Well...

My time keeps reseting to noon, my processor is running at 1.15 ghz instead of 1.53 and Windows is detecting my on-board sound for the first time...

PROBABLY just the battery (pulling a spare out of one of my dead boards tomorrow), but I'm thinking I'm gonna upgrade regardless... that's usually a good sign it's time (as in, it's old... time to move on)...

Hate to have to reload (I JUST loaded up just about every game I have 'cause I wanted 'em all accessible), but a 64 bit 3400+ processor would probably make me feel better 'bout havin' to do it.

Ahhh, the excuses... gotta love 'em...

A CMOS battery huh....a dead one at that. That excuse have for the purposfully taking out your CPU fan header has to be the oddest reason Ive heard so far, but a genuine reason none the less.

Which way are you looking to go? 754 or 939? We'll have a rough idea of whats to come then.

I may end up going cheap... puttin' new wheels on my car killed my budget (unplanned expense, didn't figure I'd ever crack a rim!)...

As it is, I'm broke until about the second week of December.

I switched out my battery, it seems to have resolved the problem, but we'll see. I overclocked my board for kicks (a small nudge from 1.53 to 1.61), and I have to back all my data (all-day project as I have about 100 gigs worth of crap I should have backed up a long time ago...)

Still... as I meet the BARE minimum for processor speed for Doom 3, It's more than time to upgrade...

What really tweaks me is I have a really good AGP video card (5900FX), and with the new double-cards coming out, and PCI-X, it's gonna be completely obsolete PDQ... so the board I buy is gonna be obsolete before I even get started...

Ahh yes bare minimum for games is when you have to think a little bit about where you stand. If I were you I'd wait it out a little bit until PCI-e becomes upper-main stream. You could but an Asus SLI board in preparation for dual graphics cards, but not actually use it untill you financialy sound for another card. A 3200 90nm coupled with a 6800gt and 512 memory should be a good start, then when your fiancially sound add a further 512 in the dual channel slot, and another 6800gt. youll get there in the end, but you dont have to get there all at once.

The way I see it, any excuse to upgrade is a good excuse.

Quote: Originally Posted by HoJo The way I see it, any excuse to upgrade is a good excuse.

Mine was (to GF): "But baby, i need a new mobo/processor so i can do more work for F@H. Really, this is a completely selfless act. I'm doing it for the good of humanity."

Actually, that statement is partially true, although i wouldn't insist that it was a completely selfless act

For the record, my GF sooo didn't buy my semi-BS, but then again she didn't smack me for doing the upgrade either

...oh lord.....what am i gonna tell her when i upgrade again next year?!?!

This reminds me... anyone with older Hardware, make sure the CMOS battery isn't an old NiCad (such as the common green barrel battery). The Lithium-Ion (silver disc/really big watch batteries) are fine.

The NiCad batteries are notorious for leaking onto your motherboard and destroying a vital portion of your computer, in fact people register for the Amiga forums on a daily basis to plead for help when the Green Barrel Battery destroys their Amiga computer, it seems to be the number one Amiga 4000 killer. The NiCad batteries only last so long before they leak.

My 486 has the exact same Green Barrel battery... I need to get around to replacing it...

C-MOS batteries last about 3-4 years, thats about 2 - 2.5 generations according to Moores Law, so go for it, it's as good excuse as anything else and makes sense to me.

BTW, can I have the old board and proc?
I want to build another Seti@Home node.

Just kidding, sort of.

Hasta...