Is it worth upgrading from 1700 to 2600?

[Lager]

i'm thinking about upgrading from amd xp 1700 to xp 2600. is it worth the upgrade and will i see significant improvement from upgrading? should i just save my money or is the upgrade worth it? tia for your suggestions.

 

[TStep]

If you don't mind overclocking and are able to do so component wise, I'd give that go first. Many TBred B 1700+ make 2.0ghz no problem. That is on par with a 2700+. Should feel a bit snappier for $0.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

it would really help to know the rest of your system in order to let you know if you would get "significant improvement" or not. also, "improvement" in what-- games? are there specific ones you play?

and the other poster was correct. if you have a Tbred B 1700+, then there is a good chance, with good cooling, you could easily overclock that cpu to beyond 2600+ levels. do you know the letters/numbers on the chip?

 

[Sonic587]

What are your specs?

 

[Mik3y]

Originally posted by: TStep
If you don't mind overclocking and are able to do so component wise, I'd give that go first. Many TBred B 1700+ make 2.0ghz no problem. That is on par with a 2700+. Should feel a bit snappier for $0.

unless he has a good enuff mobo, ram, and juice in is psu, he wont be able to oc very well.

 

[Lager]

For gaming, but not too much. 1024MB RAM 2100, XP Home, 420W PSU, good cooling (cooler master) and a7n8x motherboard.

 

[skyking]

ram could end up being the bottleneck. try changing the multiplier from the stock setting, go to 13 or so. It should do that easy at stock voltage, if it is like 95% of the 1700's. that would be 1730 mhz, up from 1466.

 

[CJP]

I just upgraded from a P4 1.8 to a P4 2.6 that may be comparable to what you're thinking of doing. Windows is a bit snappier and I can go up a resolution or two in games but nothing dramatic.

 

[Jen]

go with a 2600+ mobile if it will work with your board

if you cant change multiplier in bios then use pin mod technique or buy tmc-xp multiplier changer. cost of the multiplier changer is 30 plus shipping


then you can overclock it some or leave at stock , i found the extra cache on the barton processors and overclockability of them a very good improvement over the t bred



Jen

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: Jen
go with a 2600+ mobile if it will work with your board

if you cant change multiplier in bios then use pin mod technique or buy tmc-xp multiplier changer. cost of the multiplier changer is 30 plus shipping


then you can overclock it some or leave at stock , i found the extra cache on the barton processors and overclockability of them a very good improvement over the t bred



Jen

i read somewhere on this forum that ppl tend to ignore previous messages, and god do they ever.

Originally posted by: Lager
For gaming, but not too much. 1024MB RAM 2100, XP Home, 420W PSU, good cooling (cooler master) and a7n8x motherboard

tada! right there, an nForce 2 mobo, he can change multi, and he can use XP Mobiles, hey lager, you really won't notice a difference from a 1700+ up to a 2600+, in your situation, just bump up the multi like everyone said, and hold off till you can afford/want an Athlon 64 rig, no sense in going up through an abandoned platform

 

[DAPUNISHER]

no sense in going up through an abandoned platform

Considering nV and Via have new chipsets for sktA with features such as native SATA and gigbit, and that AMD is making a Sempron line for it I'd say it's far from being abandoned

 

[Lager]

Ok, I'll overclock instead of upgrading and wait until the prices on the amd64 drop.

 

[Lager]

Originally posted by: skyking
ram could end up being the bottleneck. try changing the multiplier from the stock setting, go to 13 or so. It should do that easy at stock voltage, if it is like 95% of the 1700's. that would be 1730 mhz, up from 1466.

do i need to overclock the memory also or not a good idea? can i just bump the multiplier only? would that still give me a good overclock even though the ram is at default?

 

[S4M33R]

yes, but it depends on what you do and how good your video card is (if your talking about gaming)

edit: and your motherboard
edit 2: and your ram

 

[skyking]

Originally posted by: Lager

Originally posted by: skyking
ram could end up being the bottleneck. try changing the multiplier from the stock setting, go to 13 or so. It should do that easy at stock voltage, if it is like 95% of the 1700's. that would be 1730 mhz, up from 1466.

do i need to overclock the memory also or not a good idea? can i just bump the multiplier only? would that still give me a good overclock even though the ram is at default?

It sounds like you are new to overclocking, so I suggested just a multiplier change to keep it simple, for starters.
It is a very mixed bag of results when you talk about overclocking pc2100. some folks get it to 166 and tight timings almost effortlessly, adn others can't get past 145.
You have a feature that will lock the AGP and PCI busses to 66 and 33, which helps greatly, but I think you have to enable it in the BIOS.
In the days before such a feature, there were no-man's lands, areas where you could go with the ram that would put the PCI bus out of spec too much, causing all sorts of hard drive data corruption.

 

[Zim Hosein]

Originally posted by: Lager
i'm thinking about upgrading from amd xp 1700 to xp 2600. is it worth the upgrade and will i see significant improvement from upgrading? should i just save my money or is the upgrade worth it? tia for your suggestions.

What brand of memory do you have coldcut?

 

[Lager]

Originally posted by: skyking

Originally posted by: Lager

Originally posted by: skyking
ram could end up being the bottleneck. try changing the multiplier from the stock setting, go to 13 or so. It should do that easy at stock voltage, if it is like 95% of the 1700's. that would be 1730 mhz, up from 1466.

do i need to overclock the memory also or not a good idea? can i just bump the multiplier only? would that still give me a good overclock even though the ram is at default?

It sounds like you are new to overclocking, so I suggested just a multiplier change to keep it simple, for starters.
It is a very mixed bag of results when you talk about overclocking pc2100. some folks get it to 166 and tight timings almost effortlessly, adn others can't get past 145.
You have a feature that will lock the AGP and PCI busses to 66 and 33, which helps greatly, but I think you have to enable it in the BIOS.
In the days before such a feature, there were no-man's lands, areas where you could go with the ram that would put the PCI bus out of spec too much, causing all sorts of hard drive data corruption.

i see. i'll just keep the memory at default and just change the multiplier. yes, i'm very new to overclocking.

 

[Lager]

is pentium 4 hyperthreading faster or the amd64 processor?

 

[Yuriman]

Depends, AMD64 is faster in most games and a few apps, while the good old P4 can multitask much better, and be very good in games, but not quite as fast as the 64, and be much better in Media encoding and such.

If you game, get AMD64, if you do ALL kinds of stuff and game, Get p4.