Which CPU should i buy?

[ForrestFunk]

Hi guys,

first of all i dont have much money and i m planning just a decend upgrade from my athlon thunderbird 1.4GHz to a new 2600+ processor to get a little more power out of my system.

my question is... which one should i buy?

XP 2600+ (barton core)
XP-M(obile) 2600+ (barton core) --> less heat..perhaps some overclocking
or the "new" 2600+ (sempron core)

they are all nearly the same prize

[Caged Anger]

XP-Mobile? does that mean its meant for a labtop? that may immediately take that one out of the picture if you don't have a laptop and I'm right in assuming that its intended for one.

[Goober]

From what I understand the mobile one will work in a desktop and is extremely overclockable. Don't know about the sempron.
Go to the amd forums http://forums.pcper.com/ and do a search on all 3 in the overclocking section, if you don't find anything join up and post your question there.

[ForrestFunk]

XP-Mobile? does that mean its meant for a labtop? that may immediately take that one out of the picture if you don't have a laptop and I'm right in assuming that its intended for one.

read goobers answer ;)

thx goober ... ill check there..if cant find anything ill be back :cool:

[SALvation]

I would look at the 2500+ mobile. I think they are more overclockable than the higher number procs.

[ME BIGGD01]

if you are running a thunderbird core chances are you do not have a board with 333 fsb. i would be able to tell you if you listed your current motherboard. now heres the thing..... i listed a board and cpu for zell a few days ago and there were some dals to get a board and cpu for 99 bucks. that might be the best option considering your budget. it also is a prety sweet deal considering the newer chipsets. now another thing ou must consider is what type of ram do you currently own. if you plan on keeping what you have you should mak sure the fsb matches the memory speed so they are working/running insync with each other.

now a thenderbird core runs at 266 fsb so depending on the age of the board you most likely are runnng 266 ram because at that time 333/400 was not available. if this is the case if you just want to spend on a new processor, i would sugest the athlon xp 2400 which runs at 266 fsb. the problem is will your board support either of these cores (again just list the board model and i will respond back to it). i have benched the differences between the 2400 all the way up to 2800 and the difference between all of them including the higher fsb models which are 2500-2800 is about 3-5% difference. the problem is the pr ratings are screwed up and amd is at fault for that. the 2400 actually runs faster than the 2500 and just about the same as the 2600. the main reason for that is the frequency or mhz rating is just about the same between the 2400 and the 2600 xp chips. the 2500 actually has a lower frequency/mhz processor. why does amd do this ???? they based the pr ratings with the l2 cache being the difference. the 2500 and up all have a 512 l2 cache while the 2400 and lower have the 256 l2 cache. the sempron which was just released also has a 256 l2 cache but has a 333 fsb. the sempron should be considered the same as or level as intels celeron series (but better and faster).

if you buy one of these chips, make sure it will run in your board because they will not take it back. :thumbs:

[ForrestFunk]

thx bigg...

right now(im at work) i dont know my model number exactly... but its a abit board with the via KT400a chipset. i wanna keep my old ram(2 sticks, both with 266mhz fsb)

i think ill go with this one then:

- AMD Athlon XP 2600+ Mobile Prozessor
- 512KB Cache
- 266 MHz FSB

or do you suggest another one..its although availible as 2400+ and 2500+

i would go with the XP-M cause they have a better overclocking potential