rec.autos.simulators

by **Steve Irelan** » Wed, 01 Jan 2003 12:48:45

Hi all,
First, some background. I had a power supply failure the other day which to
my disgust also fried my S370 mobo (I revived my old 440bx machine to type
this). I was quite happy with my system as I was getting a 3D mark of 8200
running a Cel 1.2 at 1.5G with a Ti4200 overclocked to 4400, and so was able
to run all my sims at decent detail levels.

First step after the failure was to go out and buy a good power supply
(Enermax 350W, and yes the quality is obvious just by looking at it). The
lesson learned is don't trust a cheap power supply with your expensive
computer components.

Step two is required after finding out my mobo is toast and hence the reason
for my post:

Q1) Out of curiousity, how many of you are running a similar system and find
it to be great in terms of Framerate per Buck? FPB - a new acronym!?!?

Q2) I weighed my options of upgrading CPU/RAM/Mobo to a P4 or Athlon XP or
replacing with same type and settled on replacing with same/similar S370
Tualatin mobo. Problem is, now I can't seem to locate a new S370 mobo
anywhere as all the computer shops say these are no longer produced, except
for a couple microATX cheapies. I was hoping to get an ASUS TUSL2-C or
GigaByte 60XT or MSI 6337, so my question is do any of you know where I can
buy any of these in the Vancouver BC area or by mail somewhere in Canada?
Used is OK as long as it works.

Q3) If I am forced to upgrade, what is your recommendation for best FPB??
I'm leaning toward either the ASUS board with NForce2 chipset and an XP2100
processor. My original thinking was this is not a good time to invest in a
mobo upgrade as some of the standards have not yet matured i.e. serial ATA,
DDR vs RAMbus, NForce vs KT400, even Intel vs AMD may end up in a loser.

TIA for reading my long post.
Steve.

by **Uwe hoover Schuerkam** » Thu, 02 Jan 2003 01:26:21

> Q3) If I am forced to upgrade, what is your recommendation for best FPB??
> I'm leaning toward either the ASUS board with NForce2 chipset and an XP2100
> processor. My original thinking was this is not a good time to invest in a
> mobo upgrade as some of the standards have not yet matured i.e. serial ATA,
> DDR vs RAMbus, NForce vs KT400, even Intel vs AMD may end up in a loser.

if you can salvage some old SDRAM from your fried mobo, you
should look at an ECS K7S5A (possibly with onboard lan if you
need it), they are dirt cheap these days and do nicely with
Athlons up to XP2200, I think. Not an overclockers dream, but
rock stable as far as my machine (and several of my friend's
rigs) is concerned.

Cheers,

uwe

--
mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

by **Steve Irelan** » Thu, 02 Jan 2003 14:37:21

Thanks Uwe, that's a good suggestion that I hadn't yet considered...
especially makes sense since I recently invested in 512MB of CAS2 PC133
SDRAM. I can get that board for C$85, and an Athlon XP 2100 for C$150,
making this a very cost-effective upgrade that should up my 3D Mark by ~20%.
Suddenly doesn't make much sense anymore to spend a hundred bucks or so on
another S370 board.
Steve.

> > Q3) If I am forced to upgrade, what is your recommendation for best
FPB??
> > I'm leaning toward either the ASUS board with NForce2 chipset and an
XP2100
> > processor. My original thinking was this is not a good time to invest in
a
> > mobo upgrade as some of the standards have not yet matured i.e. serial
ATA,
> > DDR vs RAMbus, NForce vs KT400, even Intel vs AMD may end up in a loser.

> if you can salvage some old SDRAM from your fried mobo, you
> should look at an ECS K7S5A (possibly with onboard lan if you
> need it), they are dirt cheap these days and do nicely with
> Athlons up to XP2200, I think. Not an overclockers dream, but
> rock stable as far as my machine (and several of my friend's
> rigs) is concerned.

> Cheers,

> uwe

> --
> mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
> Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
> Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
> GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

by **Uwe hoover Schuerkam** » Thu, 02 Jan 2003 18:06:08

> Thanks Uwe, that's a good suggestion that I hadn't yet considered...
> especially makes sense since I recently invested in 512MB of CAS2 PC133
> SDRAM. I can get that board for C$85, and an Athlon XP 2100 for C$150,
> making this a very cost-effective upgrade that should up my 3D Mark by ~20%.
> Suddenly doesn't make much sense anymore to spend a hundred bucks or so on
> another S370 board.
> Steve.

You're welcome! I think that "new" RAM (like DDR-RAM and so on)
will at most provide a 20% speed increase (if at all), so the
ECS K7SA is a winner both ways as it provides two sockets for
SDRAM and three for DDR-RAM so you can always upgrade later.
(you cannot use two different types of RAM at the same time,
but that should be obvious ;-)

Given its price and stability (no VIA chipset, he he ;-), you
really can't go wrong with this thingy. It also has onboard
sound should you need it, not hifi quality, but good enough for
most games.

Happy new year,

uwe

--
mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

rec.autos.simulators

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