PC upgrade

PhilipMarlowe

Some advice please...(i am not a techno head...forgive my ignorance)...

At home i have a p2 350 with 128mb 100ram and a pci graphics card..
ok...i have a voodoo5 5500 on its way to me..

Now i know that this spec machine wont realise the full potential of the new card as the mb is a 440bx (only 2x agp support?), but it should help me quite a bit..

I am considering upgrading the pc and wondered about the best way to do this..

I called the guys who sold me the pc and they gave me some advice... a new motherboard seems the biz but it works at 133hz or something... is there any way that my old stick of 128mb ram will work in this new board or do i have to pay £450 + vat for 256mb of 133ram? ...seems way too dear for my liking...
btw...what are these prices like..?

board (sry forget the name) @ £160
piii 700 processor @ £310
256mb 133ram @ 450....all above exclude vat...

cant remember the name of the board but it has 4x agp support and seems like it has loads of stuff...

If i bought stuff myself, how difficult is it to assemble the bits properly...remember i also like the comfort of sending it back when there is a problem....

Regards...

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Gerry

Ok, first of all dont run out and buy a motherboard just because of agp 4x. If the bx board is any good, it will be able to run your new chip, even at 133mhz bus speed. Also it will be faster than the board that you are talking about with 4x agp. Agp speed doesnt matter a damn above 2x, and I don't think the voodoo even has agp texturing. ie I dont think it cares whether you have agp at all. Thats why they also sell pci versions of such a powerful video card. I have a bx motherboard, and it runs a 600 p3 at 1 ghz. The only reason that you will not be taking full advantage of the voodoo is your cpu. If you tell me what make and model of motherboard you have I will tell you if you need a new one. But if you get a new one it should be based on the bx. As far as the prices go, I can provide all the parts you have listed, although with the same model of motherboard as the one I am using, for £50 (roughly) less, but inclusive of vat

[This message has been edited by Gerry (edited 27-06-2000).]

SickBoy

Ok its like this I think, If your getting a system based on a 133bus it can't be a BX based system unless there overclocking it. At this stage its either i8xx or VIA chipset. Looking at the price of the RAM it sounds like its RAMBUS and not SDRAM so its pointing in the direction of an i8xx chipset.
I'm with Gerry on this one, BX isn't dead yet by a long shot. Get something like an Abit BE6-2 or something from Tyan or Asus. There all good solid overclockers. Also get a PIII600e and overclock the shìte out of it! With good PC133 SDRAM and proper cooling in a good motherboard its very possible to get that 600e to run on a 133Mhz bus which would mean the chip would run at 800Mhz!!! nice

Gerry

If you overclock a bx system to 133, the only thing you are overclocking is the agp, and most new graphics cards are ok with that. The abit be6-2 is the motherboard I use, and the one I included in the price. It runs my 600e at 167mhz bus, which gives 1004 mhz.

SickBoy

Gerry thats a truely noble overclock there!
Congrats

PhilipMarlowe

Thank's for the advice lads...

I just got delivery of my Voodoo 5 5500 today and i'll have a go at smackin that in place tonight....after that i think i'll wait and see what i might or might not do...
..not the flushest with funds at the moment so an upgrade that will cost me £1k is unfortunately sliding down the list of priorities..

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info@licksy.net

[This message has been edited by Licksy20 (edited 29-06-2000).]