Need info on upgrading an older Athlon CPU

[Bkanneg]

My sister has an old Cybermax system that has an Athlon 650 mhz processer in it. I was wondering if she would be able to upgrade this processer to a faster one without upgrading the motherboard. She can't afford a whole new system right now, so I thought getting more memory and possibly upgrading the processer would help. She is running Win98 SE right now. Would she be able to run XP home on her current processor? I'm sorry I don't know the motherboard type or chipset it is using.

I appreciate any and all advice.

 

[adlep]

Most likely, you should be able to upgrade the chip to 1 Giger K7 Athlon Classic, because I do have a feeling that this Cybermax syste is using the Slot A motherboard. Slot A means that the processor looks like a cartrige..
picture
If the mobo is using a socket A standard instead of slot A, you will be able to find a 1.1Ghz Tbird for about $35.00, which would be a nice upgrade, otherwise you will have to spend $50.00~$60.00 on a classic K7 (ebay might be a good source)
Hope that my answer will help

 

[adlep]

Also she will be able to run XP on the current setup without any problem, you might not believe it but it is still a quite powerfull processor. But make sure to buy plenty of SDRAM for the system. Two 256 MB of PC-133 RAM should do just fine...

Edit: XP will be a nice upgrade, but make sure to take an extra effort to reformat the hard drive and clean install the XP..

 

[Bkanneg]

That sounds great! Thanks! I'll give those a try.

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

most likely a classic slot athlon...but im not 100% sure

also, to find out which motherboard it is, have a look around
get the brand, model, and revision (usually found between the last two pci slots...but i dunno about the older ones)

 

[DoctorBooze]

XP will run fine on that if you've enough memory; it's usable, as a pure desktop setup (no IIS or anything) on a K6-II 450MHz or even a P-II 266 as long as you've more than 256Mb memory, so a 650MHz Athlon will be great. The thing is - you can get a modern mobo for £50, 256Mb DDR memory for £20, an XP CPU for £35, and a HSF for £5, that's £110 in all so about $160, so take care you don't spend too much upgrading what's there if you can't reuse it when you do go for the new mobo etc.

 

[yodayoda]

hey, if you find a 1 GHz slot athlon chip, buy them all. i found one really cheap and resold it for $200. a sucker is born every minute--for $200 you can get an athlon XP chip, brand new motherboard, and memory! hehehe, just trash it dude....