Uh oh. Looks like I'm looking into upgrading again.
Because my current PC requires a lot of PCI slots (and upgrading to similar USB, firewire, SCSI, sound, and PhysX cards for PCI express would cost more than it's worth) I'm stuck about two generations behind everyone else and am always trying new things to squeeze more performance out of my system.
Right now I use an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ with an MSI K7N2 Delta2-LSR and 3GB of ram but recently I came across a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 (freeeeee!). I wanted to see if it was better than my Athlon 3000+ and this review shows that it is slightly better however I'm having trouble with the trade-offs:
1-To upgrade, I need to locate a Socket 478 motherboard with AGP, PCI, SATA, and support for either DDR or DDR2 ram.
2-Apparently the Northwood Pentium 4 processors gave off insane amounts of heat.
Considering that locating a new board would cost around $150 (+ $50-$75 if the board needs DDR2 ram), is it still worth the upgrade or should I just look for an Athlon XP 3200+ and live with what I got?
EDIT: Here's the kind of board I am looking at should I upgrade.
Because my current PC requires a lot of PCI slots (and upgrading to similar USB, firewire, SCSI, sound, and PhysX cards for PCI express would cost more than it's worth) I'm stuck about two generations behind everyone else and am always trying new things to squeeze more performance out of my system.
Right now I use an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ with an MSI K7N2 Delta2-LSR and 3GB of ram but recently I came across a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 (freeeeee!). I wanted to see if it was better than my Athlon 3000+ and this review shows that it is slightly better however I'm having trouble with the trade-offs:
1-To upgrade, I need to locate a Socket 478 motherboard with AGP, PCI, SATA, and support for either DDR or DDR2 ram.
2-Apparently the Northwood Pentium 4 processors gave off insane amounts of heat.
Considering that locating a new board would cost around $150 (+ $50-$75 if the board needs DDR2 ram), is it still worth the upgrade or should I just look for an Athlon XP 3200+ and live with what I got?
EDIT: Here's the kind of board I am looking at should I upgrade.
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