upgrade path from old athlon xp system....cheap?

[railer]

I didn't see this topic in the past two weeks, so here goes.

Upgrading from an old (circa 2005) athlon xp system, primarly for video encoding.

Just need something cheap, but hopefully noticeable faster than an athlon 1700.

Do not care whether AMD or Intel....price is king. I also want something quieter than my old athlon's....those things used to run hot so needed big, loud fans.

Looking for MB/CPU thoughts, maybe from last 1-1.5 years.

 

[Stumps]

buy a new system, much more cost effective than trying to upgrade that old dinosaur.

 

[Aluvus]

You will need a new processor, motherboard (Socket A is dead), and memory (DDR is also dead). Possibly also a new power supply, largely because power supplies get worse as they age. And yeah, at that point you're basically looking at a completely new system.

If I were in your shoes, I would probably buy a lower-end Core 2 of some description, but there are Phenoms that would do the job. To some extent it depends on the particular encoder you are using (how well does it take advantage of more cores, for instance?). Tom's Hardware's performance charts include an encoding benchmark, and Anandtech's Bench has several.

 

[Ksyder]

You might check out the recession special over at maximum pc... that is going to be a pretty strong performer. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/dream_machine

I've had success on the absolute cheap end going with a Intel G31/33 based mATX board for under $50, a Pentium Dual Core (Allendale) and a few gigs of DDR2 800 for $20 or 30.

IMO that is really as cheap as it gets and you do get an upgrade path.

http://microcenter.com/search/...group=byopc_sysboards&

check out the dual-core celeron with biostar board if you need the bottom dollar system. I think that also includes a gig of ram. I've used those in a few system upgrades and its amazing performance (for the money)

 

[railer]

Thanks. I didn't know DDR was dead! . It's been a few years.

I knew I'd be looking at MB/Processor and probably RAM. I guess the only things that I planned on keeping were case/PS, vid card, and HD. I've got a couple of old cases kicking around from back in the day with 300-350w PS's, hope that's enough. Those core 2 duo's don't seem cheap....

 

[Ksyder]

Originally posted by: railer
Thanks. I didn't know DDR was dead! . It's been a few years.

I knew I'd be looking at MB/Processor and probably RAM. I guess the only things that I planned on keeping were case/PS, vid card, and HD. I've got a couple of old cases kicking around from back in the day with 300-350w PS's, hope that's enough. Those core 2 duo's don't seem cheap....

as far as video card goes, if you have agp you are out of luck as you will need either pci-e x16 or pci. Power supply "should" be fine, however, usually now they are 20 + 4 pin for main connector. In the past systems I upgraded have worked fine with an older 20 pin PSU. Also you would need a 4 pin aux cpu power plug. I think basically a P4 certified psu should be fine. Another thing to keep in mind is nowadays there is only one IDE port on new boards, especially on Intel chipsets. This will provide you with 2 devices, and obviously its best not to have the hard drive and optical drive on the same channel, although you can get away with it if you don't use the optical drive much. You'd be best off getting a modern sata2 hard drive. They are dirt cheap. I'm thinking you can get an 80gb for around $35 plus shipping. You will get a nice performance boost from the increased cache/density of modern drives, although you may already have nice hard drives if you are into video editing.

 

[o1die]

I got a frys combo with sempron 1250LE and biostar 6150 motherboard for $59.99 2 weeks ago, and a 2x2gb memory for $28 after rebate. That's about as cheap as you can go. Fry's has this combo deal again for 2 days, but they raised the price by $10.

 

[railer]

How's the E5200 wolfdale? I know ECS used to be known as kind of cheap and not overclocker freindly...but that's OK.


newegg combo

 

[Ksyder]

Originally posted by: railer
How's the E5200 wolfdale? I know ECS used to be known as kind of cheap and not overclocker freindly...but that's OK.


newegg combo

:thumbsup:

ECS still has the same reputation but still makes a generally reliable system for cheap. The nice thing about that is if you aren't happy with the motherboard, you can step to something like a p45 chipset and take your ddr2 ram with you. Sure its not the latest and greatest but still fast (and cheap)

 

[rubberneck]

I had an xp1700 I just upgraded for under $200.
Regor 240 AMD $61
Asrock 780gmh MB $60
HyperX 2x1GB ddr2 1066 $40
380 watt Raidmax PS $20

It's running 3.5 GHz stable with the IGP running at 725MHz (500 stock).

That was my 'on the cheap' upgrade.