Old-School Upgrade

[Ketchup]

Hello all. It has been a few years where a CPU upgrade had a huge WOW! factor, for me anyway. Don't get me wrong, current rig is plenty fast, but the last one (an overclocked Q6600) was no slouch!

A couple years ago my parents gave me their old Compaq Presario SR1810NX, after I had built them a new machine.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&docname=c00609384#N737

After bumping the RAM to 2 GB and adding a couple SATA drives, it was a decent file server. When my wife and I bought a Blue-Ray player, I started using the Samsung All-Share, and we really loved it, but it really bogged down the PC (Sempron 3200+ Palermo).

Finally, I decided to do something about it. Found an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Toledo on eBay for $25 to replace the Sempron 3200+ Palermo. A decent cooler and I was out less than $50.

Holy cow, what a difference! I recreated the AllShare database on the old chip, and it took at least 8 hours (may have been a little longer as it was still running when I left for work).

The new one? About 1.5 hours! I know some of you are probably thinking so what? old hardware!

But it was a trip down memory lane for me. Remember when a chip made a huge, noticeable difference in the speed of your machine? And these chips were from the same era!

Thanks for reading folks.

 

[Netopia]

I really enjoy posts like this. I miss that old fun of seeing some huge leap by upgrading/tweaking/hacking.

"Back In The Day", when things like Russ' Celery Report... letting us know which stepping he was getting the best overclock with, or cross-wiring Socket 754 processors to bump voltage... whatever the tack, it was always fun.

These days, I don't even bother with overclocking. Things are so powerful, that unless I just wanted bragging rights, there's nothing I do that will actually take advantage of additional speed/power.

Similar to your post, I just upgraded an Intel NAS from a Celeron to a Core2Duo and from 256KB of RAM to 2GB. I use this box for storage and PLEX, and saw a nice bump in performance, so I feel your excitement!

Joe

 

[Ketchup]

Thanks for the post Netopia. Good stuff!

On a side note, I was originally looked for the ones with the higher L2 cache, but man, do people want way too much for those things. I know people are buying at that price, but I would wait and save for a new build before shelling out $100 for an 8-year-old CPU.

 

[spat55]

I've only recently gotten into building PC's about 2 years ago, but at least with the new gen CPU's not being much of a upgrade it is nicer on my bank account

 

[Yuriman]

Right now on overclock.net, one of the big things is modding 771 Xeons to go into 775 boards. I snagged a 2.83GHz 45nm Xeon for my wife's compy (Q6600 -> E5440) for ~$20 which I felt was a screaming deal, but there are a lot of people there who are spending $100+ on top-end 771 chips, putting them under water, cranking them up to 4.2GHz+ and ending up with near-stock i5 performance.

To be honest, I get really excited when I find a PC on the side of the road, but it's getting rarer.

 

[ElFenix]

that computer was a hot deal about 8-9 years ago. there used to be a giant thread on fatwallet about how to upgrade it. i think my mom's has an athlon II x3 in it now.

 

[Ketchup]

that computer was a hot deal about 8-9 years ago. there used to be a giant thread on fatwallet about how to upgrade it. i think my mom's has an athlon II x3 in it now.

It was a pretty good deal at the time, and I was able to find one on clearance. Obviously I was a bit behind on the upgrade, but was still a fun little project. However, if anything else on this thing dies, I am done with it.

 

[NTMBK]

Shame that support for XP is ending in April.

 

[Ketchup]

Shame that support for XP is ending in April.

Yeah, I had it running Server 2003, upgraded to Server 2008 last week. With the new CPU, it is doing pretty well. Finding drivers for the integrated graphics was a bit of a pain though. For some reason, tons of drivers that "claimed" to work, regretfully did not.

 

[Charlie98]

A few years ago I was determined to make my old Dells (1 Pent D desktop, 2 laptops) 'new-and-improved' to last a few more useful years. They all got upgraded processors but the desktop went from a 805 Smithfield to an 820 which made it sort of faster but boy did it run HOT! That CPU fan ran pretty much non-stop and it sounded like a blender in the room.

My daughter's laptop went from a Turion 64x2 TL-60 to a TL-64, which made a real-world difference... but the biggest difference came with the 840Pro.

It's funny, I was surprised how much the older processors cost! The reason I went with the TL-64 was anything faster.... was too expensive!

Shame that support for XP is ending in April.

I agree... the whole OS and programs, drivers and everything wound up being only 10GB vs 17GB on my most recent (and clean) W7 install.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

A few years ago I was determined to make my old Dells (1 Pent D desktop, 2 laptops) 'new-and-improved' to last a few more useful years. They all got upgraded processors but the desktop went from a 805 Smithfield to an 820 which made it sort of faster but boy did it run HOT! That CPU fan ran pretty much non-stop and it sounded like a blender in the room.

My daughter's laptop went from a Turion 64x2 TL-60 to a TL-64, which made a real-world difference... but the biggest difference came with the 840Pro.

It's funny, I was surprised how much the older processors cost! The reason I went with the TL-64 was anything faster.... was too expensive!



I agree... the whole OS and programs, drivers and everything wound up being only 10GB vs 17GB on my most recent (and clean) W7 install.

It's funny nowadays you can get a 65nm Pentium D for about $15 lol. They OC very well too. I got a Pentium D 925 D0 stepping (coolest running Pentium D you'll get) to 4GHz @ 1.3v on a stock P4 heatsink.

 

[Blue_Max]

I love a good oldskool upgrade! When I found an ad for an old 3DFX Voodoo3 PCI card I jumped on it! Loaded it into an IBM SFF machine with only 2 PCI slots, along with a SoundBlaster. Add Win98SE and you have some great oldskool gaming!


That said, my workplace is using ancient single-core AM2 machines... I have a dual-core proc just lying around in my junk pile that I wish I could throw in there when no one is looking!

 

[Deders]

Just upgraded my gf's computer from a single core Semperon that couldn't handle utube, to an Athlon64x2 6000, which can now just about handle 720p.

Funny thing is, when I had an athlon64x2 5600 (overclocked to 3GHz) it was able to handle 1080p no sweat. What happened? I thought codecs were supposed to get more efficient.

 

[jihe]

Just upgraded my gf's computer from a single core Semperon that couldn't handle utube, to an Athlon64x2 6000, which can now just about handle 720p.

Funny thing is, when I had an athlon64x2 5600 (overclocked to 3GHz) it was able to handle 1080p no sweat. What happened? I thought codecs were supposed to get more efficient.

You probably had gpu acceleration.

 

[Deders]

You probably had gpu acceleration.

Not for MKV files, with G92 hardware.