Re: Upgrade

Maverick wrote on 4/29/2003, 11:15 AM
Hi All

I am thinking of upgrading a bit;

I want to upgrade V4 to V4 + DVD but also need to upgrade my CPU from the AMD Athlon XP 1700+ - possibly to XP 2600+.

To this end I would have to upgrade my MB, too which is the ABIT KR7A-RAID.

Can anyone offer some suggestions of MB that would have similar (better) spec than what I have but without on board sound, graphics or ethernet as I have decent cards for these.

Also, what is the general consideration of a good DVD writer. I have heard that the Sony ones that cover both +- formats are recommended.

Cheers

P.S> I have loooked at the MB web sites but there are so many I am finding it a little confusing:-(

Comments

Jsnkc wrote on 4/29/2003, 11:19 AM
I just upgraded my system, I put in a new MSI KT7 Ultra Board, and also put in a Athlon XP 2400, the system works great. also the board takes DDR Ram so if you're using SDRAM you will have to buy some DDR as well. As far as a DVD burner I would stick with the Pioneer A-05 drive, the Sony ones that do everything still have some bugs in them. I have one at work and it crashes my system every once in a while. The Pioneer seems to be a more solid drive.
Maverick wrote on 4/29/2003, 11:35 AM
I already have 768 MB of DDR RAM so that'll be fine. I'll look at the MB you mentioned.

I take it the Pioneer burner isn't dual format but I'll look into that, too.

Cheers
Maverick wrote on 4/30/2003, 8:30 PM
Hi

I think I'll settle for the ABIT KD7-Raid as you can have 8 IDE HDDs all AT133. I am thinking about the Athlon XP 2800+.

Will I really see a dramatic increase in rendering speed from what I have now (XP 1700+)? Is it worth spashing out almost £300 on top of the extra software I am getting?

Thanks for any advice.
BillyBoy wrote on 4/30/2003, 10:36 PM
Nope, you won't see a dramatic increase in rendering speed gong from a XP 1700+ to a XP 2800+. Remember those numbers are NOT CPU speeds as they once were. I got a XP1900+ and it runs at just over 1.66 Ghz without overclocking. I would guess you may get about a 30-40% increase. If or not you think that's "dramatic" is up to you of course.