I'm not planning a major upgrade until next year, in anticipation that FS10 may be out and have some hardware requirements :)I currently have an old system- ABit BD7II main board, old PC2100 DDR memory (1GB), and the CPU Intel P4 socket 478 2.66 GHz. I built this myself. (Win XP).I did a search on ABit for my CPU, and it came back with some later mobo models- even have AGP 8* !!One I see is the VT7. VIA PT880 / VT8237 chipset, Supports Dual DDR 400/333/266 (Max. 4GB). My video card is an ATI 9800 Pro 128MB (AGP).Any comments on what gains I might make with this new mobo amd memory?Any other advice on other uses of my CPU are most welcome (other then boat anchor :) ).Thanks- Bruce.

Hi Bruce,I wouldn't buy the new motherboard and memory if I were you. First, if I remember correctly for your CPU's family, the front-side bus speed (66MHz, I think) is tied to your memory speed and so your CPU would not take advantage of any faster RAM that you use with it. Second, it's very rare that changing a motherboard alone (without changing CPU and GPU) would result in any tangible performance difference. The last time I can remember that happening is the switch to dual channel memory but even then, the improvement wasn't too big (~10% in some benchmarks, if I remember correctly). In your case, a new motherboard would probably entail moving to dual channel but given the pure age of your hardware (sorry for being blunt), I just don't think it would be worth the money or the trouble.Uses of your current system: sure, get a brand-new system and use this system with WideFS so you can run external FS applications on it! Other than that, I think you should just live with it as is for now.Hope this helps.Edwin

Thanks Edwin, I appreciate your advice. Back to the drawing board :)Besides the hardware issue, I am goign to re-install WinXP over the new year holiday (after 4 years it's time I think), which got me wondering if I could make a "band-aid" fix :)Thanks again,Bruce.

Hi Bruce,Yes, indeed, you will often find that a reinstall of WinXP (providing it's a clean wipe i.e. a reformat and then clean WinXP install) will give you a much smoother feel to your system. Ideally, you want to do this once a year (!!) but I can understand why people don't do it so often with the hassle of copying files over and tweaking everything again. Plus, you would need an extra hard drive to temporarily store all your files.BTW, I often say that there is no best time to buy new hardware. There's always something new, whether hardware or software, around the corner e.g. FS10, Windows Vista. If you can't afford to buy a new PC now, I understand. But if you're waiting purely because you think there'll be something new next year, well then I urge you to just take the plunge now. You'll thank yourself for the better computing experience this year and MS isn't stupid - whether it's FS or a new OS, any software it releases won't not support your hardware if you bought it in the last year.Hope this helps.Edwin

Thanks again Edwin.One question- in your first e-mail you indicated "First, if I remember correctly for your CPU's family, the front-side bus speed (66MHz, I think) is tied to your memory speed and so your CPU would not take advantage of any faster RAM that you use with it.".Does this apply to all socket 478 CPU's, or just to my version of the socket 478 ( Intel P4 socket 478 2.66 GHz) ?Just trying to inderstand more about the FSB / CPU clock speed relationships.Thanks- Bruce.

It applies to all S478 CPUs. In fact, it has applied to all Intel CPUs as far as I can remember. It used to apply to AMD's CPUs as well except lately, the Athlon64 has these strange FSB:memory clock ratios that I don't fully understand. It's part of the reason I'm not as interested in overclocking anymore.Hope this helps.Edwin

Thanks Edwin-Bruce.