like VirtualDub for video encoding for a performance increase between 8% and a theoretical 50% faster.

As for mainboards-- nForce 4 is the best chipset for A64's you can go for right now. It provides a great host of features like fantastic onboard audio, 2x Gigabit ethernet interfaces, a hardware firewall, PCI Express and so on. Good companies to buy from are Gigabyte, DFI, Chaintech, EPoX. I'd advise Gigabyte or Chaintech's NF4 models like the VNF4/Ultra, but if you want to do some major overclocking spend a bit more and get DFI's NF4 Ultra-D, as it is able to sustain some amazing CPU Host clock pushes and voltage levels stably. I'd stay away from boards by MSI, ASRock, ECS, and Soltek for the sake of stability. These boards are built rather cheaply and have quite a high rate of failure or instability.