Cache vs. Clock speed?

[C_olin]

BTW I already have a nice video card.... and I've been told, and have proven myself that my computer's power is bottlenecked by the processer.

And by my understanding of shaders, shaders are calculated by the CPU, so the video card isnt everything anymore.

 

[ekÆsine]

the effective front side bus of your xp2000 processor is double pumped by DDR to 333mhz. check the specs for an xp2000+, it states it runs at a 333mhz effective speed. your processor is currently running at that I beleive. in your bios it should read cpu external frequency: 133Mhz .....meaning 333mhz effective.

a bottleneck depends on what you want to improve and the hardware you currently have. in your case you want better gaming performance and your bottleneck is is the video card not CPU. if you feel windows boots slow or your programs seem to run like a dog it could be the hard disk. if you have a 5400rpm ata100 HDD that would be your bottleneck for your applications (non game related). an xp2600 won't calculate shading much better than an xp2000....btw what is the video card you have installed currently?

 

[Alex81388]

I have the 2600 you are looking at and you will love it. Make sure you get a 8x video card that is decent and you can run some decent apps/games with OCing.

Very solid chip, take it in a heartbeat over the 2700.

 

[TheMajor]

I think its 133*2=266MHz FSB ?

 

[Alex81388]

That is right, because my ram is 166 ddr, 166*2=333, the 2600+'s FSB.

 

[ekÆsine]

TheMajor you're right. his xp2000 is running at 266mhz. I don't know where I pulled 333mhz from.