Motherboard/Processor Advice

Campbell685 said:

Hey guys,

I'm thinking about installing a new motherboard and/or processor in my machine. What I've got in there now is an AOpen AX3S(Pro) and an Intel Pentium IIIE 800MHz. I was thinking about upping the pocessor to an AMD Sempron 2500+ or 2800+. I'm not positive on which motherboard this would fit in to, so if anybody could help me out on that I'd appreciate it. The motherboard has to have 4 or 5 PCI slots and an AGP slot for my NVIDIA video card.

Thanks a lot,
John

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your gonna need the Socket A cpu, Semprons are fine and a little cheaper, but if you got the extra cash, then go XP2500+ barton, more L2 cache
Asus and gigabyte mobo socket A NF2 is good, why do you need 5 pci slots, that may not be available, new boards have on board LAN and sound so you wont need your current ones, your gfx card may be ok it just depends on the slot voltage as was mentioned would need more info on card to know.
You will need PC3200 DDR400 ram 512 recommended
You should run your new system on Win2000pro or XP
Also need what case and psu you have currently, you should have a 400 watt min/ quality ATX psu, ie, Antec, Coolmax, Sparle, Enlight, your case should have a min of 2 80mm fans, more would be better to keep new cpu cool.

I checked your mobo and it says it has agp 4x so you should be able to use your gfx card if you like. your current ram will not work though only PC100/133

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=13-128-257&DEPA=1

you cant beat this mobo for price and brand etc., just built 2 pc with this one, worked great with Sempron 2400+ cpu, Corsair Select ram 512 PC3200

I must be thinking of 6 pci boards being rare, 5 seems to be ok, however I would recommend you use on board LAN, it is way faster than pci card type.

obvious said:

socket a semprons suck, they are simply an older model athlonxp with a new name (throughbread-B core, no heat spreader, so a badly placed heatsink/fan will damage it) its not very overclockable either. if sempron is the must for you, go for the socket754 sempron 3100+ (which is an athlon64 minus the 64 bit part of it)

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Just to clarify, they really dont suck, they are an older core that use to run at 266, and are now made to run 333 fsb, they run the same as barton 333, less L2 cache 256 instead of 512, however i do agree if youre overclocking stick with barton 2500+