I am planning on upping my cpu to an XP2600+ as thats the max my motherboard can take.

Does anyone know how much encoding performance will be gained by this upgrade?

And where am I supposed to get this CPU from. I cant seem to find anyone who sells it in the UK. The highest I can find is the XP2400+ fsb 266. Im after the XP2600+ fsb266 CPU

Click the PlanetMicro advert which you have generated (Although there the 2600 is fsb 333mhz, probably not a problem)

Question: They seem cheap? Is that about as cheap as you'd get?

For reference: The 1900 is 1.6ghz, and the 2600 is 2.13ghz.

I dont really see too much of encoding performance increase, although points like that are moot, imo

i'd say there's no point upgrading unless you're upgrading from a palamino core axp to a barton core, with a 333mhz fsb mainboard.

I would say I got around a 30% performance increase when I upgraded from a 1.4ghz AMD Athlon to a 2ghz Athlon 2400+ - not bad for about $75. If your motherboard supports processors on the 333mhz fsb, I see no reason why your upgrade would be a bad decision.

FYI - the fastest 266mhz processor AMD made was the 2400+ - a 1900+ to a 2400+ doesn't seem like its worth it to me.......if you can use a processor w/ a 333mhz fsb there are ones faster than the 2600+ that would make the upgrade worthwhile....

JEN is right, there is a version of the 2600+ with a 266MHz FSB. Here in the states it runs about $20 more than the 333MHz FSB version.
Throwing the 333FSB version on a 266 FSB motherboard will declock the processor, and if you want to run it at stock clock speed you will have to modify the chip to "unlock" the multiplier and increase it (assuming the board supports changing the multiplier).
I'm confident most folks on this forum, especially IT folks, could do this without too much trouble, though it does require a steady hand, and some recent processors are reportedly immune to the procedure.

Unfortunately I'm unsure how much difference this will make with encoding audio. I doubt the majority of audio encodes are bandwidth limited, so it should result in an improvement. To what degree I cannot say, and I'd wager it varies depending on codec.
Sorry I cannot be of more help. If you have the money to spare I don't see any reason not to (edit: primarily because I always like having a spare processor around to help out friends or to use in a backup box).

Personally I don't think its worth doing, I suspect that you will see a 10% change which is really not that substancial considering all things.

Maybe your system could benifit in other ways like more ram, faster HD?

I know I can get a faster HDD, but that will just make things noisy:

I have the KT3 Ultra (Standard Version) motherboard with:

HDD - Seagate Barracuda V 120Gb
RAM - 2x 256Mb PC2700

THIS page shows all the CPUs my motherboard can take.

I doubt if im going to get any improvement by upgrading these components, but probably will add noise

I dont think theres much else I can do, unless i get a new motherboard. Thats something I dont want to do at this stage, but maybe a few years down the line.

Well

If it is in your budget i would do what I did and get the new Raptor 74GB, you can see the review here;
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2004...6WD740GD_1.html

It seems that it is louder than your seagate
seagate = 37.8dB
raptor = 42.3 dB
WD1200JB = 45.5 dB

But to quote


I think you would notice much more system performance with this drive than from the CPU upgrade - the only problem is $$$, but it is top of the line & 5 year warranty.

Some months ago I upgraded to a 2500+ from a 1800+ because my mainboard died. You won't notice a speed difference when opening a context menu or whatever , but the difference in encoding speed is noticeable though not revolutionary.

Thanks for all the replies

I think most people here agree that the CPU upgrade will not be worth it.

@ TwoJ - Im really happy with the performance of my currect hard drive. What I was really after was to increase encoding power. But I dont think HDDs play a major part in that.

With everyones help in this thread, I have come to the conclusion that upgrading using my currect motherboard will be a waist. Its probably best to get a more up-to-date motherboard and one of the latest CPUs.

Thanks for the information anyway

Hi Again

I think you would notice quite a difference with the hard drive, since encoding depends on HD access as well as floating point calculations (ALU).

Another option is to overclock your CPU, mine is an AMD 2400+ which is overclocked to 2600+ and I probably could almost push it to 2800+ with extra work and cooling.

Options

Yes. I upgraded from an ECS K7S5A and Palamino XP1800+ to a Soltek FRN2L and a Barton XP2500+, pretty happy with the relatively cheap upgrade.