ECS K7S5A + Duron 1300 good upgrade from a P3 650 and a Celeron 466?

[bozack]

Hello,

Looking to upgrade two machines, my fiancees and my own....She currently has a Celeron 466 on an Abit BM6 with 256 MB PC 100 Memory, I have a P3 650 on a Bh6 with 256 PC 133 memory. I want to spend as little as possible and see a noticable performance increase while retaining most of my older hardware (cases, powersupplies etc...) and I wanted to keep the systems somewhat similar....

The other hardware is as follows:

We both have 300w ATX Powersupplies (Hers is an Antec mine is something else which I cannot remember)
Soundblaster Live and Soundblaster Xgamer
Intel 10/100 Nics
She currently have a V3 2000 PCI but I will be giving her my Radeon 32 DDR as I will be upgrading to a Radeon 8500 LE

Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[bravesfan258]

You should expect to see a nice improvement moving to a K7S5A/Duron 1300 system. You can certainly re-use the PC133 memory, although I'm not sure about the PC100.

You'll hear a lot of people say you need a 550 watt sparkle PS to run a K7S5A, but I think that's BS. I'm running a 1700XP on this board just fine with a 300 watt Antec PS.

One last question - with Newegg.com selling the 1600XP for around 55$, and the K7S5a around $55 as well, why go with the Duron 1300? Is this part of a Fry's combo deal? You may want to consider the 1600 in any case.

Good luck with the upgrade.

 

[bozack]

Hey,

Forgot about newegg as I do most of my shopping through Mwave...I will check them out.

I thought the Duron would work with PC100? oh well even if it won't I can still pick up some DDR for her cheap, either that or give her my PC 133 and I would get the DDR as she only uses it for web surfing anyway.

Thanks.

 

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

I think that you should go with an Athlon XP 1600+ since they are so cheap @ newegg.com. You can get a mobo for this processor @ around $70. I am also not sure about the ram.

I hope this helps!

 

[pitupepito2000]

I forgot also another good place to buy your computer components is googlegear.com. They usuallly have better prices than newegg, and they are as good as newegg. When you get ram, get good ddr ram.

Also unless you upgrade frequently. I would suggest you to pick a mobo with USB 2.0, and raid. The usb 2.0 will be used a lot for different things in the future, and even if you don't use the raid, it's nice to have four ide connectors.

I hope this helps!

My favorite brands are ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte.
My suggestion is that you should get a motherboard based on the KT3 models. The KT4 models are more expensive and don't perform that much better.

 

[John]

I thought the Duron would work with PC100? oh well even if it won't I can still pick up some DDR for her cheap, either that or give her my PC 133 and I would get the DDR as she only uses it for web surfing anyway.

The Duron is a 100FSB cpu so it will work with PC100.

 

[Rickr]

It depends on what you use the computer for. I have three computers at home (an Athlon XP 1700 on the ECSK7S5A, a p3-600, and a celeron 633). All surf the web at the same speed. The Athlon system is much better for gaming, but if all you are doing is surfing or using MS Office, examine your current system to see what is making it slow. For example, maybe a 7200 RPM hard drive will give you a speed boost. Maybe a clean install of Windows is all you need...

Upgrading as you suggested is cheap, but it takes a lot of time and aggravation to actually do it!