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Old-School Upgrade

Ketchup

Ketchup

Elite Member
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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 🙂
 
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.
 
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.
 
ElFenix said:
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.
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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 said:
Shame that support for XP is ending in April.
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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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Charlie98 said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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!
 
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.
 
Deders said:
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.
Click to expand...

You probably had gpu acceleration.
 
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