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"Motherboard + CPU advice..."

I have picked up a few weeks contract work and I inted to pick up a new motherboard and CPU afterwards. I currently have an Athlon 2600 XP + with KT400 motherboard. I am looking to switch over to Intel. What is the best motherboard and CPU at the moment, money shouldn't be an object. I am looking for a setup that will overclock easily enough.

Any advice would be appreciated, cheers!

DiG wrote:
> What, my last post isnt there? Wierd

F5

What, my last post isnt there? Wierd

You can never have enough RAM, well you can but motherboards dont support an amount high enough to cause a problem. Also a good overclocker is the chaintech ultra zenth (Spelling?)

Notorious Biggles wrote:
> What make is your RAM? Most Bartons will hit 2.3 quite easily if you
> have the rest of the system up to scratch.

Its Geil. It was a good price and does the job. A few people said dont get it, but that was after I had ordered it. Does the job fine. Thing about overclocking is the heat, so I may leave it or only overclock a little. I wont do anything yet as I have my final year Uni projects on the go and could not deal with having a bust PC.

What make is your RAM? Most Bartons will hit 2.3 quite easily if you have the rest of the system up to scratch.

Also do XP2700. I am sure I have had my memory erased :D

Anyway I have a XP2800, with some PC3200 RAM. So I think I may change the CPU to 200x10.5 rather than 166x12.5.

Notorious Biggles wrote:
> Adrian, it is the 2600 XP Barton that Ali has, so he has as much
> cache as the 3200XP. Had it been a Thoroughbred version however I
> would have agreed.

Right. Never knew they did XP2600 Bartons, dont think i've seen them on sale, or I always assumed they were the Thoroughbreds. Always thought the lowest was XP2500 then the next one XP2800.

That was the stuff Ali. 8-3-3-2.5 at 223 MHz. Haven't tinkered much with it though, so I could possibly get a bit extra out of it.

Adrian, it is the 2600 XP Barton that Ali has, so he has as much cache as the 3200XP. Had it been a Thoroughbred version however I would have agreed.

With decent cooling, decent motherboard and decent RAM, most Bartons will do 2.3 GHz if you know what you are doing. Some do considerably more at that. I doubt it was something you took note of before installing the CPU, but do you know what stepping and week it was? That gives you an idea of how well it overclocks when you compare it to similar chips on overclocking forums.

Whilst the Corsair stuff is very nice, it is expensive. I'm not sure it would be worth the extra £90+ for it. The way I see it, by the time I need to upgrade the rest of the PC, DDR 2 will be in widespread use, meaning that I wouldn't be keeping my old memory. So I just don't see the point in spending that much on it at this stage. Well unless you're made of money that is.

I currently have it set at 176MHZ.

Would it be worth getting PC3700 RAM? I have seen a twin 512MB Corsair pack for £189.99. I was going to go with 3200 RAM but I have heard the results with the Abit Nforce motherboards and this particular RAM were good. I have just read an article from Tomshardware on it.

ÂLŠ†ÂÎR wrote:
> The thing is I have clocked my 2600 XP + to run at 3200 speeds. Some
> new RAM with my new fans etc will able me to clock it further.

But the XP3200 has more L2 cache and also has the increased FSB. If I remember you run your FSB at standard 166 for the XP2600 dont you?

To get the best out of your XP2600 you will need to get the FSB to 200 if not more. And then have a clock speed which is more than a standard XP3200 due to the L2 cache. Something like 200x11 or 200x11.5 would be good. 2.2Ghz and 2.3Ghz respectivily.