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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
Hi There,
I was wondering if this would be a good upgrade for me. MSI K9MM-V Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor 2.0GHz. I will also get 1 gig of ddr II memory. I am on a very tight budget. I am not a real gamer. The game I am currently playing is Fable - The Lost Chapters. I also do video and photo editing. I would like to keep my AGP card. My motherboard, cpu and memory will be going to my son to upgrade his Pentium III based system. He just bought a AGP Nvidia graphics card. My system specs a AI7 Pentium 4 motherboad 1 GB of ocz memory (512 x 2) MSI NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB) 2.8 Pentium 4 CPU WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 SATA II WDC WD1600JD-75HBC0 SATA I ASUS CRW-5224A (52x/24x/52x CD-RW) LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-527T (52x CD-ROM) TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M Ultra ULT31841 V-Series 500 Watt power supply. Thank you for any help! Laurie |
#2
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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
lamba wrote:
Hi There, I was wondering if this would be a good upgrade for me. MSI K9MM-V Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor 2.0GHz. I will also get 1 gig of ddr II memory. I am on a very tight budget. I am not a real gamer. The game I am currently playing is Fable - The Lost Chapters. I also do video and photo editing. I would like to keep my AGP card. My motherboard, cpu and memory will be going to my son to upgrade his Pentium III based system. He just bought a AGP Nvidia graphics card. My system specs a AI7 Pentium 4 motherboad 1 GB of ocz memory (512 x 2) MSI NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB) 2.8 Pentium 4 CPU WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 SATA II WDC WD1600JD-75HBC0 SATA I ASUS CRW-5224A (52x/24x/52x CD-RW) LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-527T (52x CD-ROM) TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M Ultra ULT31841 V-Series 500 Watt power supply. Thank you for any help! Laurie The K9MM-V has one IDE connector, for two drives. You have three optical drives I can see in the list, which means one of them cannot be connected. There are two SATA connectors on the motherboard, and you have two SATA drives, so that is OK. In terms of performance, a 3200+ is single core, without Hyperthreading to make a second (virtual) core. That is one advantage your P4 at 2.8GHz with FSB800 has. I have an AthlonXP 3200+ and the machine I'm typing on is an overclocked P4 running at about 3.2GHz, and the P4 is slightly better and smoother in the desktop by a fraction. You could spend a few more dollars, and get a dual core 3800+. Take the rating with a grain of salt. The processor is basically like having two 3200+ processors. The clock speed is 2000MHz, cache is 512KB per core. Most of the time, it won't seem that much faster, like for single threaded programs, it would be the same speed as the 3200+. But when a game runs on one core, the second core can handle the OS and background tasks, which can be a benefit. If you had a lot of modern software, then the dual cores would be used more often (as you can see on the benchmark page listed further down). ADO3800CUBOX 3800+ dual core 65W 2000MHz http://products.amd.com/en-us/Deskto...ail.aspx?id=55 ADO3800CUBOX $64 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103733 The 3200+ single core is listed here. ADA3200CNBOX 3200+ single core 62W 2000MHz http://products.amd.com/en-us/Deskto...il.aspx?id=100 So for an extra few dollars, you'll have a smoother desktop. There are benchmark charts here, but they emphasize the benefits of dual cores. And not all programs benefit from two cores. This is one of the few, where I think only one core is being used. The 3800+ only has a slight lead on the 3200+ here. http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_20...32&char t=422 I tried to price an equivalent Intel solution to your old motherboard and processor, but that cost more again. A processor similar to your old one was $80 and the motherboard was $60. The motherboard does have two IDE connectors though. Intel Pentium 4 631 Cedar Mill 3.0GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116004 GIGABYTE GA-8I865GME-775-RH-AS LGA 775 Intel 865G Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128051 Read the reviews on the K9MM-V before you make your final decision. I wouldn't mind buying this motherboard locally, as returning it locally would be much easier. It is too bad that decent quality AGP motherboards are so hard to find. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130064 HTH, Paul |
#3
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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
"lamba" wrote in message ... Hi There, I was wondering if this would be a good upgrade for me. MSI K9MM-V Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor 2.0GHz. I will also get 1 gig of ddr II memory. I am on a very tight budget. I am not a real gamer. The game I am currently playing is Fable - The Lost Chapters. I also do video and photo editing. I would like to keep my AGP card. My motherboard, cpu and memory will be going to my son to upgrade his Pentium III based system. He just bought a AGP Nvidia graphics card. The hardware you need depends a lot on the software you use. Just for an example...if you use Photoshop (CS2/3) a very fast CPU is needed if you process large images... a dual core CPU is not a bad idea here...but for RAM...2 gigs is sufficient. OTOH: An application such as Publisher, though it may not require the fastest CPU... for a large document...a lot of RAM is needed...and 2 gigs may not be enough to efficiently run it. Since you mentioned you were on a budget... I'd probably get (as suggested elsewhere) an AMD-3800 X2 As for RAM, though you could start out with just one gig... you could always add a 2nd gig or more later if needed |
#4
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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 04:05:18 -0400, Paul wrote:
lamba wrote: Hi There, I was wondering if this would be a good upgrade for me. MSI K9MM-V Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor 2.0GHz. I will also get 1 gig of ddr II memory. I am on a very tight budget. I am not a real gamer. The game I am currently playing is Fable - The Lost Chapters. I also do video and photo editing. I would like to keep my AGP card. My motherboard, cpu and memory will be going to my son to upgrade his Pentium III based system. He just bought a AGP Nvidia graphics card. The K9MM-V has one IDE connector, for two drives. You have three optical drives I can see in the list, which means one of them cannot be connected. There are two SATA connectors on the motherboard, and you have two SATA drives, so that is OK. In terms of performance, a 3200+ is single core, without Hyperthreading to make a second (virtual) core. That is one advantage your P4 at 2.8GHz with FSB800 has. I have an AthlonXP 3200+ and the machine I'm typing on is an overclocked P4 running at about 3.2GHz, and the P4 is slightly better and smoother in the desktop by a fraction. You could spend a few more dollars, and get a dual core 3800+. Take the rating with a grain of salt. The processor is basically like having two 3200+ processors. The clock speed is 2000MHz, cache is 512KB per core. Most of the time, it won't seem that much faster, like for single threaded programs, it would be the same speed as the 3200+. But when a game runs on one core, the second core can handle the OS and background tasks, which can be a benefit. If you had a lot of modern software, then the dual cores would be used more often (as you can see on the benchmark page listed further down). ADO3800CUBOX 3800+ dual core 65W 2000MHz http://products.amd.com/en-us/Deskto...ail.aspx?id=55 ADO3800CUBOX $64 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103733 The 3200+ single core is listed here. ADA3200CNBOX 3200+ single core 62W 2000MHz http://products.amd.com/en-us/Deskto...il.aspx?id=100 So for an extra few dollars, you'll have a smoother desktop. There are benchmark charts here, but they emphasize the benefits of dual cores. And not all programs benefit from two cores. This is one of the few, where I think only one core is being used. The 3800+ only has a slight lead on the 3200+ here. http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_20...32&char t=422 I tried to price an equivalent Intel solution to your old motherboard and processor, but that cost more again. A processor similar to your old one was $80 and the motherboard was $60. The motherboard does have two IDE connectors though. Intel Pentium 4 631 Cedar Mill 3.0GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116004 GIGABYTE GA-8I865GME-775-RH-AS LGA 775 Intel 865G Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128051 Read the reviews on the K9MM-V before you make your final decision. I wouldn't mind buying this motherboard locally, as returning it locally would be much easier. It is too bad that decent quality AGP motherboards are so hard to find. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130064 HTH, Paul I can get rid of the one of the optical drives as I use the DVD drive the most. So that shouldn't be a problem. Thank you for this info, more checking to do. I am not up on the newest stuff. And I havn't used AMD since my first build. The AI7 board has served me well, and thought that it would be a good upgrade for my son. He alway's gets my hand me downs. Again Thank you, Laurie |
#5
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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 05:29:09 -0500, "philo" wrote:
"lamba" wrote in message .. . Hi There, I was wondering if this would be a good upgrade for me. MSI K9MM-V Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor 2.0GHz. I will also get 1 gig of ddr II memory. I am on a very tight budget. I am not a real gamer. The game I am currently playing is Fable - The Lost Chapters. I also do video and photo editing. I would like to keep my AGP card. My motherboard, cpu and memory will be going to my son to upgrade his Pentium III based system. He just bought a AGP Nvidia graphics card. The hardware you need depends a lot on the software you use. Just for an example...if you use Photoshop (CS2/3) a very fast CPU is needed if you process large images... a dual core CPU is not a bad idea here...but for RAM...2 gigs is sufficient. OTOH: An application such as Publisher, though it may not require the fastest CPU... for a large document...a lot of RAM is needed...and 2 gigs may not be enough to efficiently run it. Since you mentioned you were on a budget... I'd probably get (as suggested elsewhere) an AMD-3800 X2 As for RAM, though you could start out with just one gig... you could always add a 2nd gig or more later if needed That is what I thought I would do, get one gig, and add another gig later. Thank you for you info Laurie |
#6
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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
"lamba" wrote in message ... On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 05:29:09 -0500, "philo" wrote: "lamba" wrote in message . .. Hi There, I was wondering if this would be a good upgrade for me. MSI K9MM-V Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor 2.0GHz. I will also get 1 gig of ddr II memory. I am on a very tight budget. I am not a real gamer. The game I am currently playing is Fable - The Lost Chapters. I also do video and photo editing. I would like to keep my AGP card. My motherboard, cpu and memory will be going to my son to upgrade his Pentium III based system. He just bought a AGP Nvidia graphics card. The hardware you need depends a lot on the software you use. Just for an example...if you use Photoshop (CS2/3) a very fast CPU is needed if you process large images... a dual core CPU is not a bad idea here...but for RAM...2 gigs is sufficient. OTOH: An application such as Publisher, though it may not require the fastest CPU... for a large document...a lot of RAM is needed...and 2 gigs may not be enough to efficiently run it. Since you mentioned you were on a budget... I'd probably get (as suggested elsewhere) an AMD-3800 X2 As for RAM, though you could start out with just one gig... you could always add a 2nd gig or more later if needed That is what I thought I would do, get one gig, and add another gig later. Thank you for you info Laurie Going from P4 2.8 to Athlon 3200 is only 14% increase, and will be even less for video work. You will not see an improvement! You need at least an x2 3800, x2 4200 would be better. Mike. |
#7
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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:32:57 +0100, "Michael Hawes"
wrote: Going from P4 2.8 to Athlon 3200 is only 14% increase, and will be even less for video work. You will not see an improvement! You need at least an x2 3800, x2 4200 would be better. Mike. Thanks for your input. I guess that mabey I should save some more money and get a better system. Not much offerings for us poor folks. Laurie |
#8
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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
My motherboard, cpu and memory will be going to my son to upgrade his Pentium III based system. He just bought a AGP Nvidia graphics card. My system specs a AI7 Pentium 4 motherboad 1 GB of ocz memory (512 x 2) MSI NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB) 2.8 Pentium 4 CPU WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 SATA II WDC WD1600JD-75HBC0 SATA I ASUS CRW-5224A (52x/24x/52x CD-RW) LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-527T (52x CD-ROM) TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M Ultra ULT31841 V-Series 500 Watt power supply. Thank you for any help! Laurie Ok here is what I am thinking of buying Friday. Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157115 If they still have this motherboard then. Cpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819112234 Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820161675 Will this be budget upgrade for me? I would like to get another 1 GB ram in the near future. Thank you in advance, Laurie |
#9
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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
lamba wrote:
My motherboard, cpu and memory will be going to my son to upgrade his Pentium III based system. He just bought a AGP Nvidia graphics card. My system specs a AI7 Pentium 4 motherboad 1 GB of ocz memory (512 x 2) MSI NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB) 2.8 Pentium 4 CPU WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 SATA II WDC WD1600JD-75HBC0 SATA I ASUS CRW-5224A (52x/24x/52x CD-RW) LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-527T (52x CD-ROM) TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M Ultra ULT31841 V-Series 500 Watt power supply. Thank you for any help! Laurie Ok here is what I am thinking of buying Friday. Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157115 If they still have this motherboard then. Cpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819112234 Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820161675 Will this be budget upgrade for me? I would like to get another 1 GB ram in the near future. Thank you in advance, Laurie It will be budget, but it will perform about the same as your old system. Your old processor was 2.8GHz, supporting Hyperthreading. The new processor is 3.06GHz Celeron, which lacks Hyperthreading, and usually the cache is less than an equivalent P4 (equivalent in this case, would be comparing it to a P4 Prescott with 1MB cache), which makes a slight difference. So the new processor is in the same ballpatk, but my guess would be, slightly slower for some things. Asrock is the "king of tricks" when it comes to motherboards. Yes, the motherboard is fine for your stated purpose. The fun comes, when considering upgrades to your system, at a future date. 1) The PCI Express slot is x16 in size, but is only wired with x4 lanes. See the Asrock manual, section 1.4, for a list of approved video cards known to work in such a slot. That reduces the performance of the PCI Express video slot, compared to a normal PCI Express motherboard with true x16 wiring. http://www.via.com.tw/en/downloads/p...comparison.pdf ftp://download.asrock.com/manual/4CoreDual-SATA2.pdf 2) We're not sure about the memory slots. Yes, there are four DIMM slots. Two are for DDR (2.5 volt) memory. Two are for DDR2 (1.8V) memory. But the memory does not operate in 128 bit mode (what everyone else calls dual channel). I think that VIA's lawyers consider it fair game to refer to two, independent memory channels, as "dual channel". In any case, you can only use a maximum of two of the four slots at a time. A maximum of two DDR memory sticks can be installed or a maximum of two DDR2 memory sticks can be installed, but not all four slots can be occupied at the same time. About the only way to verify the "lawyer style" specification, would be for someone to benchmark with one or two sticks of memory present, to see if it functions in 128 bit mode. So, yes, the motherboard is fine for your usage. The surprises may come later, if you want to upgrade the system further. I'm not saying it is a bad product. To judge that, all you have to go on, is previous customer reviews for the product and the product's predecessor. It is just I am not in favor of "tricks" or "lawyer style" specifications. A manufacturer should be able to be honest (i.e. two single channel memory channels, one for DDR and one for DDR2, one PCI Express x4 video slot), as otherwise they'll get a reputation for being a "snake". Notice, now, that when I analyse their products, I always assume the worst, because of their "lawyer-talk". For your choice in memory, read the customer reviews in the Newegg page, to get some idea as to what to expect. With that product, as soon as the computer is assembled, your Windows repair or clean install is finished, I would run Orthos to verify everything is OK. Memtest86+ is a good thing to run from a floppy, first, before booting into Windows, but you'll also need to test with Orthos, as it tests in a more stressful way than memtest86+ does. Orthos should run for hours, without stopping or reporting an error. http://www.memtest.org ( http://www.memtest.org/download/1.70....70.floppy.zip ) http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm Good luck, Paul |
#10
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upgrading motherboard, cpu and memory
On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 15:42:56 -0400, Paul wrote:
lamba wrote: My motherboard, cpu and memory will be going to my son to upgrade his Pentium III based system. He just bought a AGP Nvidia graphics card. My system specs a AI7 Pentium 4 motherboad 1 GB of ocz memory (512 x 2) MSI NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB) 2.8 Pentium 4 CPU WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 SATA II WDC WD1600JD-75HBC0 SATA I ASUS CRW-5224A (52x/24x/52x CD-RW) LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-527T (52x CD-ROM) TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M Ultra ULT31841 V-Series 500 Watt power supply. Thank you for any help! Laurie Ok here is what I am thinking of buying Friday. Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157115 If they still have this motherboard then. Cpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819112234 Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820161675 Will this be budget upgrade for me? I would like to get another 1 GB ram in the near future. Thank you in advance, Laurie Paul, Thank you for your detailed answer, much appreciated. It will be budget, but it will perform about the same as your old system. Your old processor was 2.8GHz, supporting Hyperthreading. The new processor is 3.06GHz Celeron, which lacks Hyperthreading, and usually the cache is less than an equivalent P4 (equivalent in this case, would be comparing it to a P4 Prescott with 1MB cache), which makes a slight difference. So the new processor is in the same ballpatk, but my guess would be, slightly slower for some things. That is what I was afraid of, I know nothing about these new processors. Only that I can't afford anything higher right now. Want to save for a better cpu. Asrock is the "king of tricks" when it comes to motherboards. Yes, the motherboard is fine for your stated purpose. The fun comes, when considering upgrades to your system, at a future date. 1) The PCI Express slot is x16 in size, but is only wired with x4 lanes. See the Asrock manual, section 1.4, for a list of approved video cards known to work in such a slot. That reduces the performance of the PCI Express video slot, compared to a normal PCI Express motherboard with true x16 wiring. The only time I would upgrade to PCI Express is when my old AGP dies. If I ever do, memory then cpu would be my first upgrade. http://www.via.com.tw/en/downloads/p...comparison.pdf ftp://download.asrock.com/manual/4CoreDual-SATA2.pdf 2) We're not sure about the memory slots. Yes, there are four DIMM slots. Two are for DDR (2.5 volt) memory. Two are for DDR2 (1.8V) memory. But the memory does not operate in 128 bit mode (what everyone else calls dual channel). I think that VIA's lawyers consider it fair game to refer to two, independent memory channels, as "dual channel". In any case, you can only use a maximum of two of the four slots at a time. A maximum of two DDR memory sticks can be installed or a maximum of two DDR2 memory sticks can be installed, but not all four slots can be occupied at the same time. About the only way to verify the "lawyer style" specification, would be for someone to benchmark with one or two sticks of memory present, to see if it functions in 128 bit mode. So, yes, the motherboard is fine for your usage. The surprises may come later, if you want to upgrade the system further. I'm not saying it is a bad product. To judge that, all you have to go on, is previous customer reviews for the product and the product's predecessor. It is just I am not in favor of "tricks" or "lawyer style" specifications. A manufacturer should be able to be honest (i.e. two single channel memory channels, one for DDR and one for DDR2, one PCI Express x4 video slot), as otherwise they'll get a reputation for being a "snake". Notice, now, that when I analyse their products, I always assume the worst, because of their "lawyer-talk". For your choice in memory, read the customer reviews in the Newegg page, to get some idea as to what to expect. With that product, as soon as the computer is assembled, your Windows repair or clean install is finished, I would run Orthos to verify everything is OK. Memtest86+ is a good thing to run from a floppy, first, before booting into Windows, but you'll also need to test with Orthos, as it tests in a more stressful way than memtest86+ does. Orthos should run for hours, without stopping or reporting an error. I would get the same memory as soon as I could to have 2 gigs of DDR2. From other reviews, people seem to like it. http://www.memtest.org ( http://www.memtest.org/download/1.70....70.floppy.zip ) http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm I have heard of memtest, just never used it. Never heard of Orthos, thanks for the links. I also like that fact that it has sata 2. Again, thank you for taking the time to look and give me this information. It is helping me. Good luck, Paul |
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