Upgrading Biostar M7NCG

[Retnaburn]

The link to the Biostar website compatibility page is broken. Just so you know I tried! I play Everquest 2 and the lag I get is barely tolerable. I just maxed out my ram to 3 gigs and while I can play on low settings much better I would like to see if upgrading my CPU will let me up the quality a bit.

I currently have this in it. http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K7/AMD-Athlon%20XP%201800+%20-%20AX1800DMT3C.html

I have the opportunity to buy this. http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K7/AMD-Athlon%20XP%202600+%20-%20AXDA2600DKV4D.html

I don't know much about this at all, and I was hoping you guys could tell me if this is much of an upgrade and if it is how much the chip I'm buying is worth? Or maybe I should be on the lookout for a different better chip? I don't have much money after buying the ram, I think that $50 is my limit.

[Retnaburn]

Am I in the right place? =p

[gshv]

What video card do you have? Upgrading video card these days may do much more for 3D games than upgrading the CPU.

Gennadiy

[Retnaburn]

I have a Radeon 2600 XT. I realize that it's not the greatest but Best Buy screwed up and gave me a 99 year warranty on it so I have to wait until this one dies on me too until I can get another free upgrade. Until that happens I was hoping to make the best of anything else I can upgrade.

The cpu that I was interested in is only available for another day, if anyone could tell me if it's a worthwhile upgrade to what I have, and if not what would be a better choice, I would really appreciate it.

[gshv]

I'm afraid that upgrading to XP 2600+ won't give you much. You will probably notice the difference, but it won't be much faster than your current processor.

Gennadiy

[Retnaburn]

Thank you for the help. I forgot to mention that the reason why I assume that upgrading my processor will help is that when I play these games the CPU usage history shows 100% for the majority of the time. Do you know what is the best available that will fit in that board?

[gshv]

[Guest]

I can't tank you enough for everything you've done so far, you've been a great help! Unfortunately I have one problem that arose in the meantime.

My girlfriend saw that I was looking at the 2600+, and tho I said don't buy it because I wasn't sure it was what I wanted the sweetheart got it for me for christmas anyways. I installed it because I figure I can use it until I get the 3000+ you suggested. It's my first cpu install but I try to research thourally before anything I do so I'm sure I installed it correctly.

The problem is that when I finally got it to run at 166 fsb it started to reboot the system shortly after loading it's startup programs. I found when when I lower it to 133 fsb that it would stablize it. Could this be a counterfeit chip? I also noticed that when installing another pci device it didn't matter if it was 133, 166, or 100 it would start rebooting on me again. Would this be my power supply? I don't see anywhere that I would need to upgrade my psu just becasue or a small cpu upgrade.

[Retnaburn]

Oops, I'm on her computer and forgot to log in.

[gshv]

Sorry, I can't help you much with this. It could be a weak power supply, in which case you can try to remove peripheral boards from the motherboard and/or disconnect USB devices, and see if it changes anything. It could be that your CPU is overheating - check its temperature in BIOS, or boot the computer without the external cover. It could be that your memory doesn't like 166 MHz FSB. It could be a faulty CPU.

Gennadiy

[Retnaburn]

Dang, that's alot of could be's but I'm happy to know what I should look for. Thanks once again. =)