cody - why would you spend the extra $$ on a athlon when you can get a duron 750 for $40 or an 850 for around $70-$80. You're not really gonna notice a speed difference with it anyway, you need to concentrate on a newer, faster harddrive and more ram and vid, forget getting a fast cpu until the rest of the system can handle it, otherwise you'll have a huge bottleneck in your system and the speed and performance will suffer.
 
[This message has been edited by EddiE314 (edited 27 March 2001).]

Well, if your gonna get a new chip, it might not be a bad idea, but it depends on how much more it is for the T-Bird 900 over the Duron 850. On average, the Duron can pull 90% of the T-Bird. Id say shoot for it, but be a little conservative on the OC this time. Athlons are cheap, but I dont want to buy more parts than necessary. Then with the money you dont spend fixing things, you can buy some newfangled part.

exactly, instead of repairing or upgrading the cpu and mobo every few months, shoot for a balanced system, not a fast CPU.Back when i had dual celeron 400's, i upgraded to dual celeron 500@550's, guess how many seconds got shaved off my boot time.......2! I got about 4-8 extra fps in quake 3 arena and about 10 extra fps with SMP enabled. Not a very big difference huh? you know why it was not that big of difference? udma33 5400rpm hard drive and a voodoo3 2000. As you can see, it wasn't worth it for me to upgrade for just 2 seconds and 10 fps.

Yup. I got a Duron 800-now 904-and incresed some, but when I dropped the $100 on a GF2MX that made the difference...like 2000 (yes 2000) points on 3dmark. Also, if you set your cas and timings to 2t instead of 3t, it can speed up your system a little bit. But the prob is if you dont have ram that can run at that speed, you'll have problems.
Real good advice: GET X-SETUP!
Uhh lets see it: enables nVidia cards clock adjustment feature (works with the 10.80s), encreases efficency, what ever TweakUI does and a whole lot more.
Also, getting the latest bios helps tremendously. Ive got the Asus A7V and updated to the 1007 bios. I had problems fixed that I didnt know were issues with the bios.
Plus, the Bios is FREE!
What can I say, Im a cheap .
And you should be too.
Only upgrade what is going to give you a major bang for the buck.
Remember its the Durons and Celerons and GeForce 2 MX's that make you a damn good box...if you get the right components.

i agree totally.

Well i was gonna get the athlon 900,geforce 2 64 meg vid card and a s tick of 256. but i want to know if the 256 is high density it is by micron but what is it. okay i want a new hard drive but what kind should i get?i was thinkin a ibm deskstar or something like that

well is it

Well, where are you getting it from. If its from Micron, duh. Micron memory should have MT on the chips. Or you could just ask the guy you're getting it from.
Having a better video card is always a good thing. A GeForce2 MX is a stellar card for the price. The next speed upgrade will probably cost you another $100 to go from a MX to a GTS.

new system specs now
amd ahtlon 850
dfi ak-74 mobo
5x dvd
nvidia geforce 2 mx with tv out
mtec 256 megs of ram pc 133
and everything else is still the same
 
 
but i got to get a new mobo because it fried too

Get an Asus A7V or A7V133. Sweet boards, man.
They are a little frustrating to get running, but in the end, its very well worth it. The only really bad thing about the board is the worthless CNR slot on it. Geez, there couldve been another PCI slot or an ISA slot instead.
If you just OC by the FSB, you wont be able to get it completely stable past 113MHz.
But go for the best one in your area.

where is the cheapest place to get one?

you know what brian? when i first got on nt, you seemed like you didn't like me and now you're cool a sh1t.but thank you for the info and you too ed

I didnt want to come off as an @ss, but I wanted to make sure you werent trying to pull a stunt to say you had the best computer. The reason for this is because when I joined up, there was this guy who thought his PC was the stuff. Needless to say, the forum swarmed on him. Hes posted once since we put him back in his place. I didnt want you to start one of those.
 
BTW, ive got a much better OC of my GF2MX. Ive heard the GTS cards might be able to hit 240 on the clocks, but thats it. On both the core and the ram clocks are running 200+ MHz.
 
As for the A7V, they are kinda expensive ~$150 at least, I paid 189 for it, but I consider that a good trade off in case the board goes bad then you wont be as stuck as if you did it through mail-order. Dont ever get things from Tiger Direct. My dad did, but he never got replacements for them when some parts didnt work.
The A7V may be cheaper since the A7V133 is out now. Id personally suggest looking locally for a new board. I havent heard much about that DFI board, but I have seen seen reviews of the FIC AZ-11e. That is better suited for overclocking than the FIC AZ-11, and is also more stable from what Ive read.
The AZ-11e doesnt have the bells and whistles of the A7V or Abit KT7/A-line, but its gotten some good reviews.
Go for the best board that you can afford.
 
[This message has been edited by Brian Frank (edited 29 March 2001).]

just thought I should mention my 1.1ghz AVHA Tbird(b)is now running at 1400(140x10) at default voltage with no temperature increase from 133x10
 
thank you
 
I'll take it higher after I break it in at this speed for a week
 
I want to stay at 1.5 and not worry...
 
I saw her once...I wanna see her again
 
Oh..and this is on an A7V133
 
[This message has been edited by INFERNO2000 (edited 30 March 2001).]

Ooooooh! Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Thats sweet.
I love to see the extras overclocking gives you.

Hey, Pimpin, got your new mobo picked out yet?

Sorry boys the comp was down yes i got a new one picked out the ---Abit KT7A-RAID ------pretty sweet check it out http://www.tccomputers.com
it's pretty sweet it supports raid and i glad i didn't turn out to be a guber.

Well, now the L1 bridge pencil trick isnt critcal to overclocking. The only thing you need to worry about now is having PC133 ram.
Ive heard that the A7V series and the KT7-line are the only ones to fool with if you want the real power. Not to say other boards are bad, but these lines are the pinnacle right now.
Here's to overclocking.
 
BTW, make sure youve got a good HSF to keep your investment from burning up this time.

Sadly, you have to copy and paste, since geocities doesn't allow linking.
 
http://www.geocities.com/reaper_computer_systems/NEoutside.jpg
 
http://www.geocities.com/reaper_computer_systems/NEinside1.jpg
 
http://www.geocities.com/reaper_computer_systems/DESK.jpg
 
http://www.geocities.com/reaper_computer_systems/Desktop.jpg
 
http://www.geocities.com/reaper_computer_systems/WCPUID.jpg
 
>this isn't (directly) computer related. But, what the hell.
http://www.geocities.com/reaper_computer_systems/BMC.jpg
 
[This message has been edited by INFERNO2000 (edited 01 April 2001).]

Apparently, my logic was faulty on my case choice that I picked up today at computer show. I drilled some holes right where a fan inside my case is--dropped the temp a little.
Funny, I thought a bigger case would be a bit cooler. Oh well, I'll just buy more fans then.
Just a word of warning to all cosidering full tower cases.
 
Hey, Pimpin, hows the computer coming along now?