700 to 1.1gig

[Guest Coneman]

Hi guys,I hope this hasn't been beat to death but couldn't find a specific answer in the archives. I've got a 700mhz Athlon and a thinking of upgrading to a 1.1 TBird for $85. Is this worth it? I've got most sliders maxed now but am a little jerky around bigger airports and lots of AI. Also leave multi-texturing off to gain a little speed. The card I have is a TNT2 Pro 32mg. I would rather not have to upgrade the card right now if it is more expensive.Thanks for any help,ToddKCOE

[Guest]

Bump.I would be interesed in the answer to that question. Ken

[Hornit 3]

I went from a PIII 750 ocl'd to 850 up to an athlon 1.4 g tbird and it was avery nice upgrade. Definitely worth the money. For a bit more I would get yourself a new mobo and memory to go with it really. You need to take advantage of the faster/bigger bus speeds. Also I would go for the 1.4 athlon as its also pretty darn cheap. My rule is I dont upgrade unless i can see just about twice the cpu clock increase. Otherwise its not really worth it. In your case I think your right on the edge.Hornit

[Steve Dra 7,579]

Hey Todd,I was running a PIII 600. I recently bought a ECS K7S5A motherboard AND an AMD XP 1700 (Retail) from Newegg.com for $157 delivered to my door in Atlanta from California in 2 days!!!I got it last Friday and started upgrading my system at 7pm. At 10pm I was running FS2002 for the 1st time and spent more time scraping my chin off the ground than flying! :-lolThe reason I bought this particular MB is because it supports both SD and DDR ram. I have gigs of SDRAM that I did not want to part with, so it made sense to get this board. I am still thrilled with the upgrade in performance to even think about overclocking or upgrading ram.The one thing I can tell you about the Tbirds from what I've read is that they tend to run hot. The XP's run much cooler, and faster from what I've heard.Also, you will need very stable ram to run chips with over 1ghz clock speeds. I have read many threads in the major computer forums from people with endless problems that disappear when the buy some good ram.I would suggest going to some computer forums like http://www.amdforums.com and read up and ask questions there. I learned alot I didn't know about upgrading (like larger power supplies, async vs sync ram settings, bios flashes and tweaks, etc).I attribute my 3 hour upgrade from an Intel chip/board to an AMD on the fact I scoured these forums and learned what NOT to do when upgrading! :)...BTW, 1 of those hours was spent trying to figure out how to hookup the silly power-on and reset connectors..the manual had them all wrong!You will see an increase in any speed increase on your CPU, so I would upgrade if you can swing it.Regards,Steve Dra

[Guest Coneman]

Wow, thanks guys for the great info. I guess I need to do a little homework before I dive in. I'll certainly check out the forum.Todd

[barryward12345 0]

My son upgraded from an AMD 700 to an AMD 1100 -- that was the fastest AMD processor that 1. would go into his mainboard and 2. that was available in retail stores here in Australia.It proved to be a significant improvement.