Hun-Speak

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December 27, 2001 -- Too Much Information

I recently began scouring the web and Usenet, looking for information to help me with a motherboard and processor upgrade. I had pretty much settled on some form of AMD solution since their CPUs are so much cheaper (and often times, quite a bit faster) than their Intel counterparts. While that decision was easy, the rest of it quickly descended into a nightmare.

I needed to keep the upgrade as cheap as possible: $300 or less. I just don't have all kinds of money to throw around when I have three kids that like three square meals per day. One question that needed to be answered was do I go with a slower processor and DDR SDRAM, or do I go with a faster processor and SDR SDRAM? If I go the latter route, I can save money by reusing my current PC133 memory. The problem is that then I'd be buying an older technology. I can't afford for this to be utterly worthless in no time flat. If I go the former route, it would be more "future proof," but I'd almost be dooming myself to upgrading my processor again sooner than I would want.

I scoured every corner of the Internet for information. Should I go with a VIA chipset? If so, should it be a KT133A or KT266A? Should I go with an ALi MAGiK1? Which one is best supported by the current Linux kernels? After I figure that out (ha!) which company should I buy a motherboard from? Do I save a little money and get a Duron, spend a bit more and get a Thunderbird Athlon, or splurge and get one of the slower Athlon XPs? Which of those processors takes best advantage of DDR SDRAM?

I read all kinds of horror stories about VIA chipsets and hard disk corruption with DMA transfers, incompatibilities with SoundBlaster Live!s (which I currently own), and AGP problems. Are those problems still there? Have driver releases fixed them? Have recently Linux kernels worked around them? I've heard very few complaints about the ALi. Is that because there are actually fewer problems or because there are just fewer boards based on it? Is its memory latency really as bad as some say?

Finally, I sort of decided on an ASUS A7A-266E motherboard. That uses the latest ALi MAGiK stepping which improves memory latency. It also has both SDR and DDR slots so I can use my memory now and upgrade later. The problem is that no one seems to have this board. So do I wait and see when retailers will start carrying it, or do I go with some other solution?

I've read so many articles and so many postings about all of this that, quite frankly, I'm suffering from information overload. It's hard to tell who's right and who's wrong. It's hard to tell who is having genuine problems with some hardware and who is just some fanboy wanting to rip some other company's technology. Which hardware site do you trust when the benchmarks of the same hardware produce notably different results? What do you do when the hardware used differs dramatically?

The Internet provides us with an unprecedented access to information. Unfortunately, we can start drowning in it. It gets maddening trying to pick fact from fiction and truth from hyperbole. I've officially reached the point where even thinking about this upgrade makes me sick. I know way more than I ever needed or ever cared to know.

Whose fault is it? I must bear at least partial blame. My never-ending quest to get the most bang for my buck drove me to keep comparing until I went nuts. Another part of it is the fact that so much of what is said is opinion, and wherever opinion enters in you are going to get disagreement. There is no such thing as a crap filter for the Internet that will weed out all the junk and give you the real scoop.

I'm not saying that the Internet needs to be fundamentally changed. It is what it is--take it or leave it. Maybe I need to rely on the experience of my friends more instead of the analysis of total strangers. Maybe I need to get out more.

Finally, I did come to a conclusion. I'm not going to upgrade. I'm going to kill off some bills. If I can upgrade later, great. Waiting is always good since things keep getting faster and cheaper as new technology comes out. As chipsets mature, problems disappear. For now, I'm going to have a beer and forget that I ever thought about this in the first place.