Athlon XP 3100+ (2.1ghz single core) vs. Dual Core Atom

[ProCoolingKevin]

My grandpa has a fairly old computer running Windows XP. It's got an old 120gb hard drive, an Athlon XP, and 512mb of RAM. I was thinking about upgrading all of his equipment, and hopefully giving him a smaller, quieter system at the same time. I thought maybe a dual core Atom + 1 gig of RAM might do the trick. Also, in four years of owning his computer, he's only used 11 gigs of space haha - So I was thinking a 32gb SSD for good measure might make for a good small, silent, faster PC. Am I off? It seems hard to find benchmarks that compare a dual core atom to an old single core athlon. I think the athlon might be slightly faster, but the increase in RAM and SSD might even it out. I'm just rambling out loud - can someone point me in the right direction? I haven't been following CPU technology that closely over the past 18 months - would like to keep the costs low. Thanks!

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Since this is going to be a desktop, there's no reason to go with Atom. You can always pick up a low-end Athlon 64, Sempron 64, Celeron, or Pentium Dual-Core and get much better performance than you could with Atom. These should run cool and use low power, although not quite as low as the Atom. Here are samples of what I'm talking about:

AMD Sempron LE-1250 Sparta 2.2GHz Socket AM2 45W Single-Core Processor
AMD Athlon LE-1660 Lima 2.8GHz Socket AM2 45W Single-Core Processor
AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor
Intel Celeron 430 Conroe-L 1.8GHz LGA 775 35W Single-Core Processor
Intel Celeron E1400 Allendale 2.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor

 

[ProCoolingKevin]

What about something that will just go right in the same socket? Is that possible?

 

[taltamir]

nothing is made anymore for that socket; nothing much better was ever made.
Atom is a terrible choice for a desktop, its not gonna be an upgrade at all.

Just get her 2x2GB of DDR2 ram (30$), and a cheap mobo + cpu like a 70$ mobo and a 30-50$ X2 cpu.

 

[ProCoolingKevin]

Thanks for all the replies, guys. I'm going to go w/ the cheap CPU + mobo combo. Is a Celeron E1400 going to beat this thing head to head? I see their clock speeds aren't too far off. I can get this @ Newegg for under $50.

 

[GundamF91]

You might as well step up and get E5200, it's only 20bucks more, and more cache makes a difference. These E1xxx are crippled.

 

[ProCoolingKevin]

Yeah I saw that... but when we're talking about CPU, RAM, and motherboard for $120 after tax / shipping, another $20 is another $20!

Right now, he's on Windows XP and he has an Athlon 3000+ with 512MB of DDR SDRAM. After this, he'll have an E1400 with 2GB of DDR2 memory. I might even give it a slight overclock as well. I mean he just needs Firefox to be snappy so I think this will do the trick. If you can think of a cheaper way to do it. i'm all ears!

 

[alcoholbob]

Atom 330 has 4 threads although the IPC is bad. So basically it's gonna run some things very well, some things quite badly whereas a desktop cpu won't have that variance (which may be a good or bad thing depending on your needs). The good thing about dual core atom is it does not require active cooling.

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: ProCoolingKevin
Yeah I saw that... but when we're talking about CPU, RAM, and motherboard for $120 after tax / shipping, another $20 is another $20!

Right now, he's on Windows XP and he has an Athlon 3000+ with 512MB of DDR SDRAM. After this, he'll have an E1400 with 2GB of DDR2 memory. I might even give it a slight overclock as well. I mean he just needs Firefox to be snappy so I think this will do the trick. If you can think of a cheaper way to do it. i'm all ears!

The E1400 is crippled but even counting that it should beat the athlon xp to a pulp. Games is generally where it performs the worst but I doubt that comp will ever see those.

Any boards now days have fan control, and even the stock heatsink will be quite.
Instead of the SSD a 2.5 inch laptop drive would be a lot cheaper and will be quite, something like 80gig would work fine.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

The E1400 will definitely smoke the Athlon XP and Atom with no problems. That being said, the Athlon X2 4850e will be quite a bit faster than the E1400 and they cost nearly the same, but either chip will be fine for what your grandpa does.