Well, I have come to the point of considering a modest upgrade to my rig because I have found that FS9 in particular is increasingly hurting performance, especially around major airports with lots of AI. However, since I am not particularly interested in any present games and therefore want to keep my rig going for just another one or two years (unless something should break ;) ), I wouldn't want to spend an awful lot of money right now and really don't have the nerve to reformat and reinstall everything at this time.You can see my current specs in my signature. Considering these, I was thinking about adding another 512 megs of RAM to my system, and possibly going for the fastest Athlon XP CPU my board will allow. I think that would be the 2800 MHz variant, though I was wondering if my MB would also accept the 3000. My CPU cooler is good up to the 3400 variant if I believe the specs.I have a rev. 1.0x A7N8X standard main board running the 1.007 BIOS, which should be the latest for this batch of the A7N8X. Do any of you happen to know if this BIOS also provides compatibility with CPUs beyond the 2800 variant? I'd very much appreciate to hear your thoughts on my proposals :) .

If you have a PCB version 1.04 or later, it will accomodate up to an XP 3200+ 400 FSB Barton. The version number is printed on the PCB between PCI slot 2 and 3. Hope this helps.

I looked and found I have a version 1.06 board :) .

Have you tried to up the FSB from 166 to 200 on your current processor?

Could I try this without killing my present CPU and memory? The XP 2500 I got and the memory are specified for 166 MHz.

You could try, but it is a craps shoot :-) It was mearly a suggestion to avoid having to invest in a new CPU as those 2500's were stellar overclockers. Most would run at the same speed as the 3200 right out of the box, especially the Mobile units. That being said, if your memory isn't up to it, there's a good chance it wouldn't boot at the higher FSB.

Yes, I think I got one of those 2500s which could be easily overclocked, but I don't really feel comfortable with such things. I did consider it some time ago, but I wouldn't want to kill my system if something would have gone wrong.

Hi Dominik, perhaps get yourself a pair of PC3200 modules before you do so? If you don't have them and switch the FSB frequency and as Jim mentioned, the system might not boot and you'll need to reset the CMOS. With PC3200 modules it should work fine if you have one of those old Bartons. Good luck and kind regards Jaap