Need to Max out my 7811FX

Ok I've got some money to play with, I love this machine and i want to get the most out of it I can.

Whats the highest fastest processor I can put in this thing?

Also wheres the cheapest place for a blu ray drive that will work?

Any advantage in going with a hard drive that supports the 6.0 sata? or are we capped with the 3.0 ones

Anyway I can upgrade the graphics maybe pull a later card from another later fx machine?

 

Whats the highest fastest processor I can put in this thing? X9100, T9900

Any advantage in going with a hard drive that supports the 6.0 sata? or are we capped with the 3.0 ones. I don't think there is a disadvantage with going with 6.0 SATA.

Anyway I can upgrade the graphics maybe pull a later card from another later fx machine? Nope. It is one with the motherboard.

I don't know about Blue-Ray

 

any real difference in the chips, is there a better one to go with?

 

The E0 stepping Core 2 Extreme X9100 name QHBQ is the best processor, which should be equal to the T9900 but overclockable. The C0 X9100 will run hotter than the T9900 at the stock clock speed. The P9700 which I didn't mention is 2.8GHz but more energy effiecient. Some people have disabled this thing called EIST which allows them to overclock their non-extreme processors by 133MHz.
Stock Clocks:
X9100: 3.06GHz
T9900: 3.06GHz
P9700: 2.8GHz

The secret to Core 2 Quads may yet be discovered (although for gaming quads are overrated), and overclocking through the FSB has been done by several people but it requires soldering skills.

If you are on a budget the E0 T9800 will be almost equal to the T9900.

 

MB and controller chip do not support SATA 6 and unfortunately, the GPU is soldered.

Your processor is the best upgrade and of course an SSD would be useful to throw Windows on for ultra quick boots. Nice having room for two drives, isn't it.

 

1.) GPU is fixed, as mentioned above.
2.) X9100 ES cpu's work great but the cooling solution will only yeild 3.4 GHz max stable Prime95 without overheating. The CPU will yeild about 3.7 GHz under normal apps but still expect a huge amount of heat.
3.) SSD primary is the way to go. Boots are faster but not record breaking as the BIOS and hardware intialization is time consuming. APP launching and the like will love you.
4.) A seconadary 7,200 RPM storage drive is great too. The new XT is the optimum drive but a 7K500 suits the system extremely well.
5.) 8GB is not neccesary but a nice upgrade as well. I personally went with a burner and made the memory CAS6. Not a grea upgrade but I can see a slight difference working with large RAW files. If your work never goes through the full 4GB you already have don't bother with the 8GB.

Look at the returns though for the cost of your best upgrades

$300.00 X9100
$300.00 Vertex 2 120GB

Optionally
$10.00 Donation to Throttle Stop for overclocking.
$200.00 8GB Ram
$120.00 500GB XT

So from about $600 to $930. While you could get another system you'd have to decide if these upgrades are worth it for your needs. For mine, P7805, it was well worth the upgrades...........