Jack Carr Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 I'm considering a motherboard upgrade for my machine. My current board is an ASUS A7V8X. My processor is an AMD XP 2800+ Thoroughbred 2.25ghz 333 bus. My motherboard bus is 266. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of upgrade? Being that the bus on the MOBO does not keep up with the processor and the RAM, PC2700 also 333, can I expect to see an appreciable performance boost of any kind? Thanks 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 To see a speedup you need faster RAM, a motherboard that allows it and a CPU that uses it. If I understand you correctly you have 333MHz RAM and your CPU uses 333 MHz but your motherboard limits you to 266 and you are considering upgrading to one that also allows 333 MHz. You will not be able to see this speedup in any kind of game, video encoding or whatever. Only applications with special memory bandwidth requirements like large compilations of source code, video (large file) copying and similar will show a minimal speedup. Granted a new motherboard for this is only $60 but still it is a waste of money and time to replace it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted March 18, 2004 Share Posted March 18, 2004 Had an A7V8X. Make sure it is below the rev 1.4 version--which I doubt yours is since you are running the 2800 at 333mhz. The real issue with those mobos is RAM. You can only run one slot at 3200, or 2 slots at 2700. And there is no dual channel option. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Carr Posted March 18, 2004 Author Share Posted March 18, 2004 Originally posted by redwolf: To see a speedup you need faster RAM, a motherboard that allows it and a CPU that uses it. If I understand you correctly you have 333MHz RAM and your CPU uses 333 MHz but your motherboard limits you to 266 and you are considering upgrading to one that also allows 333 MHz. You will not be able to see this speedup in any kind of game, video encoding or whatever. Only applications with special memory bandwidth requirements like large compilations of source code, video (large file) copying and similar will show a minimal speedup. Granted a new motherboard for this is only $60 but still it is a waste of money and time to replace it. Thanks for the advice. The motherboard I was considering is $146 which makes it even worse. Also, I've been doing some reading and this is not as easy as it would seem. There is a good chance that I would have to blank my hard drive and reinstall the operating system in order to successfully make the transition to the new board. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Carr Posted March 18, 2004 Author Share Posted March 18, 2004 Originally posted by WWB: Had an A7V8X. Make sure it is below the rev 1.4 version--which I doubt yours is since you are running the 2800 at 333mhz. The real issue with those mobos is RAM. You can only run one slot at 3200, or 2 slots at 2700. And there is no dual channel option. WWB Correct. That is a drawback. I currently have two 512mb modules of PC2700. Can't use the third slot because of this limitation. If I ever upgraded to a AMD XP 3200+ and wanted to keep the memory up to speed I could only use one stick in this motherboard. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted March 19, 2004 Share Posted March 19, 2004 Just as a datapoint, I just upgraded my i875 based system with 2.8C Pentium-4 from single channel RAM (one module) to dual-channel RAM (two modules). In theory that doubles the data access rate to RAM from 400MHz to 800MHz. It took a major effort to come up with benchmarks that show any difference. The reason is pretty obvious and that is that the caches in modern CPUs are pretty effective and hence you need really unusual program patterns to hit actual RAM often enough to see the difference. I should mention that the new modules are ECC and might be a little slower module by module than my old RAM. But still it is obvious that upgrading memory bandwidth alone is not the right way to invest system upgrade money. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted March 19, 2004 Share Posted March 19, 2004 I would have to echo what redwolf said. Having just upgraded from a 2000+/A7N8X to a 2500+/A7V8X I would point out that it was not really worth it insofar as speed went. Minor benefits but nothing amazing. A7N8X boards cannot run at 3200+, as that processor requires 400mhz FSB, which those boards cannot do IIRC. The jury is still out on weather or not ram faster than PC2700 is worth it anyhow. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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