dual processor upgrade or athlon ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter trevor
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T

trevor

hi there,

been asked to upgrade a friends pc !

now its got albeit old quite a funky MB dual slot 1 and onboard scsi
at the mo its got a single pII 350 in
Now looking on ebay i can get 2 x P3 700mhz for peanuts
Or get a new athlon board and chip.
It only needs to run premier 6 well
what dya rekon ?

cheers
 
trevor said:
hi there,

been asked to upgrade a friends pc !

now its got albeit old quite a funky MB dual slot 1 and onboard scsi
at the mo its got a single pII 350 in
Now looking on ebay i can get 2 x P3 700mhz for peanuts
Or get a new athlon board and chip.
It only needs to run premier 6 well
what dya rekon ?

cheers
Click to expand...

You're not going to get 2 P3 chips in the current motherboard. He is going
to be much more happy with a nice Athlon XP. You can get good ones for
under $100 and a good motherboard for $70.
 
trevor said:
yeah it'l take up to a P3 1gig with the right bios.

http://www.asus.com.tw/support/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx

p2b-ds

otherwise i'll have to buy a scsi card as well for the scsi drive.
Click to expand...

In that case I'd suggest getting one P3 1gig rather than two 700s if you can
do it for the same or near the same money. It would be noticably faster in
most applications than going with the dual configuration. Of course, if
money isn't that big an issue go for two 1gigs. Unless you have applications
optimised for dual CPUs IME you're only going to see maybe a 5-10% increase
max in speed with one two CPUs compared with one.
 
yeah it'l take up to a P3 1gig with the right bios.

http://www.asus.com.tw/support/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx

p2b-ds

otherwise i'll have to buy a scsi card as well for the scsi drive.
Click to expand...

Upgrading a PC to run Premiere well will probably require a new hard
drive too.

A motherboard of that age is near the end of it's expected lifespan,
so it's not really a good idea to be buying multiple P3 CPUs for it,
not expecting a good servicable lifespan from the upgrade. I'd tell
you to get the Athon but then you may need a new power supply,
increased chassis airflow, etc. He got a good run out of the old box
so build him a new one that'll last that long.


Dave
 
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