Now that I got my parents a new computer, I've been looking around at the state of PC hardware, and was thinking it might be a good time for me to upgrade. I'm going to inherit their current and *ancient* K6-233 based machine, and was thinking I might gut it, put my current Abit KT7-RAID motherboard in the case, and invest in a new motherboard and CPU for my current PC. The KT7-RAID would then become my dedicated Linux box, instead of using VMware as I currently do.

Sooooo... I've been looking around, and for my price range, the AMD 1.7 GHz range Thoroughbred processor is looking very desirable. I hear they can be overclocked into the 2GHz range, which is way more than I need right now (I'm getting by okay on my Duron 800 @ 900.) As an Abit motherboard loyalist, the Abit NF7-S is looking like a winner. After throwing in 512 MB of memory, I was hoping to get my new PC together (using my existing drives, peripherals, etc) for less than $400.

So I'm just curious if anyone follows this stuff more closely than I do, and might have any reason to believe that (a) my choices are bad, (b) it's a bad time to upgrade because there's something much better on the horizon, or (c) if there are other options I should seriously consider other than the AMD T-Bred 1700 or Abit NF7-S. I've skimmed forums on these things, but so much of the other forums are noise about who gets higher Folding@Home stats, I can't really get a good picture.

I should point out that, other than the occasional MAME session, I'm not a gamer... I'm still running a Matrox G400 video card and don't have much reason to upgrade my video. I really want the upgrade to improve my overall system speed, software compile times, etc. rather than to push more frames in Quake3 or whatever.

So, anyone have any comments?

Just a quick thought: consider going with a Barton core based chip, i.e the XP 2500. The extra $10-15 is worth it.

Oh, and a good place for AMD related reviews/news is Athlonmb.com.

Hmm. Coincidently, it looks like winning system for the "Pricegrabber System Build Contest" includes the NF7-S and the XP 2500.

The difference between the XP 1700 and XP 2500 is more like $81, not $10-$15. Pricewatch has XP2500's at $123 minimum, and XP 1700's are $43 at newegg. I'm not really sure that extra horsepower is worth it... But it might be... Not sure how 2500's overclock, the 1700 is supposed to overclock very well...

Interesting, though, about the Pricegrabber contest. I had heard rumors that Abit was losing some ground in terms of their leadership of the motherboard market, obviously that's not the case. My last 3 motherboards have been Abit (TX5, BP6, and my current KT7-RAID) so I see no reason to change.

Gotta think about the CPU though...

Oops, I must've read something wrong. Anyway, it's still worth it. The cache and FSB are most important. A plain 2500 will out perform a overclocked XP 1700.

My last 3 motherboards have been Abit (TX5, BP6, and my current KT7-RAID) so I see no reason to change.

Yeah, I've got two BP6 machines here, one is a MySQL server, and the other is my main server / firewall. I haven't had any problems with them at all. With all the hacks you can do to them, it's no wonder they got so popular. I'm considering moding one of mine so I can put PIII's on it, I'm just not sure if I trust my soldering skills enough.

I had a BP6 but I don't use it anymore. It was one of the boards with the incorrect capacitor which drove me nuts as it was really unstable. Abit admitted that there was a mistake in manufacturing in the end.
You used to be able to buy adapters that let you put a FC-PGA CPU into a PPGA socket. They probably don't make them anymore however so you'll have to look on eBay however.

- Trevor

Actually, one of mine had that problem. I sent it back to Abit and they sent me a replacement, and all I paid was the cost of shipping, and a $15 fee. And this was well after its warranty was up. Not too bad.

I'll have to look at finding a PPGA -> FCPGA adapter, I forgot they exist. Do you know if they have been proven to work with the BP6?

Oops, I must've read something wrong. Anyway, it's still worth it. The cache and FSB are most important. A plain 2500 will out perform a overclocked XP 1700.

Of course, but, again, it's all about whether I need the extra horsepower. I will keep my eyes peeled for really good deals on the XP 2500, and I would really like the higher FSB and L2 cache, but ultimately, I might go TBred. It's not like my current setup (Duron 900) is killing me, I just would like a few things to go a little faster.

Yeah, I've got two BP6 machines here,

I think the BP6 is officially the "coolest" motherboard ever. I had to let it go on EBay so I could afford my KT7-RAID. The funny part? KT7-RAIDs and BP6's are going on EBay for about the same price. Granted, the BP6 is a 2 CPU board, but it's just unheard of that a motherboard holds its value like that. I kinda still wish I had it around, having 2 CPU's is pretty cool. I haven't seen anything comparable to the BP6 come out, it seems you need to pay a premium for a dual CPU setup now, and, really, I don't think it's cost effective anymore, for the average home user.

Damn, I miss me BP6.

I haven't seen anything comparable to the BP6 come out...

Its successor, the VP6. I built a few machines with that board as well, and they were also very nice. You can still find them on eBay for a decent price.

Hehe, I bought 2 of those BP6's. One is now running our mail server at work. Never had a moments trouble with either of them. Great board.

My short advice, which I stumbled over by accident, is to look for something QUIET. You don't really need any more horsepower, though some would be nice, but having a QUIET machine can make a phenomenal difference!

I got an Intel motherboard and P4-2.4GHz CPU -- the fan on that CPU is much larger and quieter than on any previous CPU I've owned, and really suprised me. And I had to upgrade the PSU to handle the 6-drive RAID I was working on at the time, so I got an Enermax quiet supply (lots of other brands out there too), and the combination was really impressive. Six IBM deskstar drives in that box, and it was nearly whisper quiet!

The RAID is now in a different box for SMP testing, and so there's now just a single Maxtor 160GB hard disk left, and is really is no noisier to use than my laptop now. Sure the laptop is quieter, but the fan on it is much closer to my ears than the box under the table is.

I haven't yet bothered teaching RedHat9 about ACPI suspend/resume, but this box is fully capable of it -- works with win98 anyhow.

So.. in summary, think (hard!) about noise levels!

Also, your next MB/CPU may REQUIRE a new power supply -- the P4's do, dunno about the latest Athons.

Cheers

I personally would probably get a shuttle of some sort. Unless you have either lots of hard drives, or several cards, that need to be fitted the shuttle range is very very good. Reasonably quiet, small, very fast, and cost-effective. You can even get a matching carrying bag for it. Sort of the empeg of the PC world.

I have two at the moment, and for PCs they're pretty neat. One is purely for gaming, with a radeon 9700 and lots of memory, and the other is my main linux box. If you go for the SN41G2, you even get twin VGA outputs with the nvidia nforce2 chipset. They run linux very well indeed, although at least with red hat you need to add the kernel option pci=bios,biosirq or it will hang on boot.

If you don't need a cdrom or floppy they will handle three hard drives as well.

pca

Since you've mentioned noise and Tony mentioned 1700XP and TBirds earlier - the 1700XP puts out a lot less heat than the 1333TBird.
I think it was Tom's hardware that had a big list of power dissipation figures for AMD chips, it is worth checking out if you can find it. Obviously the less heat the CPU throws out, the easier it is to get efficient and quiet cooling. It is easy to save $15 on the CPU only to then spend an extra $30 cooling it.

Lots of good suggestions... Thanks to all for the input.

To clarify a little, I should state that I'm not terribly concerned about noise... I mean, all things being equal, I'd like a quieter PC, but it's not at the top of the priority list. I did look very seriously at Shuttle PC's six months or so ago, and now that they support AMD with the nForce chipset, it's very appealing... Since I don't follow this stuff closely, I missed seeing that Shuttle now does AMD boards. I'll be stacking my current plans (new MB, CPU, RAM inside my current PC, current MB, CPU, RAM get put into 2nd case) against the prospect of bringing a Shuttle XPC into the mix.

After doing a little research, I've seen lukewarm reviews of the Barton chips. It only looks like the extra L2 cache helps you out to the tune of 6 or 7% in most applications, a factor which could easily be exceeded by overclocking. I do agree that an XP1700+ against an XP2500 is no contest, but it's also almost $100 in price difference. Right now, I'm leaning towards an XP1700+ or XP2100+ Thoroughbred B as the CPU.

The Abit NF7-S is definitely the mobo I'll get unless I go with the Shuttle. The Shuttle adds in an interesting caveat, which is that it's got the built-in video, along with built-in LAN, built-in audio.. There are pluses and minuses involved there, which I'll stack up against each other this weekend, probably. The one area the Shuttle will almost surely suffer in is the overclockability, and that's something I'll have to factor in.

I haven't really focused in on cooling yet, that's something I'll have to consider unless I go the Shuttle route... Lots to think about this weekend.

Anyway, I'll post some more later in the weekend when I've had a chance to do some comparison. Thanks for all the hints, folks.