I have a 5 year old Gateway athlon 1100 I would like to get a few more
years out of. Has socket A (462) K7T PRO (MS-6330) ver 2.1 ATX VA mobo
with a VIA KT133 chipset & 200mhz fsb (max 266). PC has 786 meg of
SDRAM & 2 hdd's, 120 gig & 160 gig. What are the practical
possibilities for speeding up this pc?
The most demanding tasks must be considered. It should be
plenty fast for office, surfing, email, etc, already. If it
seems sluggish at these things too, you might have spyware,
an overly cluttered/encumbered windows installation that
could benefit from a clean install.
Maybe. Does the board support manual multiplier
adjustments? If so, a Mobile Barton Xp2400 might be a good
choice. if not, an Athlon XP2400 w/266FSB. "Usually" a
socket A board will accept these w/o issue but there's
always some chance a bios glitch might surface, I suggest
upgrading bios if possible, perhaps if it's exactly same as
the MSI board, using an MSI bios rather than Gateway, which
would (usually) be older, even their most recent bios have
historically been older than what board manufacturer has
available.... IF the bios can be swapped without fooling
with editing to change vendor ID strings or forcing differnt
bios... things that are possible but not for the faint of
heart.
I guess another
possibility is new mobo/cpu. I would like to retain as much of the
current pc as possible (case, hdd's, dvd burner, TV ATI card, vid &
sound cards, ps is 300 watt replacement, probably needs upgrade. I'm
guessing a new mob would not accept this SDRAM), spend $300 or less, and
get a meaningful speed increase to allow me to use the machine another 3
years or so. Any suggestons or referrals to good links appreciated.
DDR memory is pretty cheap right now as it usually is in
Spring... that could work in your favor since there is no
significant upgrade for the motherboard that would still use
PC133 (SDRAM) memory. You could get 1GB of PC3200 memory
for about $100 if you keep an eye open for deals. Another
$80 for a board (there are large variations, decide what you
want featurewise and brands then you can narrow that down
some).
Then of course the CPU... whatever if left of the budget
will dictate what to choose. Sempron 3100 or Athlon 64
would be preferred, but if you needed a new PSU too then the
budget might require older technology, like an nForce2
board, Barton XP????, plus the power supply. Frankly I'd
budget in another few dozen $$ for a PSU before downgrading
to an older platform, but your current PSU might be
sufficient, we don't know what you have nor the video card
(which is typically 2nd highest power consumer in a system,
for some systems).
So there wasn't anything unique or revealing in my post, I
pointed out the pretty obvious/common choice, which is
common because it's a good one. Do keep in mind though that
any modern CPU will produce more heat, your case may not
have sufficient airflow and could need some modifications to
be optimal for a new build. If this is your only system and
you decide to get a power supply too, it might make sense to
get a whole case with decent PSU in it, so you can have the
new parts pretty much working before you have to dismantle
current PC to finalize the new system with the reused parts.
