Upgrading mobo but want to keep cpu

pinipatel

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Joined
28 Jun 2002
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Hi guys,

I've come into a little spare cash, and thinking about a wee upgrade...

currently, I have Athlon t-bird 1.4 ghz

2 x 256mb 133mhz sdram

abit kt7a (v1.1) mobo. (no raid)

i can't really upgrade the cpu anymore with this mobo, since this is the max it will support, so i'm looking for a new motherboard that will hold the 1.4 athlon and the sdram memory, but will also let me 'futureproof' for a while so that i can upgrade cpu to athlon xp and memory to ddr at some point in the future.

a mobo with all the clever stuff like 10/100 and 6 channel sound would be nice.

any ideas?
 
Finding a board with both sdram and ddr ram is your downfall

There is not a great deal of decent options ..best bet would be to get a board that runs DDR ram, I would suggest waiting and saving your cash up some more ...


maybe someone will find something but again its the sdram that is going to hold you back ....:)
 
kermit's somewhat right. if you limit yourself to a sdr + ddr motherboard, your not going to have many options and none of them will be new chipsets.

but there are some decent options...

MSI KT2 Combo-L


Shuttle AK32E


both of them are KT266A chipset motherboards which isn't bad, but they're no KT333, KT400 or nForce2. both have usb 2.0 and support up to athlon xp 2600+ (i think the shuttle does).
 
Hi guys,

the MSI board looks pretty funky, and will cost approx £50 inc p&p. from dabs.com so I may go for it...

does anyone else have any suggestions or warnings?

thanks
 
Abit and Chaintech(which I use) supplied mobos that did not originally support XP Athlons, but with Bios upgrades some can be used up to and past Athlon XP 2200+.
If not then new board will be needed.
Processor up to the current 3000+ are all Socket A, so although the FSBs supported are 333 can also support 266, with slightly reduced performance.
 
Originally posted by RogerPhillis
Abit and Chaintech(which I use) supplied mobos that did not originally support XP Athlons, but with Bios upgrades some can be used up to and past Athlon XP 2200+.
If not then new board will be needed.
Processor up to the current 3000+ are all Socket A, so although the FSBs supported are 333 can also support 266, with slightly reduced performance.
yeah, i'm wondering if his kt133a board would run, say, an athlon xp... it doesn't mention it anywhere on abit's site, but there are other kt133a boards from different manufacturer's that support up to xp 2600+'s with bios updates.

i'm betting it would work. matter of fact, i have a kt133 (not A) board with a 200fsb and i have an xp 2000+ in it right now, so it's running at a cool 1.25ghz. (100x12.5) :cool:

pinipatel... buy your new processor first (2100+ or whatever) and try it in your board. there's a decent chance it will work. if it doesn't, then go ahead and purchase the new board.
 
id scrap the SDram and go for a stick of 256mb DDR ram, that more than compensates for the lack of the extra MB.

And get an Nforce 2 board :);)
 
I Second Flatbeat_Eddy's Idea!

DDR Double Data Rate + Nforce2 Bandwidth Multiplier is awesome.
Get a stick of 256MB PC 3200 for $28 US or 512 Mb for $54 US
Not sure on S&H. or find compairable prices where your at. (Glad to live in the US here)
The performance of this upgrade would be like getting a 2.1 Ghz processor, with that crap they call SDRAM. I've got 2 1.7 Ghz systems in my office with PC133 RAM and they run 85% slower then my old 1.4 AMD T-Bird Y-Core with PC2400 DDR-RAM on a SIS 750 chipset. With the performance upgrade of the Nforce2 wow that would be sweet!
 
phew! thanks guys!

rogerphillis, taurus - i like the idea, and that would have been my first choice just to upgrade the cpu, but i've heard that i can only do it on the v1.3 kt7a motherboards, and not mine, and even then it's not guaranteed that it's going to work...


indomidable, could you give me a little more details of the system you are describing using the 1.4 Athlon? what motherboard is that using?

thanks to everyone who's replied so far... it's like getting an education on the cheap!
 

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