BigJim said:
the head scratching is over the processor is a Intel Celeron 420 1.6
Conroe-L LGA 775. So now that that is over what would be
a modest upgrade to the chip. The MB is a 945 g/g7 chipset.
There are the new Celeron Dual-Core Processors (ie the E1200) but two cores
sharing an equally small cache on a narrow FSB may not be much improvement
on the current Celeron.
I'd recommend going at a minimum up to the Pentium Dual Core E2180 or E2200
(2.0ghz or 2.2ghz, 1mb cache, $80/$85 on NewEgg)... or if your budget
stretches that far, consider the Core 2 Duo E4500 or E4600 (2.2 or 2.4ghz,
2mb cache , $125/139 on NewEgg).
Those are all 800FSB and based on the Allendale core so they're as likely to
be compatible as anything you're likely to get and still a bunch cheaper
than the E6300 (only 1.86ghz, but 1066fsb.) The big thing you give up vs.
the E6xxx chips is virtualization.
Friends have built a couple of systems with the E2160s and E2180s and they
are actually pretty fast chips, even with the small cache.
The newer 1333FSB chips are unlikely to work, which is a shame as the E6550
and E6750 are sort of in the sweet spot for midrange machines.