I purchased a Gateway GT4010 at Office Depot over the weekend. I was getting ready to build a custom machine, but this was to good of a deal to pass up, for just $750, I got the following including a nice 19" Gateway LCD monitor:
AMD 3500+ (Venice core, DH-E3 stepping)
200GB Western Digital HD (with small 2MB cache, a good drive for data backups)
1GB Dual channel DDR400
Nice 19" Gateway LCD
Dual layer DVD burner
Integrated Nvdia 6100
FIC KBTC51G Motherboard (supports AMD 64, and AMD 64 X2, with PCI Express 16x slot)
Nvidia C51G Chipset on the motherboard
Keyboard, Monitor, Mouse, Speakers
Canon IP6000 printer
Windows XP Media Center OS included $$$
Before even turning it on, I replaced the boot drive with a nice Seagate (8MB cache instead of 2mb). I also have a Geforce 6800GS, and a new 500 watt PSU on order.
This will give me a real nice machine for my needs, but I was wondering what would happen down the road if I dropped in a new CPU (say an AMD X2 4400+).
The motherboard definately supports AMD64 X2 CPUs (as stated on the manufacturers site). But, since the BIOS has no options for specifying any CPU info I was wondering if the BIOS that Gateway puts on this board would really handle the new CPU ? Is it possible that it would auto detect a different CPU, and know that it is a dual core CPU ?
I'm not ready to upgrade yet, but when the X2 processors become cheaper I would like to have that option.
AMD 3500+ (Venice core, DH-E3 stepping)
200GB Western Digital HD (with small 2MB cache, a good drive for data backups)
1GB Dual channel DDR400
Nice 19" Gateway LCD
Dual layer DVD burner
Integrated Nvdia 6100
FIC KBTC51G Motherboard (supports AMD 64, and AMD 64 X2, with PCI Express 16x slot)
Nvidia C51G Chipset on the motherboard
Keyboard, Monitor, Mouse, Speakers
Canon IP6000 printer
Windows XP Media Center OS included $$$
Before even turning it on, I replaced the boot drive with a nice Seagate (8MB cache instead of 2mb). I also have a Geforce 6800GS, and a new 500 watt PSU on order.
This will give me a real nice machine for my needs, but I was wondering what would happen down the road if I dropped in a new CPU (say an AMD X2 4400+).
The motherboard definately supports AMD64 X2 CPUs (as stated on the manufacturers site). But, since the BIOS has no options for specifying any CPU info I was wondering if the BIOS that Gateway puts on this board would really handle the new CPU ? Is it possible that it would auto detect a different CPU, and know that it is a dual core CPU ?
I'm not ready to upgrade yet, but when the X2 processors become cheaper I would like to have that option.
Facebook
Twitter