Upgrading from a 1.7Ghz Celeron

[Pray For Death]

Hi
I have a 1.7Ghz Celeron @ 2Ghz, running on a Gigabyte motherboard, and I have 512MB of 133Mhz SDR memory, this setup is pretty slow, and my CPU is being a bottleneck for my GPU, so I wanna sell this crappy Celeron and get a P4 instead, I read the CPU support list for my mobo, and it says it supports 400Mhz FSB Northwoods (1.5-2.6Ghz) and it also supports 400Mhz FSB Willamettes (1.4-2.0Ghz), and I am thinking about getting a 2.2Ghz or 2.4Ghz Northwood and overclocking it to around 2.9Ghz, is this a good idea?
I have a question about the Ram, my mobo takes SDR ram only (I think), but doesn't the Northwood 400Mhz FSB take DDR? So how does my mobo support Northwoods? Or is it only the 533Mhz and above Northwood take DDR?
I am not planning on getting DDR memory, and I am also not planning on getting a new mobo, cuz when I move to Chicago, I'll get a whole new PC.
Sorry for the long post, any advice please?


p.s: does the 2.6Ghz 400Mhz FSB Northwood come as 26x100?

 

[swatbat]

As far as the memory goes it is the motherboard and the chipset that determine the type of ram. Your board supports the older pc 133 and will not run ddr at all even though it will run the northwood cpu. The ram is going to be a bottleneck in this system also.

 

[Pray For Death]

You mean that the size of the RAM will be a bottleneck or the RAM speed?
What do you think about my upgrade? Is it worth it?

 

[Lord of Shadows]

He is talking about ram speed.

If I were you I would upgrade everything, but if you need a quick fix I suggest getting fastest processor you can throw in there, and dont forget the thermal paste =)

http://www.pricewatch.com/h/prc.aspx?i=3&a=12798&f=1 -2.6ghz Pentium 4's cheapest $147

http://www.pricewatch.com/h/prc.aspx?i=3&a=5907&f=1 -2.8ghz Celeron cheapest $88

The p4 will perform alot better than the celeron even with the slower frequency.

 

[Pray For Death]

My motherboard doesn't support that 2.8Ghz Celeron, but it supports the 2.6Ghz P4 you linked. By the way, is it a Northwood? I heard Northwoods overclock well.
Is there a noticable performance difference between DDR and SDR?
Thanks for your advice!