New Spec hmm

kremedios · 13 Jun 2007 at 19:10

Okay so currently i have:

2.8Ghz Pentium 4
1gb DDR ram
200gb hdd
6600 AGP 256mb Graphics Card
XP Pro
400W Optronix PSU

And I am going to sell my PSP next week and buy these parts:

My Budget was it had to be as close to £120 as possible. Will i see a performance increase? I will be using this rig to game, mainly on CS:S and CS:CZ.

Thanks

kremedios · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:15

Bump.

semi-pro waster · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:21

You should see a jump in performance because it is dual core but I'd try to pick faster Ram, just for the purpose of attempting some overclocking if nothing else. The OcUK PC6400 is even cheaper than the PC4200 you picked although the motherboard will probably limit overclocking if you upgrade in the future it won't hurt to have the faster Ram.

kremedios · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:26

semi-pro waster said:
You should see a jump in performance because it is dual core but I'd try to pick faster Ram, just for the purpose of attempting some overclocking if nothing else. The OcUK PC6400 is even cheaper than the PC4200 you picked although the motherboard will probably limit overclocking if you upgrade in the future it won't hurt to have the faster Ram.

Does my mobo support it, on the OcUK listing it says:

- Supports Dual Channel DDRII667 (DDRII x 2 DIMM slots) and DDR400 (DDR x 2 DIMM slots)

semi-pro waster · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:35

The Ram will simply underclock, although it is rated at a higher speed it will work perfectly well at PC5300 (667mhz) or PC4200 (533mhz).

kremedios · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:40

semi-pro waster said:
The Ram will simply underclock, although it is rated at a higher speed it will work perfectly well at PC5300 (667mhz) or PC4200 (533mhz).

Will it underclock automatically?

semi-pro waster · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:47

kremedios said:
Will it underclock automatically?

Yes, it will run at the correct speed but if not you can easily change the speed in bios between 533mhz and 667mhz (and probably a few values in between but I don't know much about the ASRocks bios so be careful and ask if you are unsure about changing a value).

kremedios · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:59

semi-pro waster said:
Yes, it will run at the correct speed but if not you can easily change the speed in bios between 533mhz and 667mhz (and probably a few values in between but I don't know much about the ASRocks bios so be careful and ask if you are unsure about changing a value).

Thanks very much. I can get an "Intel E2160 Socket 775 Pentium Dual Core 2x1.8Ghz 800FSB Retail Boxed Processor" from a competor for £5 more than the 1.6ghz. Is this worth it? What can i overclock this to if i buy it?

semi-pro waster · 13 Jun 2007 at 21:05

Difficult to say how much you could overclock it, it depends very much on the individual chip and in this case I think the motherboard will hold you back more than any other part but because of the components you currently have you don't have an option on the motherboard. I'd say that the E2160 is probably worth it for £5 more though especially if your overclocking options may be limited.

kremedios · 13 Jun 2007 at 21:39

Thanks for your help.

I also have a 200gb IDE hard disk drive. Would i be able to connect this to the motherboard? And i have a CD Burner drive and a DVD reader drive. Will all these connect?

semi-pro waster · 13 Jun 2007 at 22:28

I'm not certain on that motherboard but most socket 775 motherboards only support 1x IDE slot which means that you can only have 2x IDE devices unless you get an PCI IDE controller card or a SATA-IDE adapter.

kremedios · 14 Jun 2007 at 07:59

semi-pro waster said:
I'm not certain on that motherboard but most socket 775 motherboards only support 1x IDE slot which means that you can only have 2x IDE devices unless you get an PCI IDE controller card or a SATA-IDE adapter.

Okay thanks.

Can anyone who has this board confirm that you can use a IDE hard disk drive??

Just checked the ASROCK site. It says - 2 x Serial ATA 1.5 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD) and Hot Plug functions
- 2 x ATA133 IDE connectors (support 4 x IDE devices)

So i can then afaik?

semi-pro waster · 14 Jun 2007 at 18:07

If it says 2xIDE then you can have up to 4 drives as it says so you can use the hard drive plus both your optical drives.