Topic: Ultimate Socket A Sytem... Opinions?

[bobtheflish]

I want to upgrade my machine. Cash wise, I am not ready for going 64bit so I want to do the best I can with Socket A machines.

I am not into graphics design or anythingrequiring specifically advanced systems, I just play games. I only want the power nescesary to tide me through till I have to go 64bit.

I am trying to take all things into account, such as, even if I could afford it, the GeForce 8800 would so not be worth it cos I don't think the rest of the machine would be powerful enough to take full advantage of it's abilities.

With that into account, I ask for opinions on what I should go for to build up the top Socket A system for now.

My Current System:

Gigabyte K7 Triton Series, nForce2 motherboard
Athlon XP 1900+ (also have a Sempron 2400+ and have bought an Athlon XP 2400+ which should be in the post any day)
2Gb DDR400 RAM
nVidia GeForce 5500 128Mb



I think thats all the really important stuff mentioned, I just ask for the thoughts and opinions you all have on this subject.
Most people here have specific preferences, the only real preferences I have are staying with GeForce and nForce. I have had many bad experiences with the alternatives which have led to hundreds of pounds going into their pockets in exchange for technology thats unreliable, faulty, poorly designed and uses a lot more system memory than I am willing to part with for a single piece of hardware.

Anyways, with that all said, in effect what I asked was...

Before 64 bit arose, what were your dream systems? What were you aiming for?

Cheers in advance

[Sandra]

I dont think that going from your Athlon 1900 to the Athlon 2400 will make much of an improvement.

I always thought that the Sempron was just an updated Duron so wouldnt be very good but having used 2 pcs recently that had Semprons in them I was pleasantly surprised.
They seem better than when I had my Athlon 2100.

As you said we all have our own preferances for our pcs, I prefer Intel based to AMD based ones.

I was in a similar dilemma to you recently as I wanted to upgrade one of my pcs as I had upgraded the cpu in my best pc from an Intel 3.6ghz 660 cpu to a 3.4 ghz dual core D945 and I didnt like the idea of leaving an expensive 3.6ghz cpu unused.

I found a cheapish mobo from Asrock that took the 775 cpu, had slots for both DDR and DDR 2 ram and took an AGP and a PCI-e gfx card.
That meant that for around £45 I could use my 3.6ghz cpu and my existing DDR ram and AGP card from my Athlon 2100 based pc and have a considerably faster and better pc.
At a later date I will be upgrading my best pc with a better gfx card and faster ram which will enable me to use the older bits in the Asrock mobo to give me yet more improvement at no real extra cost.

I dont know if there are similar mobos for the AMD cpus but if there are then I would have thought that you may have been better off getting something like that which would use your existing bits and buy the best cpu you could afford at the moment.
Then you could upgrade the ram and gfx card as and when you could afford it or felt it necessary.

[sam]

hey

I'm an amd person at heart, for my pc that is... but I think I have to agree with sandra without going 64bit the amd chips wont make much difference.

[bobtheflish]

The aim of getting the Athlon 2400+ was just to up me to 2Ghz, which I am not actually sure if it is that to be honest (on ebay most think that the 2400+ is 2.4Ghz... so many people are selling them that either don't know about AMD cpus or deliberately aim to mislead... As far as I know, it was the Duron only that worked that way) but I know it's not going to make that much difference, I suppose it's just so that I can pass the 2Ghz mark...

I am not going to go for 64bit for the moment because I would rather do that when I can really make it worth it, it seems with most machines that I am going to have to buy a whole new machine, as all the technology is different... PCI-E, DDR2... it all adds up to the fact that on the current cash I have spare, I would end up with a much lower spec machine overall... Does the change to 64bit improve performance in such a way that a lower spec machine can have better performance? I really wouldn't have thought that.

As for the moment I think the motherboard I have seems around the best I could hope for, the only issue I have with it is the on-board sound is somewhat quirky but I recently bought the Audigy Platinum kit so I don't have to deal with that.

My next buy is going to be new graphics, I think thats all I am lacking, but I will be sorting that before long. This will be expensive because I will not but the 3rd party graphics cards, as I have had numerous problems with them in the past (they generally seem to last about 5-6 months, my XFX5500 is going strong now after well over a year).

I was thinking about going for the 6600, is it at all worth me going higher?

[Sandra]

The way that AMD name their CPUs bears no reationship to the actual speed.

The Athlon 2100 XP + runs at 1733  (I think)
The 2500 Barton runs at 1833mhz, I cant remember the others off hand.

Re the gfx cards, I would check the specifications of the games that you are likely to be playing in the near future and get one that will handle those.
Paying for a more expensive card than you are likely to need would be wasting money that you could possibly put to better use when increasing your ram or building a better pc later on.