lamba said:
Hi There,
I was wondering if this would be a good upgrade for me. I am on a
limited budget. I am not a real gamer. The game I am currently playing
is Fable - The Lost Chapters. I also do video and photo editing. I
would like to keep my AGP card because I just put a Zalman Led VGS
colr VF700LED-ALCU (modified to fit) on the card.
My system specs are:
AI7 Pentium 4 motherboad
1 GB of ocz memory (512 x 2)
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB)
2.8 Pentium 4 CPU
WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 SATA II
WDC WD1600JD-75HBC0 SATA I
ASUS CRW-5224A (52x/24x/52x CD-RW)
LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-527T (52x CD-ROM)
TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M
Ultra ULT31841 V-Series 500 Watt power supply.
My motherboard CPU an memory would be going to my son to upgrade his
Pentium III based system. He just bought a Nvidia graphics card.
Thank you for any help!
Laurie
To start with, the best way to get responses to your question, is to
start a fresh thread. People will assume your posting is replying to
the original question for this thread, which is a discussion about
registered memory.
That motherboard is 865PE based, which is a fine choice for a chipset.
The only time the 865PE kicks up a fuss, is if you try raising the
memory clock too high. Some people have noticed video artifacts when
the memory is overclocked a lot. The 875P was supposed to be a bit
better for that, and 875P could go to DDR600.
Looking at the picture here, I see the CPU socket is mounted at an
angle, which is a bit strange. I'd want to be sure that the heatsink
makes good contact with the CPU. I prefer to see the whole heat spreader
make contact, for best cooler performance. My 2.8GHz currently peaks
at about 46C or so, running Orthos.
http://www.shopbot.com.au/p-7834-181678.html
For processors, there are a couple families of 2.8GHz. There is
Northwood (the one in my computer) and there is Prescott. The Prescott
might run a bit hotter.
You can use Google, searching for "AI7 problem" to see if anyone has
had problems with that particular motherboard.
The AGP 6600GT is a mid-range card. You might find the cooler a bit
loud on it. The problem with such cards, is finding a good after-market
cooler, if you want to try a quieter cooling solution. There aren't a lot
of alternatives available. The reason for this, is the location of the
HSI bridge chip, near the card connector, means the GPU sits higher than
normal, and thus a lot of after-market coolers won't fit.
For the larger hard drive, you'd probably be wanting to be running
WinXP SP2 or Win2K SP4. If the OS is bundled with the machine, check
WGA (windows genuine advantage) and software updates, to make sure the
license key is unique, and not shared with someone else.
I'm picky about power supplies, and I probably would not buy an Ultra
for a new system. As long as it is working OK, I'd leave it in there.
My video card is a bit weaker than yours, and for my gaming, I found
that overclocking my processor a bit, made the game run smoother.
That is just to give you some kind of idea, as to whether 2.8GHz is
enough or not. I have a total of 1GB of memory, like you, and noticed
a bit of hesitation in games, at 2.8GHz. At 3.2GHz, things seemed to be
a bit better. Sometimes small changes are all that is required.
Paul
