Time To Upgrade..... 1

[jdschooler]

I own a DELL Dimension XPS R400....It contains a Pentium II 400 Mhz with 224 MB RAM, an IBM 12.9 GB (master) HDD, Quantum 40 GB Fireball Plus AS (slave) HDD, Toshiba DVD-ROM, Sony Spressa External USB CD-RW, Iomega 100 MB Internal Zip Drive, NVidia 16 MB Video Card, NIC Card,...and so on....

This was a good system 3 years ago but was outdated about 1 month after I owned it....I now want to upgrade the exisitng system to make it a bit faster...however DELL techs tell me that since I only have a 100 Mhz FSB I can go no faster than a 450 Mhz....

Question #1

Is there another faster processor that I can just plug into my exisitng MOBO?

Question #2

If I find a MOBO Combo will it plug into the rest of the hardware I have without any hitches? and will it mount in the case I have?


What is the best action to take.....

Thanx,

Jeff

 

[paparazi]

An upgrade bundle! Case, motherboard, CPU, heatsink/fan, and ram.
Duron bundle! say an 800.
The problem in your case is because your board won't support anything higher than an 450 pII you got to buy a moby! and so you might as well go the whole hog and buy an upgrade bundle, most of the other stuff you've got you can use, remember you will have to clean install windows on the new motherboard.

 

[jdschooler]

OK....but why only an 800?...and how much do these bundles cost typically?

So in the end I will have 1 & 1/2 puters? Since I will have to clean install Win 98....Is there a different OS I should use? If not...is there a way to backup everyhting on my HD except the Windows so that after I reinstall clean I can restor my previous apps?

This is starting to sound like a Headache....how long will it take me?.....or is it easier than it sounds?

Thanx,
Jeff

 

[paparazi]

How longs a piece of string, hey I dunno!, no really I chose an 800 Duron as being pretty much the cheapest upgrade that would give you a reasonable jump from your 400 PII. The 800 bundle will cost you about £150/$255
Now if the question was what upgrade would I get, well then I would say something like a DDR 1.33 Athlon being a couple of steps down from the latest chip releases the prices have come down but you are talking 3 times the price!! of the Duron bundle because everything else that goes with it is more expensive.
Yes, You will need to put all your vital files onto a disc or zip so that you can write them back onto the clean drive.
At the moment we wait with baited breath for windows XP but in the meantime I would say if you class yourself as a technical user, go for windows 2ooo, but if you are a home user and like the bells and whistles go for 98ME. 2000 is good if you can get the drivers for everything you have.
It will take you best part of 4-5 hours by the time you've reinstalled everything, but it's time consuming as opposed to difficult.
If you let me know what kind of a PC you want and budget I will advise you on what to buy if you want.

 

[jdschooler]

I will not have the $$$ to do this for a couple of months atleast...possibly even January....I would glady accept some guidance if you are still on the forum at that time....
I'm sure alot will change in the mobo world & OS world by then....Thanx for the preliminary info though.

Later
Jeff

 

[p51d]

Hi Jeff,

I'm in the process of doing an upgrade myself, and in fact I'm leaning towards to 1 gig Celeron. As some others above have already mentioned, an upgrade 'bundle' is really the most pain free path.

The limiting factor in upgrading from old boards is that they don't usually have a high enough CPU ratio speed for the newer CPU's etc.

However, you can still sell off your old bits on-line or via newspaper afterwards to off-set the cost of the upgrade.