[zetakappa700]

Alright, it seems to me that CPU ghz have gone down and frontside bus has increased, how does this effect the overall speed of the system? I have a celeron 2.7 with a bus of 533 Mhz. How would this compair to say a AMD 2.0 Ghz with a 1600 or 2000 Mhz bus? The CPU speed has gone down but the bus speed has increased?

Also, I was thinking of buying a motherboard/CPU combo from tiger or newegg...can I plug and play or would I have to adjust the windows settings? Or is this entirely a bios thing that should be no problem, provided that motherboard bios supports the CPU? I was thinkig about moving to 939 interface or 754 interface, any suggestions on boards or CPUs?

[Advertisements]

well...the bus speed allows for increased data flow from ram (and everywhere else) to the processor..and back out...so the increased bus speed increases processing speed by allowing the processor to work more efficiently...

as far as you second question..if you've got xp...it's motherboard dependant...all kinds of things are tied to the motherboard...if you switch motherboards then you have to do one of two things

install the motherboard and IMMEDIATELY prefore a repair installation of xp..(which doesn't always work)

or reinstall xp completely..

[dsenette]

well...the bus speed allows for increased data flow from ram (and everywhere else) to the processor..and back out...so the increased bus speed increases processing speed by allowing the processor to work more efficiently...

as far as you second question..if you've got xp...it's motherboard dependant...all kinds of things are tied to the motherboard...if you switch motherboards then you have to do one of two things

install the motherboard and IMMEDIATELY prefore a repair installation of xp..(which doesn't always work)

or reinstall xp completely..

[dpica]

yup that is correct. i changed my mobo last year and had to reinstall xp completly....the repair did not work for me

[zetakappa700]

So, since store purchased computers don't come with the install disk, then I'll have to purchase an OS?

[Neil Jones]

So, since store purchased computers don't come with the install disk, then I'll have to purchase an OS?

Store purchased PCs tie their Windows XP licence to the bits inside that PC. Plus the recovery methods will only work on the board that it expects to find.

And also, according to Microsoft:

An upgrade of the motherboard is considered to result in a “new personal computer” to which Microsoft® OEM operating system software cannot be transferred from another computer. If the motherboard is upgraded or replaced for reasons other than a defect, then a new computer has been created and the license of new operating system software is required.

What this basically means is the product key you get on the side of your new HP/Compaq/etc machine is null and void if the motherboard inside it is replaced when it isn't faulty and you have to go and buy another copy of XP as well - the licence on the side of the case isn't valid anymore.

This is of course one good reason to 1) buy Retail XP as opposed to OEM and 2) Build your own PC because your Retail licence is valid no matter how many times you change the board.

[zetakappa700]

XP home edition or XP pro? I don't have anything hooked up to a network, but I had though about hooking up both my wifes labtop and my desktop to a router for a joint printer.

[dsenette]

if you're making a simple home network...you can use home...i generally prefer pro...but there's not that much of a difference in a home environment

[Hammm]

a two byte hack can change home to pro haha, don't ask me though. look at the Skt 939 systems. a 3200+ for buget, 3700+ for medium and 4400+ dual core for rich guys. one thing though, the 4000+ AMD CPU runs at 2.4GHz but actually runs in line with a 4000MHz intel, hence the 4000+. it's because the AMD dont have an actually FSB, they have the HT(hypertransport) which is a superfast connection between CPU and RAM. the also 533MHz FSB is really lower, i think it's below 200MHz FSB. Intel P4s quadpump their FSB from 200MHz to 800MHz(not sure about Celeron). AMD double pump from 200MHz to 400MHz. the FSB has to run inline with the RAM. new DDR2 ram has changed Intel FSBs but not AMD yet..............

AMD rule