Athlon to Thoroughbred Upgrade?

[BionicJohn]

I'm using an EPoX EP-8K3A mo-bo with the VT8367-8233A chipset. It currently has an AMD Athlon XP 1900+ processor and 3×256Mb PC2700 DDR 333 SDRAM. There is no RAID and it's got USB1.1 ports and (disabled) on-board sound chip.

I have what I think is the latest BIOS version. Hard to tell, though it flashed OK.

I've being doing some research and considering swapping the Athlon 1900+ for an Thoroughbred XP 2600+ 2.0GHz, not least because they seem to very cheap. The classification of these CPUs is most confusing part.

If this PDF (

http://www.epox.ru/support/mb/cpu_support_socket_a.pdf)

is correct, then it would seem I can do it.

Questions:

a) Am I correcting assuming that the new CPU would be automatically detected?

b) Would there a noticeable increase in performance?

c) Heat sink - I'm using a "flower cooler"

http://www.quietpc.com/uk/cpucool2.php#flower

which is supposed to good for Athlons right up to the XP 3000+. So no problem there.

d) Anything else I've missed? Am I right in thinking this could be 15 minute job to exchange the CPUs and after rebooting, I'll notice a difference in performance for the better? Or should I keep the eighty quid or so and buy two bottles of decent Malt Scotch? ;-)

Iechyd da! John
18:36 04/09/2003 BST

 

[edemiere]

Well, if it were me, I would unlock the CPU first (about $10 US dollars in stuff to do it) and make it run the faster settings until it dies and then see where prices are on newer stuff.

Seriously though, you should see some improvement, but I don't think you are gonna get all oogly over the improvements.

Is it worth the money? That depends. If you have lots of cash laying around, then sure. If you are doing heavy gaming and need more horsepower, probably not. But if you just want basic stuff to run better, then sure.

I say probably not to the gaming piece because I would recommend getting a 333FSB motherboard and Athlon (if you want to stick with AMD) which should show you better gains with respect to gaming and maybe a few other odds and ends applications.

All that aside, it really boils down to cash and how frivilous you can afford to be.

Good luck deciding!

 

[BionicJohn]

Hi, edemiere,

So you reckon it's technically strightforward, and up to me to determine if the cost/benefit analysis is in my favour.

I'm not into games, other than idling with Patience or Freecell. More Adobe - Photoshop, PageMaker, Acrobat and so on.

And I'm not really into overclocking, meltdown, toast. and all that either. This kit's been thrashing away nicely without a hitch for almost two years - maybe I need to take the leap to the next generation. And make my decision over a wee dram or two. ;-)

Iechyd da! John
19:43 04/09/2003 BST