Looking to replace Tbird 800 . . .

I've been out of the hardware circuit for a while and I'm now looking into at least doubling the processing power of my current computer.

I have a Tbird 800 w/512 133 Ram and an Asus MB (the model number escapes me). I'm looking at the AMD XP1800+, what motherboard should I pair it with? MSI, Asus, Abit? What chipset? Via, Sis, AMD? What about the memory? Can I keep my PC-133 memory or will I have to upgrade to DDR? I understand the degraded performance, but if I need to spread this out across a couple paychecks, that MB and CPU aren't going to be sitting around. I guess I'll also have to upgrade my PSU.

I would be reading up on this myself, but so much has changed in a year and I'm hopelessly behind. There is no way I could catch up, so I need a crash course on technology evolution to this point. Thanks. I know I'm asking a lot, but I'll really appreciate the help.

no dought you will get a few replies over this one , I will go first:

Asus A7A266 m/board will take abything from <-800 duron to xp1700-> (so if you are changing from a slot A m/board and need use immediatly u can stick a very cheep duron in (to start with) the board - although some will disagree is a very good board (maybe not the fastest)

it will take either dimm OR ddr ,

i bought this board (and a Duron 800) about 4 months ago ,,,,,,and am impressed enough not to have changed the cpu yet!!!! ....was using slot 1 p3x700 ,,,,this is faster.

I just built one for my dad, he went with the AMD XP1700. I put it on and MSI K7T-266 Pro, very nice board. I got it for 92.00 and Newegg.com. It uses the DDR memory. If my memory serves me correctly, Asus had a board that ran bot SDRam and DDR (well not at the same time, it supported the memory in an either or fashion) As far as your PSU, you didnt give any details on it, so I cant really tell you anything on that other than check out AMD's website. You can check to see if its on the AMD approved list...
You may want to check into getting into the VIA KT333 chipset as well. The memory for it is a little scarce right now, not to mention expensive. But it is another option if your wanting to wait a bit and gather up some cash first...

[quote]Originally posted by cc_penguin:
<strong>I just built one for my dad, he went with the AMD XP1700. I put it on and MSI K7T-266 Pro, very nice board. I got it for 92.00 and Newegg.com. It uses the DDR memory. If my memory serves me correctly, Asus had a board that ran bot SDRam and DDR (well not at the same time, it supported the memory in an either or fashion) As far as your PSU, you didnt give any details on it, so I cant really tell you anything on that other than check out AMD's website. You can check to see if its on the AMD approved list...
You may want to check into getting into the VIA KT333 chipset as well. The memory for it is a little scarce right now, not to mention expensive. But it is another option if your wanting to wait a bit and gather up some cash first...</strong><hr></blockquote>


the board i mentioned above takes either dimm or ddr memory 3xdimm 2xddr.

If you don't want to change your memory, then the Abit KT7A-RAID (rev 1.3 or above) supports the XP CPU's. If you are thinking of going to DDR then the Abit KR7A-133R is a cracking piece of kit, with native ATA133 integrated into both the Hihpoint controller & the Southbridge.

Or you could go the P4A 2Ghz (Northwood) & Abit BD7-133R combination, which would set you back a few more dollars, but this would be my first choice though.

Okay, the PSU is a 300watt Tbird approved one from Enlight.

I was looking at the new P4's. I see that they managed to work out those rambus latency issues that they were having. I guess I should have mentioned that I'm looking for an onboard 10/100 controller. Is that an option for any of those boards that were mentioned?

[quote]Originally posted by Kymera:
<strong>I was looking at the new P4's. I see that they managed to work out those rambus latency issues that they were having. I guess I should have mentioned that I'm looking for an onboard 10/100 controller. Is that an option for any of those boards that were mentioned?</strong><hr></blockquote>

The BD7-133R uses PC2100 DDR SDRAM rather than RDRAM (and almost matches Rambus in memory benchmarks, and will probably overtake it with PC2700 DDR SDRAM). It also has a CNR socket which would be fine for a 'cheap' network interface & you would have plenty of CPU power to runit with no noticable detrimental effect on performance. I have just built 4 systems on ECS P4S5A boards using AMR modems (customer is tight and didn't want to pay for hardware modems) and I have been testing these out with P4 1.6Ghz CPUS (Willamette core) and 256Mb PC2100 DDR and been able to run a burn-in test constantly with all options set to 100%, listen to Audio CD's & surk the Net with 3 or 4 IE6 windows open, and no problems at all with pausing or stuttering of applications.

I know the Abit's don't have the option for onboard LAN, but most onboard LAN options are the cheapo Realtek chipsets which are notorius at being tempermental. With a high end system, it is worth spending the extra and buying a quality NIC such as a 3Com 3C905C 10/100.

The ECS K7s5a may be a good idea. It uses SD-Ram and DDR-ram, and uses a SiS chipset. These have had notorious problems in the past, but the version in the K7S5A works great. Also, as far as I know, the ASUS boards and other boards that allow SD and DDR ram use an Ali chupset, and the performance of this is abysimal.

The KT333 chipset is a marketing gimmic. Like the KT266 it supports 200 and 266 MHz bus speeds. It offers 333 MHz (166 DDR) memory support, but this is done asyncorusly (spelling?) and your performance is actually worse pairing a 266 MHz FSB chip and 333 MHz ram. When running FSB and RAM both at 266 or 200 it is just as fast as the KT 266.

Hope this helps.

With those VIA chipsets you gotta wait for the KT333A anyway.

Basically, I'm looking at a KT266A based board and an XP1800+. I was hoping to save a PCI slot by using an onboard modem, but if they're using a realtek chipset I'm not touching those. Of the 266A boards out there, is there any one that really stands out, or are the MSI, Gigabyte, Asus and Abit boards pretty much the same, and I should just get the one that fits the best in my case.

The KR7A-133R is the one that is standing out above all others at present (look around any of the hardware sites and you will see this). There is supposed to be a problem when all the memory banks are filled, but this could be down to memroy types used by the owners.

That Abit board is really nice. I also very much like the MSI K7T266 Pro2-RU. It may not be as fast as some other boards, the difference is minimal and only noticeable when overclocking. It does only accept DDR but that is a nice upgrade to make IMO. One thing is for sure, you can't beat the stability of this board. With on board raid and 8 usb ports including USB 2.0 you can't go wrong.

Great, thanks for the input guys. I'll be keeping more up to date with the hardware changes so this won't happen again.

The Epox 8kha+ is a nice board. It uses DDR memory and is rock solid and blazingly fast. I would be using one now if it were not for Newegg.com. My friend has one and he says that eh loves it and from what I have read in the benchmarks, everyone else does also