davepcam1
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Upgrade Options
I'm considering an upgrade and am wondering which combination will result in a faster system....an Asus Pentium II LX motherboard with a Celeron 300a processor and 48 mb of Ram or an Asus P5A motherboard with a K6-2 300mtz processor running at 100mtz front side bus and 64mb of Ram.
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wayneb
Opt for a bx board and not a lx chipset for the pentium II, the lx is limited to a 66 mhz bus while the bx can do a full 100 mhz front side bus if you use pc100 sdram. Also stay away from the celeron and get a real pentium II. One has only 128k cache and the other a full 512k l2 cache.
Just my personally point of view... Get a Celeron 300A and a BX board and overclock the hell out of it! Most 300A will be capable of 450 or 463, and if you're really lucky, you might hit 504... Since the L2 cache of the 300A is running at the same clock speed as the core speed, therefore, 300A @ 450 will be as least as fast as a PII 450 if not faster in most cases, even with only 128K cache.
ASKER
How much quicker is the Celeron than the K6-2. Is it that noticeable at all?
The performance gap between K6-2 and Celeron/PII is becoming very narrow at same clock speed. But Celeron/PII still have better FPU, though K6-2 has 3DNow! but still it will require patches in most cases. However, with 3DNow! capble game, they're around the same speed. I personally just sick of the compatible issue with Super7 boards, especially with the ALI chipsets, and since Celeron 300A is around the same price range as K6-2 I would suggest the 300A, or at least wait for K6-2 400 or even K6-3 (Sharptooth) coming out next year...