old athlon xp system- max it out or upgrade?

nessiemonster · Apr 21, 2011, 08:33 AM

hey guys, i'd like some thoughts here...

i have an old system with an athlon xp 2700+ cpu. it has an agp 256 nvidia graphics card, 1.5 gigs of ram, and a soundblaster live! xgamer soundcard. the motherboard is an abit nf7 s2g, which i know is a budget board. also, 2 ide dvd burners, a pioneer and asus. 600w powersupply

i upgraded to this board about 3 years ago, buying it refurbished, because i knew i was getting a good deal because it was somewhat old, so even a few years ago, it was an older board.

anyway, my issue being, that i want some performance increase, so i was wondering, if i should just max this board's ram out at 3 gigs, maybe upgrade the 256 videocard to a 512, and maybe even buy an old barton 3200+ cpu to replace the 2700+, and just use it like that a couple more years? or do i really need a new motherboard, cpu and memory? what are some thoughts on this?

im not much of a gamer, but i do occasionally get on a kick where i play one of those role playing games that take forever to finish (last one i played was divine divinity last year) but those dont seem to be graphics intensive and my present 256 card seems to handle them fine. dvds and xvids play just fine as well.

also, my 10-year old soundblaster live! xgamer soundcard seems to play my audio library and movies nicely, i dont have any problems.

anyrate, a couple years ago i had a 320 gig hard drive go bad on me, and im just now getting ready to start going through my backup dvds and restore my data to a new western digital 1 tb hard drive ive bought, so coming up, i really will be focusing mostly on restoring my backups, reorganizing and sorting my data--i'm one of those guys that spends alot of time messing around in his partitions/drives, organizing files, etc, and for whatever reason i enjoy this.

for whatever reason, this system never gives me a hiccup or any trouble, i know all the hardware in it, and keep the latest drivers installed, and it just runs smooth. so what do you guys think? should i go ahead and upgrade to a new motherboard and cpu, do i not know what im missing somehow? or can i max out the ram to 3 gigs, throw in a better 512 videocard, and be ok for another year or even 2 if i want? as i said im going to be concentrating on restoring and organizing my backup data, but i wanna have a bit of fun along the way of course

thoughts are appreciated!!

blibbax · Apr 21, 2011, 08:54 AM

I'd recommend upgrading to a newer platform, but some kind of budget would be helpful. You might be able to keep some components of your current system (case, PSU, DVD writer etc.) to save some costs, and of course ebay the old parts.

I'd also like to stress that quantity of VRAM is not the most important specification on a video card (within reason). Most 512MB AGP cards are still going to be pretty slow by modern standards.

nessiemonster · Apr 21, 2011, 09:14 AM

thanks for the thoughts blib, i think you may be right- i was just taking a look at the athlon II tri-core cpus, they seem to be pretty good and low-cost, what do you think about them as regards an upgrade from my athlon xp?

then its back to downloading drivers, finding the best tweaking tools, polishing etc-- this stuff started for me back wanting the have the best aol booters when i was 22 or so, now at 36 i see the cycle just renews itself periodically and never quite ends...

blibbax · Apr 21, 2011, 10:44 AM

An Athlon x3 based system would be a colossal upgrade, even in single threaded applications. You might even be able to unlock the dormant fourth core :P

This would also, of course, open up possibilities of large quantities of DDR3 RAM, SATA 3, pci-e based graphics...

Like I said, let us know your budget, and boot together a list of parts (including anything from your old system you want to carry over), then we can comment on whether you've made a good selection

niceguyrichy · Apr 21, 2011, 10:46 AM

if you have any kind of budget, i'd be inclined to upgrade (makes life soooo much easier down the road..)

an AM3 board with BIOS that support core unlocking
some uber cheap DDR3
a Sempron 140 (which unlocks to an Athlon II X2 440) < for a total budget option

your choice of gfx, i see real, real cheap deals on 460's fairly regular now, as well as 5770 & 6850's at bargainous prices

and you've got yourself a huge upgrade, for not very much money, with the knowledge that the CPU, memory, & gfx will be upgradable enough to keep you going for a good long while

blibbax · Apr 21, 2011, 11:32 AM

Indeed... Niceguy's proposed build could take a six core CPU, next gen graphics and 8GB+ of RAM down the line if you so wished.

The thing I'd add there is that a 460 would be held up by a Sempron 140, even unlocked to a dual core... I'd go for a triple core with a 460 or a dual core with a 450 (or even something like a used 250, for absolute bargainage).

Judas · Apr 21, 2011, 04:32 PM

don't waste your time upgrading that machine...

First... nforce 2 400 chipset... obsolete and highly finicky... you so much as install windows 7 of any flavor or even vista... and there is a high possibility of it going wonky on you..... plus installing any of the PCI-ex~>AGP converted video cards tends to piss the motherboard chipset off enough to cause you even more headaches....

Considering what you have already installed... i think you've already capped out that board already.. so even trying to install upgraded parts isn't going to benefit you any further at all.. just turns everything else into a bottleneck and leaves your new parts idling waiting for something to do.

Definitely jump ship to a newer build... something at least with PCI-EX 2.0 compliance....

Personally i'd suggest jumping to an intel i3 solution.... preferrably now with the latest 1155.... but in the end.. whatever your budget can muster.. provided you don't go to cheap.

nessiemonster · Apr 21, 2011, 09:37 PM

thanks for the replies guys

question: regarding the gigabyte am3 motherboards, how do you guys think the onboard sound would compare to the sound of the creative soundblaster live! xgamer card that i bought about 10 years ago? same, better, worse?

Judas · Apr 21, 2011, 10:30 PM

If the motherboard you looking at has anything by Realtek for it's onboard audio...

and your running windows vista/7....

the realtek onboard audio will just work period.... it'll do very well at producing good sound... and be trouble free...

If your using digital speakers..... (connected via hdmi/optical-toslink/coax) then it should perform exceptionally...

I would have retired the soundblaster live card about 2 years after having it.... personally....

Matth · Apr 21, 2011, 11:12 PM

Before upgrading a system that's "doing fine", the question is, what else do you NEED it to do, and is there a reasonably priced upgrade that get's it there.

blibbax · Apr 22, 2011, 12:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matth

Before upgrading a system that's "doing fine", the question is, what else do you NEED it to do, and is there a reasonably priced upgrade that get's it there.

This is a very good point, and needs answering before we can make more specific recommendations

nessiemonster · Apr 22, 2011, 04:06 AM

thanks for the engagement folks

another question regarding audio:

how would the onboard audio of my present board, abit nf7 s2g, made in 2004, compare with the pci soundblaster i have that came out around 2000? i figure the difference would be negligible

Takaharu · Apr 22, 2011, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nessiemonster

how would the onboard audio of my present board, abit nf7 s2g, made in 2004, compare with the pci soundblaster i have that came out around 2000? i figure the difference would be negligible

Try it. If you can hear a difference, use the better of the two. If not, use the onboard.

Judas · Apr 23, 2011, 05:24 PM

well abit sites is as usefull as i expected..

which is useless mostly..

they don't have a driver listing for the onboard audio.. and it's only listed as AC'97... which i would assume is NOT soundforce nvidia audio... some of the nforce 2 boards has that chip and many people think it was the cat meow at the time.... ditching their creative cards and use it because it was one of the first with dolby digital support not to mention many other hardware features that blew a lot of people out of the mind for being onboard....

If it's realtek AC'97.... it might be better....... get the latest drives from realtek (or search for the drive version from majorgeeks for a faster download)...

if it's anything else.... your creative card is likely better....

Apr 21, 2011, 08:33 AM	#1
nessiemonster HardwareHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2011 Posts: 27 Rep Power: 0	old athlon xp system- max it out or upgrade? hey guys, i'd like some thoughts here... i have an old system with an athlon xp 2700+ cpu. it has an agp 256 nvidia graphics card, 1.5 gigs of ram, and a soundblaster live! xgamer soundcard. the motherboard is an abit nf7 s2g, which i know is a budget board. also, 2 ide dvd burners, a pioneer and asus. 600w powersupply i upgraded to this board about 3 years ago, buying it refurbished, because i knew i was getting a good deal because it was somewhat old, so even a few years ago, it was an older board. anyway, my issue being, that i want some performance increase, so i was wondering, if i should just max this board's ram out at 3 gigs, maybe upgrade the 256 videocard to a 512, and maybe even buy an old barton 3200+ cpu to replace the 2700+, and just use it like that a couple more years? or do i really need a new motherboard, cpu and memory? what are some thoughts on this? im not much of a gamer, but i do occasionally get on a kick where i play one of those role playing games that take forever to finish (last one i played was divine divinity last year) but those dont seem to be graphics intensive and my present 256 card seems to handle them fine. dvds and xvids play just fine as well. also, my 10-year old soundblaster live! xgamer soundcard seems to play my audio library and movies nicely, i dont have any problems. anyrate, a couple years ago i had a 320 gig hard drive go bad on me, and im just now getting ready to start going through my backup dvds and restore my data to a new western digital 1 tb hard drive ive bought, so coming up, i really will be focusing mostly on restoring my backups, reorganizing and sorting my data--i'm one of those guys that spends alot of time messing around in his partitions/drives, organizing files, etc, and for whatever reason i enjoy this. for whatever reason, this system never gives me a hiccup or any trouble, i know all the hardware in it, and keep the latest drivers installed, and it just runs smooth. so what do you guys think? should i go ahead and upgrade to a new motherboard and cpu, do i not know what im missing somehow? or can i max out the ram to 3 gigs, throw in a better 512 videocard, and be ok for another year or even 2 if i want? as i said im going to be concentrating on restoring and organizing my backup data, but i wanna have a bit of fun along the way of course thoughts are appreciated!!

Apr 21, 2011, 08:54 AM	#2
blibbax What does this do? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Oxford, UK Posts: 4,230 Rep Power: 254 System Specs	Re: old athlon xp system- max it out or upgrade? I'd recommend upgrading to a newer platform, but some kind of budget would be helpful. You might be able to keep some components of your current system (case, PSU, DVD writer etc.) to save some costs, and of course ebay the old parts. I'd also like to stress that quantity of VRAM is not the most important specification on a video card (within reason). Most 512MB AGP cards are still going to be pretty slow by modern standards. __________________ Donate the spare computing power of your PC to help to cure Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease and cancer: Fold for HH!

Apr 21, 2011, 09:14 AM	Thread Starter #3
nessiemonster HardwareHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2011 Posts: 27 Rep Power: 0	Re: old athlon xp system- max it out or upgrade? thanks for the thoughts blib, i think you may be right- i was just taking a look at the athlon II tri-core cpus, they seem to be pretty good and low-cost, what do you think about them as regards an upgrade from my athlon xp? then its back to downloading drivers, finding the best tweaking tools, polishing etc-- this stuff started for me back wanting the have the best aol booters when i was 22 or so, now at 36 i see the cycle just renews itself periodically and never quite ends...

Apr 21, 2011, 10:44 AM	#4
blibbax What does this do? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Oxford, UK Posts: 4,230 Rep Power: 254 System Specs	Re: old athlon xp system- max it out or upgrade? An Athlon x3 based system would be a colossal upgrade, even in single threaded applications. You might even be able to unlock the dormant fourth core :P This would also, of course, open up possibilities of large quantities of DDR3 RAM, SATA 3, pci-e based graphics... Like I said, let us know your budget, and boot together a list of parts (including anything from your old system you want to carry over), then we can comment on whether you've made a good selection __________________ Donate the spare computing power of your PC to help to cure Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease and cancer: Fold for HH!

Apr 21, 2011, 11:32 AM	#6
blibbax What does this do? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Oxford, UK Posts: 4,230 Rep Power: 254 System Specs	Re: old athlon xp system- max it out or upgrade? Indeed... Niceguy's proposed build could take a six core CPU, next gen graphics and 8GB+ of RAM down the line if you so wished. The thing I'd add there is that a 460 would be held up by a Sempron 140, even unlocked to a dual core... I'd go for a triple core with a 460 or a dual core with a 450 (or even something like a used 250, for absolute bargainage). __________________ Donate the spare computing power of your PC to help to cure Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease and cancer: Fold for HH!

Apr 21, 2011, 09:37 PM	Thread Starter #8
nessiemonster HardwareHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2011 Posts: 27 Rep Power: 0	Re: old athlon xp system- max it out or upgrade? thanks for the replies guys question: regarding the gigabyte am3 motherboards, how do you guys think the onboard sound would compare to the sound of the creative soundblaster live! xgamer card that i bought about 10 years ago? same, better, worse?

Apr 21, 2011, 11:12 PM	#10
Matth Flash Banner Hater Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: UK Posts: 3,426 Rep Power: 93 System Specs	Re: old athlon xp system- max it out or upgrade? Before upgrading a system that's "doing fine", the question is, what else do you NEED it to do, and is there a reasonably priced upgrade that get's it there. __________________ Mary had a little lamb, Her father shot it dead Now Mary takes her lamb to school, Between two crusts of bread

Apr 22, 2011, 04:06 AM	Thread Starter #12
nessiemonster HardwareHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2011 Posts: 27 Rep Power: 0	Re: old athlon xp system- max it out or upgrade? thanks for the engagement folks another question regarding audio: how would the onboard audio of my present board, abit nf7 s2g, made in 2004, compare with the pci soundblaster i have that came out around 2000? i figure the difference would be negligible