You want two sticks. Why? Because using both DualDDR slots you halve the latency and double the bandwidth. With 400mhz DDR (PC3200) you will have twice the bandwidth and half the latency of PC800 RDRAM. However, with the 333mhz FSB cpus, you will want PC2700 because you take a performance hit when the FSB doesn't match the speed of the memory - and AMD hasn't got 400mhz FSB cpus yet.

It has two! :D

[ 01-15-2003, 07:27 AM: Message edited by: Sir Krustin ]

That's what I'm using now - an ECS K7S5A. Good 'board, but my friend has an XP 1800+ and it has had bootup problesm with a cpu that fast. I suspect for the faster cpus you're better off with a different 'board.

Used to have the speed crown until other mobo manufacturers started using the same chipset as the ECS.

ECS are average in every respect, price, build and speed, they seem pretty reliable, do a good P4 board as well as XP, so id recommend them as a budget option

If you get the powerleap adapter you can upgrade to a Celeron 1.4Ghz withouth changing your motherboard. This is assuming you have a Dell computer as you said you did. I can't remember the details but go on to the dell site and go to support until you find their forums. Then go to the hardware upgrade forum and search for topics.

or check this page http://www.roberthancock.com/dell/ . There is a link to a review of the powerleap adapter and somewhere there should be a link to buy it. It seems like a pretty good deal as it allows you to just install the adapter and not worry about changing motherboard. When it comes to upgrading again, you can just buy a new motherboard then. Or by then you'll probably want a whole new comp anyway.

*nods* thanx for all the great advice, fps isn't that much of an issue, as I don't play first person shooter games often, although I do break out quake2 once in a while (weapons of destruction add on), I also haven't seen all that many new games that I must have (with the exception of warcraft3, c&c generals, and civ3)

I mostly want to keep everything under $500 when I upgrade, which doesn't give me a whole lot of room for top of the line things, I'll check out the ECS board, and I found some good prices on pricewatch.

once again, thanx to everyone that replied

i just literally right now installed an ecs motherboard, a very nice one, good price, 4 usb, modem and firewire + network all on board and two slot for raid support as well, they have gone up in my estimation [img]smile.gif[/img] (i got it for 53 quid + vat (17.5%) at trade price)

Don't Get a P4 get an Amd, the problem with P4 are that every time a new one comes out the change the chip so that you can't put it in your existing motherboard, I was going to get one but then I got told that so I didn't instead I'm getting an AMD 2400+ and a Geforce 4 Ti4400. It wilol rock like the heavens of Cheese

Get an:

Athlon XP 1800 T-bred core chip for around $66.00 (highly overclockable)
MSI or Asus Nforce2 MB - should go for between $100-150.00
and lastly a nice stick of Corsair XMS3000 or better for around $100.00

You should be able to clock this up to about 1.8 ghz w/ 180 mhz fsb and a 10x cpu multiplier. Just use a good HSF.

No problem, any more specific questions, feel free to post.

No problem, any more specific questions, feel free to post.</font>[/QUOTE]Trying too hard sir K! [img]tongue.gif[/img]