Stupid Question about old Socket A

[filterxg]

I have an old socket A VIA KT133A, with an 850 T-Bird. How far can I upgrade this? I'm giving the computer to my father (who uses a Cyrix 350Mhz right now), he only uses it as an office/internet machine so an upgrade isn't necessary, but anything would help (he'll likely use it as his primary for another 4-6 years).

I'm guessing a Sempron out of the question.

 

[Munky]

You can probably upgrade it to a T-bitd 1400. I don't know if Athlon XP would work, but in your case it wont be worth it anyways, because the rest of the system would not keep up with the processor. If all you're gonna do on it is internet/office apps, then instead you might want to install more memory, if you have less than 512 mb.

 

[Peter]

KT133A, in theorz, does take everything 133 MHz bus, all the way up to the (rare) XP2600+ /133 model.

YMMV, depending on how far the board's BIOS takes you. But anyway, an 850 T-Bird is plenty enough for the target application. So make sure the thing has at least 256 MBytes of RAM, give it a modern, quiet and fast hard disk and a fresh and also quiet CPU fan/heatsink, and there you go.

It might be a good idea to inspect the large capacitors on the board for bulges and leaks - not that the thing is on its way out anyway.

 

[ChicagoPCGuy]

The KT133A can handle, technically speaking from a chipset standpoint, a 133Mhz FSB Athlon Thunderbird core CPU to 1.4 Ghz and POSSIBLY an AthlonXP--most likely only the Palomino core XP's however (good luck finding one). However, this is all trumped by what the mobo rev. and BIOS itself will support. First, determine what PCB rev your mobo is. The PCB rev will either be on a sticker on the mobo or silk-screened. Check the manufacturer's website, and if they still list the board, see what the last CPU was that was supported by the most recent BIOS update/PCB rev. That will tell you where you can take your exisiting system. Obviously, you are still restricted to SDRAM. NewEgg was selling the old 1.33Ghz 133MhzFSB Thunderbird C core CPU's for about $40 last time I checked, but they might have sold out of the them. The other place that might have the older core CPU's is www.pcprogress.com.

EDIT: To say that your question is hardly stupid.