computer upgrade questions

HI,
I have a few computer upgrade questions. I currently have a KG7-Raid mobo and I want to buy a at7-max2. THe questions that I have are is that I have 4 DIMMS of 256 MB 2100 DDR-RAM registered and i don't buying new ram. I will be buying a 2700 AMD chip with the 333 mhz bus. Will i still be able to get the 333 mHZ bus with the olde ram?

Second question, I bought a full tower case and I notice that since this board has a sound card built in the back layout is a littel different and the metal panel on the back of my case doesnt look like the back of the new board. The motherboard tray is removable, but is there anyway I can just get update the small back place of the trey instead of buying a new case?

Thanks,
Mike

 

Hi bloncecanuck.

First question - The cpu will run fine at 333 with the 2100 memory. You will be able to run the 2100 memory on that new motherboard. You might even be able to overclock it to 333 but if not it will run at the 2100.

Second question - A small plate punched for the shape of the backplane plugs should be packed with the motherboard. You can check this out for certain by emailing any site that sells that Abit motherboard.

Hope this helps.

 

Ok, so is the memory speed and the CPU bus speed totally different?

 

Hmmm.... PC2100 only runs at 266 Mhz. So we're going to feed a 333Mhz FSB with memory running at 266 Mhz - I can't see that being a stable system.

There is a model 8 XP 2600 (suffix c) that has a 266 FSB - there's only a 34 Mhz speed difference between it and the model 8 XP 2700 you are considering Bloncecanuck, but you wouldn't be puttting any extra load on your 266 Mhz PC2100 ram with the 2600.

If you go to AMD here and type FSB in the search box, answer 4 will give you the specs on all the Athlon processors.

FSB explained here.

No disrespect intended just voicing my thoughts.

Cheers,

Ice

 

Hi iceolated.

You're quite right however Abit motherboards have the SoftMenu capability whereby you can control the cpu FSB and clock speed (if the cpu allows setting the clock speed) and the memory speed.

I'm running an Abit SA7 and can run a 2.0 P4 cpu up to a little over 3Gigs with PC2700 memory. I can control the memory separately within a range.

The Abit boards are great overclockers. I ran a BH6 with a 566 Celeron overclocked to 849MHz for a long time. Worked perfectly.

Even tho, it might be better to pose these questions to ABIT before making a final decision. The best place to do this is the ABIT forums. They are monitored by Abit techs who usually answer promptly. Go to http://forum.abit-usa.com. Register and have at it. Enjoy.

 

Hi Giles,

Not having owned an Abit board myself I wasn't aware of that feature - seems like a nifty tool. I must keep that feature in mind.

Personally, If I were to by an XP 2700 running at 333 Mhz on the FSB (assuming I could convince the wife that was necessary ) I would want 333 Mhz Ram as well. I don't think it's worth the money to buy the processor and then couple it to slower ram, especially when there are other processors with marginally slower speeds that are mated to the speed of the ram....I feel I'm just handicapping the processor when we 'turn it down' to work with the slower memory.

Of course this is all my own personal preference and is obviously not founded on the same considerations that others may use in their processor selection.

It's just that I only get new 'toys' on rare occasions so one has to exploit those opportunites!!

Cheers,

ICE

 

Hi isolated.

Quite right. Not all Abit boards have the full controls in the softmenu but they are nice. The cost of ram is down quite a bit from where it was but it still adds up. The old ram will run interchangeable with new ram so purchasing new modules and selling the old ones over a bit of time is an effective way to upgrade.

The optimum setup would be to match the components to the motherboard as much as possible. Gives better performance in the long run and more stable. Even at that most computers do not run their memory correctly. Check out http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20030701/index.html which is an article titled "How to Speed up Your RAM ". You can set up the BIOS to reflect the type of RAM you have and almost double the effective speed. I would venture to say that at least 60% of computers are running slower than they have to and probably 40% quite a bit slower. With these fast computers most people don't notice. It also isn't a good thing to mess around with the BIOS settings if you haven't been there and done that. I usually open up the computer and disconnect the hard drives when setting up cpu and memory settings and work with test routines in DOS. That way I can lay a pattern in memory and let it sit there for several hours and then read it out and see if anything changed. For heavy duty checks I run Prime95 but you have to watch cpu temp with Prime95. It loads the cpu down pretty heavy and works the heck out of the memory.