Old CPU's upgrade question..

[JeremiahTheGreat]

I'm currently typing on a AMD K6-2 500Mhz machine, running windows 2000 which has a webserver, mailserver, firewall, ftpserver, mIRC session, dnsgo, antivirus and remote WinVNC installed and running. And you guessed it, it runs DAMN slow.. it has 354MB of RAM but it can't even play a DIVX for 2seconds without the sound and video bemoing out of sync by the second.


My question is, will upgrading (or is it downgrading?) to a AMD k-2+ 450 help in this matter? Or is it worth double the price to get a Amd k6-3?

Or live with it till i save up for that Fanless Cyrix C3 system.. Noise, Power consumption IS a concern, so please don't go suggesting a celeron or a duron (tho i do have a 750 lying around somewhere..)

 

[Gungnir]

I'll give you the advice you don't want 🙂 Upgrade to a .13 celeron on a new mobo. Mine runs fanless. It would work much better than your setup and a 1.0A and a tusi-m costs 130 bucks. Your idea of a C3 upgrade is, in my opinion, not a good one. Its not going to work faster than your rig now. It benches slower than a 550 pentium.

 

[mechBgon]

I second that motion. The Tualatin-based Celerons are very low on power consumption. I rebuilt an ailing little Hewlett-Packard at work with a 1.1A Celeron and a VIA PLE133T-based motherboard, along with a normal 7200RPM Maxtor hard drive and some PC133 SDRAM, and it is very perky. It was running fine on the stock HP 100-watt power supply.

Besides the TUSI-M, also check out the Biostar M6VLQ, which sells for around $50. Biostar says it takes up to a 1.3GHz Celeron, and a 1.3GHz Celeron has a "thermal design power" of 33.4 watts according to Intel. edit: a look at www.sandpile.org confirms that 33.4W is the max thermal output of the 1.3GHz Celeron, which is not radically different from your current CPU (20.75W). Contrast that with 55.2W for a 1.3GHz Duron, for instance.

The nice thing about either of those options is that you can re-use your PC100 RAM with them, or stick PC133 in there and boost the RAM to "host + 33MHz."

Another thought that may help with your system performance: since you have a lot of network traffic, get a network card that lets Windows2000 offload the packet-checksum calculations from the CPU to the network card. One example would be the Intel Pro/100 S, which you can find at Newegg and Multiwave, among other places.

 

[JeremiahTheGreat]

The biggest problem with getting that Celeron for me, is that this case is a MicroATX and comes with a spanking 90W PSU.. thats right.. 90Watt!!! That would mean i need a new PSU as well as case, the case is catered for this absolutely tiny PSU, its 1/3 of the size of a normal one!!! The K6-2+ is like $30 on ebay..

 

[mechBgon]

How about a cheap replacement case with a cheap 250W power supply? Would $28.50 shipped be a possibility? That will take flexATX, microATX or full ATX boards.

 

[Richardito]

Originally posted by: JeremiahTheGreat
The biggest problem with getting that Celeron for me, is that this case is a MicroATX and comes with a spanking 90W PSU.. thats right.. 90Watt!!! That would mean i need a new PSU as well as case, the case is catered for this absolutely tiny PSU, its 1/3 of the size of a normal one!!! The K6-2+ is like $30 on ebay..

It seems to me that you already made up your mind...

 

[JeremiahTheGreat]

How about a cheap replacement case with a cheap 250W power supply? Would $28.50 shipped be a possibility? That will take flexATX, microATX or full ATX boards.

With computer cases for that price going around..

i think i'm gonna get one cheapo new case, bang in my old dust encrested Asus 17v-133 and mouldy duron 750, downclock it to 500Mhz and 1.5v core, and bang in a big arse heatsink w/o fan!

If my house burns down, i'll tell you about it!