# Athlon for Athlon XP swap, plug and play ?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athlon-for-athlon-xp-swap-plug-and-play/204654>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 30, 2003, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athlon-for-athlon-xp-swap-plug-and-play/204654 "2003-09-30T06:53:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vasyachkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c5a1d2/32.png) [@vasyachkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vasyachkin)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2003, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athlon-for-athlon-xp-swap-plug-and-play/204654/1 "2003-09-30T06:53:59Z")

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i have an old Athlon 1.33ghz and a quite new motherboard, dont remember model number but its an Asus that supports up Athlon XP3000+

anyway i saw Athlon XP2400+ ( 2.0ghz clock ) for $76 (free shipping) on [newegg.com](http://newegg.com) and i thought, why not ?

now the question is, would i have to reinstall windows or would it be a relatively painless upgrade ?

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**Author:** ![Alereon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@Alereon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alereon)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2003, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athlon-for-athlon-xp-swap-plug-and-play/204654/2 "2003-09-30T07:31:10Z")

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You definitely won’t need to reinstall windows. You may want to flash your BIOS before the upgrade to make sure that the CPU is automatically detected, thus making the upgrade as simple as possible.

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**Author:** ![Elycien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/48db29/32.png) [@Elycien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elycien)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2003, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athlon-for-athlon-xp-swap-plug-and-play/204654/3 "2003-09-30T09:42:47Z")

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Should be painless. The only things you will have to mess with is the cpu and heatsink. Everything else should be automatically detected in your bios…you probably don’t need to update your bios unless the new cpu isn’t automatically detected.

Make sure you get good contact with your heatsink and cpu. I would suggest getting a new heatsink and using some heat compound like Arctic Silver to put between the heatsink and cpu.

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**Author:** ![vasyachkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c5a1d2/32.png) [@vasyachkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vasyachkin)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2003, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athlon-for-athlon-xp-swap-plug-and-play/204654/4 "2003-10-01T02:01:07Z")

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thanx people, i already got an exotic cooler, cost me $40 about a year ago 🙂