How much of a diff does every 100mhz make?
 

Just planning my next upgrade :)

depends, are you going from 166 to 1.6? big difference, 1.3 to 1.6 = not worth it

Memory always seems to make a far greater difference for me.

not much. IMHO the best way to pic a processor is to find where the gap between one and the one above it breaks $50 or so and then get that one.

i.e. this is from pricewatch.com
$343 Pentium 4 2.8GHz
$231 Pentium 4 2.6GHz
$181 Pentium 4 2.53GHz
$154 Pentium 4 2.4GHz 533MHz
$160 Pentium 4 2.4GHz 400MHz
$159 Pentium 4 2.2GHz 400MHz
$169 Pentium 4 2.26GHz 533MHz
$169 Pentium 4 2.26GHz
id get the 2.6 ghz

get lots of ram (1 gig is good), and a good graphics card.. as long as your cpu is over 1-1.5ghz, you'll be fine

if u want a real kickass system, get something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...5942 429&rd=1

http://priceelectronic.com/images/eb...ifications.gif

harddrive speed and lots of good ram are far more important then processor speed.
if your on XP hit ctrl+alt+del, and watch your performance, only time when you would use a faster processor is when thats hitting 100%.

Radeon 8500??

WTF?

It's like having a top of the line car with a cheap radio system. :1orglaugh

Go with the 9700 PRO

i agree

Thanks for the help. My current mobo will only support a CPU a couple hundred mhz's higher, so guess I gota get a new CPU and mobo.

Already got enough ram and a 7200rpm HD.

damn, when i play a video in windows media player my cpu usage jumps to 80-95%. mainly in high 80's. i got a 1600 xp+ :(

Other than the card, that IS a pretty sweet system, altho an 80gig would suit me fine

Liquid cooled too..

I wonder what the reserve price is... Those Koolance cases cost a fortune.

Anyways, 100Mhz doesn't make much of a difference.

You need a Western Digital with an 8MB cache buffer :thumbsup

lol.. i have one of those, but all it does is store my documents and mp3's :thumbsup


gonna get me an 80gb model tho for my main drive.. waste of good drive space, but most cost-effective.

Ditto, I got one when it was cheap.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/mess...d1=8mb%20cache -- Sorry if it's dead.

You can get an 80-gig Western Digital from Google Gear for $99 shipped if you don't wanna wait for all of the rebates - http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/Produc...uctCode=101206

It doesn't specify if it's retail or OEM though. I've seen it over at NewEgg for $99.50, but they state that it's OEM, so I'm thinking that the Google Gear version is OEM also.

I guess if you can get it for $69 retail through rebates, that's a DAMN good deal :) There's no Circut Cities around here though :(