Upgrade from a Anthlon II x2 250

[cmf21]

My sister would like a faster chip so I'm going to give my dads cpu to her to replace her 5050e. What's the best upgrade from a Anthlon II x2 250 without breaking the bank too much but still faster.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

PII 555 BE with 2 cores unlocked, Athlon IIx 4 620, PII 955 BE overclocked. It depends on what you want/ how willing you are to tweak it to get what you want.

 

[LoneNinja]

There really isn't much of an upgrade for the Athlon II X2 250, it's already one of AMD's best dual core processors. Moving to a Phenom II X2 would be better, but depending on what the computers used for it may not be noticable. Same can be said with a quad core upgrade, if nothing real cpu intensive is done on the computer, no gain will be noticed.

 

[cmf21]

Might just leave his system alone if it's not going to make a difference and just get my sister the same cpu or something. I would just like to get her something faster then what she has. My father mostly uses his computer for the internet, word processing, youtube, etc. Has a ton of programs loaded and always has multiple programs and windows open. He's and still running xp with 2gb ram. I don't think he needs a quad, a dual core or something is fine. He does like speed though and seems to think the faster he gets into windows the faster his computer is.

Would overclocking the chip help all that much?

 

[DrMrLordX]

At that point, I'd look into just overclocking the Athlon ii x2 250 if at all possible. You should be able to squeeze a few extra mhz out of it without touching voltages.

 

[BD231]

Might just leave his system alone if it's not going to make a difference and just get my sister the same cpu or something. I would just like to get her something faster then what she has. My father mostly uses his computer for the internet, word processing, youtube, etc. Has a ton of programs loaded and always has multiple programs and windows open. He's and still running xp with 2gb ram. I don't think he needs a quad, a dual core or something is fine. He does like speed though and seems to think the faster he gets into windows the faster his computer is.

Would overclocking the chip help all that much?

Just an FYI. Windows seven dramatically cuts load times over XP, that and two extra gigs of ram would be a big boost for him. Not sure what app's he use's though, you'd have to make sure all his app's would work on seven.

 

[Axon]

Might just leave his system alone if it's not going to make a difference and just get my sister the same cpu or something. I would just like to get her something faster then what she has. My father mostly uses his computer for the internet, word processing, youtube, etc. Has a ton of programs loaded and always has multiple programs and windows open. He's and still running xp with 2gb ram. I don't think he needs a quad, a dual core or something is fine. He does like speed though and seems to think the faster he gets into windows the faster his computer is.

Would overclocking the chip help all that much?

Who's got which chip now? Sister has the 5050e? That's real old tech. The Athlon X2 250 would probably be perfect for each of them if all they do is surf, email, music, word process. If they do more complex operations, you might need more oomph.

Your dad's rig would benefit from more RAM, Windows 7, and an SSD (set up strictly as a boot drive, this takes some time, but would reduce his load time to seconds. SSDs don't love WinXP though, and you'll again have some work to do). The RAM and the SSD would really improve muliti-tasking. How much is in your father's system?

As to overclocking: it will improve performance, yes, but if the rest of your system is bottlenecked while multi-tasking, it will not do exactly what you want. People on this community range from gamers looking to push out more FPS via OC or hard core overclockers looking to set world frequency records. So we have a bias toward overclocking even when it isn't the appropriate answer.

Anyway, if you're really itching to upgrade, Intel has a highly underrated value oriented chip in the i3 530, and AMD's Athlon II x2 or x3 line offers tons of processing power for the average joe at bargain bin prices, and likely without the need to replace Dad's motherboard. Rebuilding a system from scratch with today's modern parts will increase performance overall. But it will cost into the mid $200s, at least.

 

[DrMrLordX]

As to overclocking: it will improve performance, yes, but if the rest of your system is bottlenecked while multi-tasking, it will not do exactly what you want.

Anything that can't be accomplished with an overclock will require one or more of the following:

More RAM
Faster RAM
Faster harddrive(s)

Overclocking is cheap-as-in-free as long as the board supports HTT bumps. Since he doesn't need more cores . . . that's about the only improvement he's going to get on the CPU side short of buying a chip with higher clock speeds or more/better cache.

The rest of his options are honestly going to be pretty expensive right now.

 

[Axon]

Anything that can't be accomplished with an overclock will require one or more of the following:

More RAM
Faster RAM
Faster harddrive(s)

Overclocking is cheap-as-in-free as long as the board supports HTT bumps. Since he doesn't need more cores . . . that's about the only improvement he's going to get on the CPU side short of buying a chip with higher clock speeds or more/better cache.

The rest of his options are honestly going to be pretty expensive right now.

Agreed. I just think, for his needs, OCing is a little overrated.

 

[richierich1212]

Check what processors are supported with that mobo first.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Fresh install of XP will do wonders.

If his graphics are 'integrated' another 1Gb of RAMs may help his multi-tasking a bit IF you have the slot available.

Updating the hard drive will help if it's older tech. A WD 'Blue' for around $55 will get him going. There was a 64Gb OCZ Agility Gen2 SSD on eBlast yesterday for $115 AR.

Time for a SSD price war




--

 

[joetekubi]

I'd strongly concur with the other posters - best upgrade for Dad is to bump him to 4GB ram. IMHO, XP improves greatly with more than 2GB ram.

 

[hans007]

the 5050e actaully sells for amazingly much on ebay.

i sold a 5050e on ebay like 3 weeks ago for $70 shipped. used the money + $10 cash to buy a used athlon x4 620.

so yeah definitely get rid of the 5050e, they are wortha lot because theya re the only 45W cpus some older machines can take.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Microcenter is having a deal, if you buy one of four AMD CPUs, you get one of their AMD motherboards for $50 off. See the Hot Deals forum for details.