fastest socket A athlon? (old chip question)

[monkeyxx]

I'm thinking about maybe a cheap upgrade to my 5 year old computer... it has a 1.4 ghz athlon in it, "socket A" I think. what's the fastest chip I could stick in here without having to change the motherboard? (I imagine i could find one pretty cheap these days)

thanks a bunch

 

[monkeyxx]

this is my motherboard (Epox 8KHA)

Motherboard Specifications
CPU Socket Socket A (200/266 MHz Support)
Chipset KT266
Form Factor ATX
Multiplier Options 5.0 - 12.5x
Bus Speed Options 100-166 MHz
Voltages 1.35v - 1.85v in +0.025v increments
Memory Support 3 x 184-pin DDR DRAM PC1600/PC2100 Support
Expansion Slots 6/0/1/0 (PCI/ISA/AGP/AMR)
AGP Support 4x AGP
USB Support 2x Standard USB ports
Integrated Components AC'97 Audio
Bios Award BIOS
Onboard IDE 2 x ATA100 EIDE

 

[larciel]

best solution for you would be to spend about $70-80 and get sempron& motherboard combo from Outpost.com (Fry's if you live near one)

you'd spend about $40+ for socket A CPU anyway, and it wont' be much upgrade. if you buy the combo, you can still use your memory and you'll notice considerable speed upgrade.

gl

 

[Zugzwang152]

http://www.epox.com.tw/eng/products_content.php?ps=96 <- your board


The fastest Athlon is what you have now: tbird 1.4 Ghz
The fastest Socket A is a Athlon XP 3200+

I don't think that board supports higher than 266 mhz FSB, so you're going to have to go with a lower end Athlon XP.

It's time to upgrade motherboard/CPU/RAM here. Save up more and then upgrade.

 

[Stumps]

IIRC that board only supports the palamino core AXP, so a 2100+ is as high as you can go...It would be easier and probably not much more expensive to upgrade to a Sempron or A64 and Mobo.

 

[monkeyxx]

thanks, all

I can't seem to find the sempron/mobo combos on the outpost site... that sounds like a killer deal though

would that board be good quality stuff for that cheap? on par with my old epox at least? I have sort of special needs, I'm a musician and I do multi-track audio recording with my PC so I need a chipset maybe that's sort of "mainstream" to be compatible with my special soundcard (my current epox board is good in general but sort of finicky sometimes on the soundcard issue...mainly the fault of bad soundcard drivers from a company that no longer exists (aardvark audio)). I don't know, for $80 I'd be willing to give it a shot

another odd question... I have two 256MB ram sticks in my PC right now... would I be able to put a non-matching stick in the third dimm, like a 512? for a decent gig of ram?

 

[larciel]

Originally posted by: monkeyxx
thanks, all

I can't seem to find the sempron/mobo combos on the outpost site... that sounds like a killer deal though

would that board be good quality stuff for that cheap? on par with my old epox at least? I have sort of special needs, I'm a musician and I do multi-track audio recording with my PC so I need a chipset maybe that's sort of "mainstream" to be compatible with my special soundcard (my current epox board is good in general but sort of finicky sometimes on the soundcard issue...mainly the fault of bad soundcard drivers from a company that no longer exists (aardvark audio)). I don't know, for $80 I'd be willing to give it a shot

another odd question... I have two 256MB ram sticks in my PC right now... would I be able to put a non-matching stick in the third dimm, like a 512? for a decent gig of ram?

those combos come up very often, but i can't find it right now. Keep checking Hot deals forum as well as fw.

the mobo in that combo uses nforce 3 chipset, which is far superior than your current board uses in terms of quality and speed. You should have no problem with your audio.

you 'can' put in non-matching stick, but it might be receipe for disaster. try putting one in, if errors occur take it out and try if the non-matching stick is the prob.

You should be fine. good luck

 

[SonicIce]

just a note, single core athlon 64's just came down a bunch in price. a 3200 venice is $99 and its no slouch in performance. 939 mobos are around $60.

 

[RallyMaster]

Since it's a 266Mhz FSB, the highest you'll be able to go is a 2600+. However, 2600+ with 266FSBs are very rare, so you'll have to go with a 2400+.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: RallyMaster
Since it's a 266Mhz FSB, the highest you'll be able to go is a 2600+. However, 2600+ with 266FSBs are very rare, so you'll have to go with a 2400+.

QFT.

Only the XP-M mobile chips are any faster on the 266FSB, and these are unlikely to be fully recognised by an older desktop BIOS.

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally posted by: RallyMaster
Since it's a 266Mhz FSB, the highest you'll be able to go is a 2600+. However, 2600+ with 266FSBs are very rare, so you'll have to go with a 2400+.

Thats not always true. While there are mobile bartons that run on 266 mhz fsb, not all mobos will support them. Sometimes, it takes a bios flash ... other times you're "sol." Socket A is a dead platform in the sense that there is no upgrade path.

You're far better off going with a 64bit processor combo or wait for Conroe. At least that way you still have room to grow.

P.S. Plan on replacing your ram too. Its likely only PC2100.

 

[wolfman11]

Definately go with the A64. I replaced a AXP 2800+ (2.08 gigahertz clock) with an Opteron 146 (2.0 gigahertz clock) and both running stock the Opteron 146 was 20-25% faster. No way the dual channel on an AXP comes close to offseting that performance gain vs the A64 on socket754...

 

[monkeyxx]

lil more help...I'm looking at mid-grade up-grades

if I buy a socket 939 motherboard and chip (I'm thinking the 3200 for $100 and either an epox or msi board for 80-100$), will I still be able to use my old hard drive? will it be a pretty much plug and play install with all my drives and cards and stuff? (I realize I will have to upgrade the RAM) I'm trying to make this an affordable upgrade, not a complete system update/rebuild

my current drive:
western digital
WD1200JB
EIDE Hard Drives
120 GB, 100 MB/s, 8 MB Cache, 7200 RPM

here are the motherboard specs I'm looking at (oh and do these both do RAID, I just have to buy two identical hard drives and an extra cable?...that would be fantastic)

A.

Model
Brand MSI
Model K8N Neo4-F
Supported CPU
CPU Socket Type Socket 939
CPU Type Athlon 64 FX/Athlon 64
FSB 1000MHz Hyper Transport (2000 MT/s)
Chipsets
North Bridge NVIDIA nForce4
Memory
Number of DDR Slots 4x 184pin DDR
DDR Standard DDR 400 (PC 3200)
Maximum Memory Supported 4GB
Dual Channel Supported Yes
Expansion Slots
AGP Slots None
PCI Express x16 1
PCI Express x1 1
PCI Slots 4
Other Slots 1x PCI Express X4, 1x PCI for communication
Storage Devices
PATA 2 x ATA100 up to 4 Devices
PATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
SATA 1.5 Gb/s 4
SATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
Onboard Video
Onboard Video No
Onboard Audio
Audio Chipset Realtek ALC850
Audio Channels 8 Channels
Onboard LAN
LAN Chipset Marvell 88E1111 PHY
Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
Rear Panel Ports
PS/2 2
COM 1
LPT 1
USB 4x USB 2.0
S/PDIF Out 1x Optical and 1x Coaxial
Audio Ports 5 Ports
Onboard USB
Onboard USB 6x USB 2.0
Physical Spec
Form Factor ATX
Dimensions 11.96" x 9.60"
Features
Power Pin 24 Pin
Features The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface (DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.

B.

Model
Brand EPoX
Model EP-9NPA+Ultra
Supported CPU
CPU Socket Type Socket 939
CPU Type Athlon 64 FX/Athlon 64/Sempron
FSB 1000MHz Hyper Transport (2000 MT/s)
Chipsets
North Bridge NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra
Memory
Number of DDR Slots 4x 184pin DDR
DDR Standard DDR 400 (PC 3200)
Maximum Memory Supported 4GB
Expansion Slots
AGP Slots None
PCI Express x16 1
PCI Express x1 3
PCI Slots 3
Storage Devices
PATA 2 x ATA100 up to 4 Devices
PATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
SATA 3Gb/s 4
SATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
Onboard Video
Onboard Video No
Onboard Audio
Audio Chipset Realtek ALC850
Audio Channels 8 Channels
Onboard LAN
Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
Rear Panel Ports
PS/2 2
COM 1
LPT 1
USB 4x USB 2.0
S/PDIF Out 1x Optical and 1x Coaxial
Audio Ports 6 Ports
Onboard USB
Onboard USB 6x USB 2.0
Onboard 1394
Onboard 1394 2x 1394a
Physical Spec
Form Factor ATX
Dimensions 12.0" x 9.6"
Features
Power Pin 24 Pin
Features Award/Phoenix BIOS v6.0

 

[monkeyxx]

here's links to the boards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130491

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813123236

I guess you could say which one you think is best... the epox is $100 shipped and the MSI is $75 shipped. my primary concern is compatibility with my PCI recording/musicians' soundcard, but overall stability is important

 

[monkeyxx]

should i ask in the motherboard forum instead?

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally posted by: monkeyxx
should i ask in the motherboard forum instead?

Nope, no need to ask in the motherboard forum. Both of the motherboards you linked would do you well. However, neither of them are AGP boards. You will need to buy a new graphics card if you went that way. Since you're interested in an upgrade and not a whole new system, I'd consider something more like THIS. You will lose 2 PCI slots, but you won't have to run out and buy a new graphics card immediately. The onboard video should meet your needs nicely. It also has plenty of "gadgets" right out of the box that would be good for the kind of work you like to do.

If you like to game on the side, no problem. Just buy yourself a nice new graphics card once the wallet has recovered from the initial round of hardware you bought. This would give you an upgrade on a budget with still some breathing room for improvement. Its also a very nice board built with a guy like you in mind who is more interested in encoding and music work, or media center pc than a gaming rig.

Your 120 gig IDE hard drive will be sufficient to get you started. You can always upgrade to sata or sata II later. However, its just a bit more complex than dropping in your old drive and firing up your new system. If you do that, you'll likely blue screen. The chipset drivers need to be updated to support your new board. It can be done without reinstalling your OS ... and if you're up to the challenge I'll point you in the right direction. However, most people back up the important files and then format/install a fresh copy of your OS.

Be aware that unless you have a retail copy of winXP, it won't be transferable to the new system. Even if all the other components are the same, a mobo/cpu swap is enough for winXP to make you reactivate. MS won't reactivate an OEM copy on a new motherboard unless its a direct replacement board. Even then, you may end up having to do the phone activation and plead your case with the Microsoft rep.

 

[SkylinGTR26]

Just in case you dont mind about switching to a PCI-E videocard from your current AGP i have a killer motherboard for sale its 50bucks.
It matches the link you gave for that MSI board except this is the F version it isnt red its black and the layout is a tad bit different.
Instead of 2 1x PCIe slots on the board you have 1 4x PCIe lane and 1 1x lane.
Pretty much the same motherboard except for that. Its comparable to the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum except for having SATAII support which isnt that much of a biggie since your gonna be using your IDE.
For 50 bucks if you dont mind switch graphics cards i'd say thats a killer deal. 50 shipped that is.
Heres the link http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...?catid=45&threadid=1881132&STARTPAGE=1

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Be aware that unless you have a retail copy of winXP, it won't be transferable to the new system.

B.S. You can re-use your OEM XP as long as it is not some DELL, HP, Compaq, etc. restore disk.

MS won't reactivate an OEM copy on a new motherboard unless its a direct replacement board.

Yes they will... Quit spreading FUD.

Even then, you may end up having to do the phone activation and plead your case with the Microsoft rep.

He will only have to call if it has been under something like 90-120 days since the last activation. He should be able to do an online activation with no prob if it has been long enough. Even if you have to call, You don't need to "plead your case".. Just tell them you are doing a re-install.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: GonzoDaGr8

Be aware that unless you have a retail copy of winXP, it won't be transferable to the new system.

B.S. You can re-use your OEM XP as long as it is not some DELL, HP, Compaq, etc. restore disk.

MS won't reactivate an OEM copy on a new motherboard unless its a direct replacement board.

Yes they will... Quit spreading FUD.

Even then, you may end up having to do the phone activation and plead your case with the Microsoft rep.

He will only have to call if it has been under something like 90-120 days since the last activation. He should be able to do an online activation with no prob if it has been long enough. Even if you have to call, You don't need to "plead your case".. Just tell them you are doing a re-install.[/q]

Correct FTW....no need to even tell them you are reinstalling...just say you upgraded your PC and they will reactivate it No worries...if it has been more than 90 days since the last activation it will work online then

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

Go back and re-read. Originally, he was talking about upgrading a socket A. A socket A would likely be at least 2 years old. That shoves aside the 90 day activation argument. The OS has long been bound to the system.

We also suggested changing out the board AND cpu ... upgrading to some completely different equipment. This qualifies as a new system in microsoft's eyes and would fail the activation on an OEM copy.

"Plead your case" doesn't mean "beg." It means presenting your argument. "This is what I did ... blah blah blah ... may I have a new activation code." Maybe you get it, maybe you don't. That would all depend on how tightly they are inforcing the rules. The above rig does not qualify for reactivation of OEM software! Will he get it? Possibly ... but you can't tell him he will for sure.

Perhaps you're confusing OEM and RETAIL. Retail is not tied to the system and can be passed from system to system provided its no longer in use in any of the previous systems.

Can this be worked around? Yes ... but what you're stating as my "misinformation" is actually microsoft's rules. I'd say you guys are the one's spreading the misinformation. You cannot guarantee that MS will simply hand him a new activation code.

The rules are the rules. If microsoft chooses to relax the standard when he calls ... and they have many times. Then thats their choice. However, its always best to present the rules as straight up as possible.

Would I try to reactivate my OEM? CERTAINLY! No harm in trying. If it doesn't work, oh well, you knew the rules. If it does, great ... you saved a few extra dollars.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: DetroitSportsFan
Go back and re-read. Originally, he was talking about upgrading a socket A. A socket A would likely be at least 2 years old. That shoves aside the 90 day activation argument. The OS has long been bound to the system.

We also suggested changing out the board AND cpu ... upgrading to some completely different equipment. This qualifies as a new system in microsoft's eyes and would fail the activation on an OEM copy.

"Plead your case" doesn't mean "beg." It means presenting your argument. "This is what I did ... blah blah blah ... may I have a new activation code." Maybe you get it, maybe you don't. That would all depend on how tightly they are inforcing the rules. The above rig does not qualify for reactivation of OEM software! Will he get it? Possibly ... but you can't tell him he will for sure.

Perhaps you're confusing OEM and RETAIL. Retail is not tied to the system and can be passed from system to system provided its no longer in use in any of the previous systems.

Can this be worked around? Yes ... but what you're stating as my "misinformation" is actually microsoft's rules. I'd say you guys are the one's spreading the misinformation. You cannot guarantee that MS will simply hand him a new activation code.

The rules are the rules. If microsoft chooses to relax the standard when he calls ... and they have many times. Then thats their choice. However, its always best to present the rules as straight up as possible.

Would I try to reactivate my OEM? CERTAINLY! No harm in trying. If it doesn't work, oh well, you knew the rules. If it does, great ... you saved a few extra dollars.

If it is a non manufacturer version of WinXP OEM(eg bought with hardware such as a harddisk or memory)then Microsoft WILL ALWAYS reactivate it, it is not bound to any particular machine...I have activated many WinXP OEM's that have been reinstalled on machines that have had a complete upgrade and NEVER had any problems with MS knocking it back....many people have doen the same...I would be will to put money on it that it would be activated...MS will only knock it back if it is a Manufacturer(IBM, DELL etc), but even then that is pretty rare...MS would like you to be using THEIR OS rather than a different one.

 

[imported_msatchmo]

I def recommend getting the new motherboard/CPU. You CAN still use your old ram and it'll work just fine.

I had a gaming rig (DFI Lan Party Motherboard, 939 pin) and an AMD 3800 X2 and my ram went bad so I had to RMA it. While I waited for it to come back I used an old pair of ram 256x2 I think it was DDR2100 or something ghetto. It worked just fine and I was actually surprised that there wasn't a MONSTEROUS difference between that ram and my 2gigs of crucial ballistix which was DDR4000 !

Also... i had an aardvark too man. It sucks they went out of business it's really hard to keep that thing working well. I'd def look at getting an audiophile96 for like $99. It's supported and is jsut as good if not better (only bad thing is no breakout box or mic pre's ;-/ )

I bit the bullet and got an Onyx 400F firewire card and the thing kicks ass, but it cost me $630 bucks!