Fastest Athlon XP @ DDR266 (PC2100)

Power surge caused my CPU to crap out. Looks like damage is confined to the CPU (tested another CPU in it) just wondering what the best option is for me without having to upgrade other hardware. I have an Abit KV7 and 1 GB of DDR266 (PC2100).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-b

The fastest XP with the 266 fsb is a 2600+ with the Thoroughbred core. They also make a t-bred with a 333 fsb though, so you'll want to double check before buying.
Your ram would work if you got a faster cpu (since your board supports the 400 fsb), but you wouldn't get much performance out of it, since the ram would be a major bottleneck then. I'd consider a faster cpu with faster fsb, and either bump that ram to an older system and get new, or ebay the old ram and get new, if performance is an issue and you want the most out of a fast cpu.

Thanks for the advice karsh, I didn't realize I could use this ram on the higher chips (even at a penalty to the expected performance). I may end up picking up something a little faster and dealing with the performance hit in the meantime and just upgrade the ram in the near future. Thoughts?


Oh, btw if I do pick up, say a 3200, since I might not have ram that could run at that speed, would I have to tweak it in the bios?

Thanks again,
-b

Apologies, I may have been misleading. You would have to set a ratio of something like 4:5 or something in bios, or underclock the cpu down to a 266fsb (well, 133 technically), to use that ram with a faster fsb cpu (unless its good ram, you might be able to OC it somewhat and run faster than 133, but most likely still less than the cpu is capable of.)
So the performance hit would be quite substantial. However, it would still probably be more cost effective to do this and upgrade the ram later, rather than get the 2600+ now and a 3200+ and faster ram later.
So basically, I think I understated the difficulty and performance loss of using a faster cpu with your ram, but its still possible. If you got some pc3200 ram later, then you could just return everything to default settings and be all set.
HTH

Ok, that's what I expected. Thanks for your reply. Just went with a 2400 so I wouldn't have to spend too much money. It'd be nice to go for the latest and greatest, but I can't justify that right now.

I hear that. Oh to be independantly wealthy