Evan T. Kaiser wrote:
>
> My comment is that if you're going to spend that much on an upgrade, you
> might as well spend another $40 or $50 and just get a new ATX case. You'll
> have a much, much wider variety of motherboards (and therefore processors)
> to choose from. If you get an AT motherboard, you'll probably have to get a
> Slot 1 processor, or a Socket 370 processor and a Slocket converter, either
> of which will cost at least $10 more than a straight Socket 370 processor.
> Additionally, you'll have fewer upgrade options with a 440BX motherboard.
> The 440BX is still a respectable chipset, but its main weakness is that it
> doesn't give much leeway with memory and AGP speeds. If you want to run it
> at 133MHz, you have to run your AGP interface at 89MHz, which not all that
> many video cards can handle. The BX is slightly faster than the newer 815E
> at the same frequency in most situations, but the 815E is designed for
> 133MHz capability and supports asynchronous memory speeds. Of course, it's
> also a little more expensive.
>
Okay, at the risk of driving everyone completely crazy for me having
beaten this thing to death (another female trait ??), let me go back to
one of your previous messages:
"I'll have to agree with Art's recommendation- the Athlon is a better
value than the Pentium !!!, and even though their motherboards are a
little more expensive, you get a lot more bang for your buck with the
overall package. About the best Socket A Athlon motherboard you can get
these days is Abit's KT7 (or KT7-RAID, if you want that capability). The
regular KT7 runs about $150, the KT7-RAID
about $170. I actually have one of the latter (and a GHz Thunderbird)
shipping to me now, so hopefully I'll have it tonight or next week. The
best Athlon value is the 900MHz Thunderbird, which will run you about
$190, give or take, with a good heat sink/fan combo. Or, if you want to
go really cheap, the 700MHz Thunderbird can be had for not much over
$100."
So, I price this out at:
ATX box - SuperMicro SC-750A $121
Abit KT7 RAID $138
900MHz TBird $166
128M CAS2 PC133 SDRAM $ 67
$492 total
Whereas the other option, pre shipping costs, was $394.
Comments:
On both I apparently forgot the fan/heatsink combo.
This case is about $50 more than others, but ARS rates this one right up
there, plus it is going to give me many years of upgrades.
So Evan, you are right. If I did not go for the more expensive, better
case, this would be roughly only $50 more than retrofitting the older
box.
So then, armed with all this info, I guess it now boils down to which
way I wish to go. Obviously, you are of the opinion that I should take
this Athlon route. This is sounding like the way I will go, and if I
do, I will bump the RAM up to 256.
Thanks for the info on P4s. I will continue to wait on it, if for no
other reason than the price and that there is only one MB maker at this
time. Besides, if I do go with the Athlon, there would not be any point
in quickly going to the P4. Hopefully this weekend I can study and
digest all your additional comments on it for pure knowledge increase.
Just as an FYI, I do use Photoshop which is one of the few applications
that can also use dual processors.
==
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