Really Tight Budget

[Triadcool]

I have $150 to buy a processor and a motherboard. What is the best proccessor and motherboard I can get for this much? Would it be better to go with this processor http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetai...oductCode=80547 or do you know of a better processor/motherboard for that money?

[Smith]

dude its either one or the other ur not going 2 get 2.6 ghz and a mother bord.

mabye 2.4 and a bad mother bord

[bob_the_alien]

If I were you, I would not go with a Celeron.
Celeron's are not what we would call great chips, I would recommend going with a AMD Athlon XP, The chips run fairly decently and you can buy a 2500+ for about 80 bucks. And for Motherboards, I'd recommend, the Chaintech Mobo's, that are good motherboards, and the cheapest good ones run from 70 dollars and Up.

Check out Price Watch, You can find some good hardware deals there.

[Triadcool]

This is the mobo I have. http://www.computerhq.com/hardware/p...o-id-1800.html

Do you think I should upgrade it with my processor?

[bob_the_alien]

Well, This will be a matter of if you can spend more than the $150, cuz your current mobo doesn't even support DDR.
So if you don't have DDR Ram and cannot afford more than 150, I wouldn't upgrade right now, I'd wait and save up, and upgrade later, Most new mobo's don't support just SDRAM, there are a few that do still, but most only support DDR, except for Pentium mobo's which also support RDRAM, but that's being phased out as well.

To upgrade to a good mobo and cpu, you will have to upgrade your ram as well.
But In my opinon, you mobo is decent, just getting old, like I said, you you don't have the DDR ram, just wait and upgrade later, when you can afford more.

[Triadcool]

But can I buy a processor that supports my mobo and newer mobos as well?

[bob_the_alien]

I went and looked at the MSI website, they say it will support up to a 1.8ghz AMD Athlon XP chip, so I think that's like the Athlon XP 2200+ cpu, so you will be able to buy this chip or under and it will also work new mobo's as well.

[bigdawgfoxx]

Buy an Athlon XP 2500+ for 80 dollars. That leaves you with 70 dollars on a motherboard. Also you have to consider your RAM. There are some motherboards that support DDR and SDRAM (what u have). If you could get a mobo like that, that would be good.

[Triadcool]

ok thanks guys.

[Triadcool]

Does this motherboard support both sdr ram and ddr?



Main Memory

• Supports six memory banks using three 184-pin DDR SDRAMs.
• Supports up to 3GB memory size.
• Supports DDR400/DDR333/DDR266/DDR200 SDRAM
Note: PC3200 (DDR400) maximum 4 banks only.