Upgrade my friend's Pentium 233 MMX - With 96 or 160 MB: Windows 95 or 98 or 2000?

[Eug]

So my friend has this pristine (except for lots of cat hair) Pentium 233 MMX. However, after getting used to tons of access to the net at work and at her dad's over Xmas, she now has the bug. But she's got a bit of a budget.

Current config:
Micro-star MS-5170 B.AT TX9 motherboard
(Mobo takes both SIMMS and 168 pin SDRAM DIMMs, and uses Intel 82430TX chipset)
Socket 7 Pentium 233 MMX
One 32 MB DIMM. Has room for another stick of memory
Windows 95 (Rev. A?)
ATI 3D Expression+ PCI
5 GB hard drive
Dunno what kind of sound card. Yamaha I think.
Some sort of CD-ROM
Some sort of 56KFLEX modem
To my surprise it even has USB

My suggestion:
Buy another 128 MB DIMM (CAD$90)
Upgrade to Window 98
CAD$12/mo dialup net access <<<-shudder->>>

Windows 95 seems fine however, since she's got absolutely nothing on it (after 2.5 years ). It boots up FAST. However, she wants to start installing the latest Internet Explorer and Office, and I'm thinking Windows 95 is pushing it. I also have an unused copy of Windows 98 first edition, but we can just download the updates.

Or should she just stick with Windows 95 and install just a 64 MB stick of SDRAM? With 160 MB RAM I'm almost tempted to slap Windows 2000 on there, but I wonder if that will choke up the the CPU. If it was a PII 350 I'd do it for sure. My understanding is that everything should be recognized fine (incl. the video) by the Windows 2000 disk, and the 4.5 GB drive will give her enough breathing room for the time being. (I'm thinking Windows 2000 because of the stability.)

I can't find this board on the Micro-Star website. There is an MS-5169 though.

Comments?

 

[HeinekinMan]

I would not upgrade the RAM beyond 64 MB if you run Win95/Win98; the Intel 430TX chipset has a design flaw in that it can only cache the first 64 MB of installed RAM even though it can address something 512 MB or 1 GB (can't remember which). The performance hit is something like 10-15 percent because of the swapping of memory addresses when you access a region beyond the first 64 MB. Not sure if this would be a problem with Windows 2K.

I have one of these dinosaurs with 64 MB of EDO memory and it runs Win98SE, Office 97, etc. And like your friend's it boots up relatively fast...

I would buy another 32 MB stick and maybe get a better video card...

Heiny

 

[Wuming]

i think you should upgrade the RAM to at least 64 mb and run 98SE. that is jus as what you suggested!

 

[Eug]

HeinekinMan,

Good point. I didn't realize that SEVERE cache limitation of the 430TX chipset. I'm reading it's about a 5-25% performance hit (more like 10%) if you go over 64 MB, and it would also occur in Windows 2000, because the &quot;top-down&quot; memory utilization is similar. But what I'm thinking is that even with Windows 98 and several apps open, there is a serious risk of disk thrashing with only 64 MB, and even a slower memory access would still be speed improvement over virtual memory.

But ideally, maybe the best option is to swap out the 32 MB DIMM for a 64, and stick with Windows 95? I figure if she is only using maybe Internet Explorer and Word at the same time, virtual memory usage can be kept to a minimum. But that sounds too simplistic... these Windows apps are getting quite bloated these days. With more memory, that will prime the system for a nice upgrade to an AMD K6-2 later or something. What's the fastest CPU she can use?

At least relatively (1998) new BIOS exist.

Dammit, it's too complicated.

 

[Gepost]

I just fixed up a friend's 233. I added some ram, up to 48mb and a 7200 rpm drive. After cleaning up Windows and some other things using Norton Systemworks, it was running great, considering a 233. I would try to find a cheap 7200 rpm drive and re-install windows.

 

[xtreme2k]

keep win95

Win98 requires at least a Pentium II to run smoothly at the speed of Pentium running 95. Seriously I dont think you can find some 32MB DIMMs easily these days, therefore getting a 64MB PC100/133 for her with this all low price isnt really insane. However, I am not 100% that the PC100/133 will work on the TX mobo.

There is no need for a new video card since she just web/word with that machine.

About the cache 'cache-able' amount, I actually forgot how much the TX can cache. As far as I know, the VX cache 64MB, but the TX should be far superior and therefore is possible to cache more. As far as I know, it is usually the motherboard's TAG ram that limits how much you can cache. If she has 256KB of L2, then she prolly can only cache 64, however if she has 512KB L2, then it is pretty possible that she can do 128MB or even 256MB. I am not 100% sure on these though as I havent come into contact with these machines anymore.

If you go new HDD, take care on the MAX HDD size you can have. Some Pentium bios has trouble identifying HDD over 8.4GB. Again I am not 100% sure on these

 

[JimMc]

I wouldn't even consider W2K with those specs, but if whe wants to utilize her USB Win 98 is a lot simpler than fooling with that USB supplement of 95 B or C, ehatever it was. I don't think she'll notice too much of a performance hit versus 95 if you get the RAM up to at least 64. I've run 98 on P100's and 133's, it's OK for everyday tasks.

 

[oldfart]

Win95 Vs Win98. Don't turn this into one of these flame wars. This is my recent (2) experiences. Take it as you will. One of my kids PC is an MMX 233 64 meg ram. I had Win95 OSR2 on it because I didn't need a browser, email, of even a TCP/IP stack. I figured it would be a much &quot;lighter&quot; OS. I networked the house awhile ago, and setup sharing so the kids can print to a network printer and what not. I figured I might as well go to 98 to get the IP stack in, network sharing, web browser etc. The PC is MUCH faster with 98 (SE) than it was with 95. Much more responsive. My neighbor has an old MMX 233 also. I upgraded him to 98 (not SE) in this case. Same thing. Big improvement in speed. I'll say I was surprised in both cases. I expected the opposite.

As far as the ram goes, like others have said, 64 meg is it. VX and TX chipset limitation, even with 512k cache...sucks, but that's the way it is. A nice speedy up to date HD helps also. The TX has UDMA33, which is fast enough to handle most of today's drives.

my $.02

 

[Homer]

I too have been 'round the course with P233mmx + 430TX combos. Just to support the majority opinion: W98 or W98SE will be fine, 64mb RAM is the sweet spot for memory, and a 7200rpm hdd will certainly pep things up. When I do this sort of upgrade, or often just a &quot;software tidy-up&quot; plus a little more RAM on old slow systems I generally set up a fixed-size swap file on the outer edge of the drive, using an old demo copy of Norton. I think that helps a little, too. These sorts of rigs do all the really basic things just fine.
I also have W2K running on just such a rig. I don't recommend it unless security concerns make it necessary.

 

[oldfart]

Almost forgot! If that TX mobo has a 75 MHz bus option, crank that 233 up to 262!

 

[Eug]

OK then, 64 MB &amp; Windows 98 it is. I'll give her my Windows 98 first edition and network the PC for web updates on my DSL and then I'll rip the network card out.

Thx.

 

[noxipoo]

you can put on win2000 if you want. I'm running win2k pro and 64meg pc66 ram on a p233mmx dell. It has a newer 5400 HD, makes a difference. It runs fine. a bit slow but no where near beating it to shreds becuase it won't respond.

 

[Eug]

Nah. I borrowed a friend's 233 MMX with 64 MB / Win2000 and I thought it was just bloody painful because of all the disk thrashing. It wouldn't be that bad with 128 MB, but there's that cache problem.

 

[Eug]

So I installed Windows 98 with 64 MB RAM and then updated it with the latest patches, Office 2000, and Internet Explorer 5.5. To my surprise, this 233 MX setup is FAST if you don't multitask too much. It certainly loads up faster than my Windows 2000 laptop, 256 MB RAM, and several tray icon programs running, with that irritatingly slow 4200 rpm drive. Felt it was kinda of a waste though parting with my PC-133 Micron RAM for a 66 MHz FSB machine, but that memory was just sitting on my desk as a paperweight. Now I have a new 32 MB RAM PC-66 paperweight. I'm tempted to stick that 32 MB back in to see how much of a performance hit it causes (because of that memory cache thing).

 

[TravisBickle]

Eug, why do you have to &quot;load up&quot; on your laptop? Why not use the faster hibernate? It's what I do at the end of the day with 2000.

 

[Eug]

Actually I do use hibernate most of the time now, for this reason. I was just comparing the two.

 

[fargus]

I have a similar PC that's dedicated to running my CD burner setup... 98SE, 233MMX, 64Mb... works nice, had 95OSR2 on it until recently. 233 is the highest supported by the mobo- but it will take an upgrade processor from Evergreen (evertech.com)- so I might just spend the 129 for a Spectra 400 and bump it up...

 

[MasterMind]

PowerLeap uses a K6-3 instead of the Evergreen's K6-2 but I think it cost a little more. Well worth it IMHO. I've heard bad things about the Evergreen PCI CPU upgrade so don't consider it unless you want a headache.

I would be very interested in how the performance is with 96 vs. 64MB. I have 40MB now but I'm considering adding some more. With the price of 72 pin SIMMS I don't want to experiment!