Upgrading MB and CPU-need a little advice

[chrisharris]

The PIII 550 is sitting in a socket 370 board. It's an Intel WS440BX board. 100mhz FSB. 3 168 DIMM banks for SDRAM--5 PCI--2 USB--4 IDE and a single AGP4X

 

[DarkBlade1]

WOW>.. that is old. I would get a 754pin AMD if you are worried about price vs Performance. They perform VERY WELL, and are very cheap. Downfall? That socket is extinct, but the CPUs are still produced to this day, so I would look into that.

 

[chrisharris]

The problem with getting an extinct board is exactly what I'm dealing with right now.

I can't find too many PIII processors-if I wanted to upgrade this one. And 370 boards are already scarce as hens teeth.

I want to go up to at least a 478 board. I will still be able to get parts for that in a couple years.

I don't understand something:

AMD--socket A boards usually only have 400mhz FSB MAX. But, the CPU for those boards-AMD Athlon--have big cache on the cpu at L1 and L2 (512 or 1000).

Socket 478 boards carry big FSB speeds, but CPU has little cache at L1 and not a lot at L2 (256)

So- which system works better and why?

I'd think that a board with 800mhz FSB (478) would win the race against a board with only 400mhz FSB (socket A)

But then I see the CPU differences in cache at L1 mainly- and a bit of a difference at L2 as well. So does the Athlon with all that cache on the CPU make up for the slower board?