Well, this technically isn’t a GQ, since I’m looking for opinions.
Here’s the situation: I own a year old Gateway PC. I have plenty of HD space, 256 megs of memory, cable modem, scanner…and a 550 processor. I’m debating upgrading the processor, because EVERYTHING else on this machine is damn near perfect. (Well, except for not having a CD writer, but that’s coming soon.)
So, my question…how much would an upgrade to around an 750-850 mHz processor cost me? Could I install it myself? (I’ve installed a hard drive before.) I currently have a Pentium chip…do I have to buy another Pentium, or can I use an Athlon?
I don’t even come near expert in this stuff, but I just recently had a processor replaced so I do know this. You can do it yourself. BUT, and here’s where they get you, the jumpers on your motherboard have to be reset for the new processor or bad things can happen to your motherboard. Even if you have the book with proper jumper diagrams and have all the info you need, it’s still possible to mess it up. Better to let a professional handle it if you’re as fuddled by the innards of your computer as I am.
You could install a new pentium processor yourself. You might have to mess with some jumpers and your motherboard might not support a faster processor.
You could get a new motherboard with an Athlon 800 for around $200, I think.
if you have a PII… or PII for that matter… all you have to do is buy the corrosponding processor in the speed you want… changing them takes all of 5 minuets… pull the old one out… put the new one in. It just pulls straight out. Just stay grounded.
You won’t be able to change to an AMD however… unless you want to change the whole motherboard too.
Thats it! …if i’m wrong… someone will tell me, fret not. L
Depends on your current motherboard. If you check your manual you should see what it ‘tops’ out at. (more than likely yours already is) Look for the jumper settings in the manual under Frequency Multiplier. If you can up this to a higher vlaue, then it would be as simple as swapping out the CPU. Pentiums are higher priced than AMD for the same performance output.
If you truly want to upgrade, I would suggest - Asus A7V Motherboard priced around 110-130$. This is a motherobard for AMD Socket A. Then I would get the 900Mhz Athlon Thunderbird priced around 120-160$. Plus you’ll need a cooling fan, so your looking at around 300$ total.
This is going to entail you unhooking all conections to old motherboard, removing cards attached, removing screws holding motherboard down, removing motherboard.
You would then need to insert new CPU into new motherboard socket and attach the fan. Then you would set the dipswitches (see next paragraph), screw down motherboard, insert cards, hook up case power buttons, and hook ribbon cables to drives (color coded).
The A7V motherboard is terrribly easy to set up. There are only 3 sets of dipswitches that you need to change. (all listed in bold in the manual) This lets the BIOS detect what type of chip you have. This motherboard has 200Mhz front side bus as does the CPU and can use 133 memory.
I would advise having someone show you how to do this the first time. If you have a local computer shop that can do this for you I would have them, it would probably save you some aggravation. If you run into problems you wont have computer cuport either, and you would have to bring it to a shop anyway.
All in all this upgarde is not going to improve surfing speeds. It would greatly increase “Frame Rates Per Second” if you like playing highly graphic games. If I were you I would buy a nice CDRW 12X or up, and a 64MG video card. Your 550 is very good for right now and upgrading to a 750 you would probably barely notice. I would buy the video card and CDRW and upgrade in a year when prices drop on the 1 gig chips.
I agree. If you upgrade right now, you’ll just want to be upping next year, too. Go for the video card (GeForce-II 64 MB GPU, baby, yeah!) or the CD-RW. Your 550 will survive until then. Heck, our P-III 450 has been doing just fine for the past year (the rest of the computer has stats similar to yours).
By next year, a good 1.1 or 1.2 ghtz chip will be pretty damn cheap, and you can upgrade by leaps and bounds, rather than one itty-bitty piece at a time.
Probably wouldn’t need a new case. One thing that’s impressed me about Gateway over the past few years is that they’ve allowed their machines to be upgradable. I upgraded a friends about a year ago, and the rear panel was set so you could punch out holes to support a new motherboard. Unless they’ve decided not to go that route anymore, she should be able to get by with just the CPU(if the MB supports it) or the CPU and MB. I’d say you’re probably right about the PC100 RAM, since it’s a 550. Pretty much any MB you get anymore will support that.
One more thing. Asus does make an excellent MB, but I use Epox. Not as well known, but I think just as good. You should be fine either way.
It’s not exactly a dumb idea, but I doubt you’d notice any difference between 550MHz and 750MHz. If you’d like to buy something to improve your computer, then why not look into a new monitor if you haven’t upgraded that for a while? It’ll cost more, but it’s a simpler fix, and you’ll notice that difference. Better yet, get that CD-R you want.
I follow the rule I read somewhere, which I find to be quite true in practice, that you won’t notice any visible speed change unless the update is 2.5 times as fast as the old one.
Of course, you might see a little, but it’s just not worth the time you wuld have to adjust everything else, bus speed, reconfigure windows, etc…
Plus, I don’t think that Gateway is configured so you can just drop in any old processor you want. Their system restore cds arent configured for that are they?
Disagree. Depends on the chipset, BIOS, mobo in general. There are several slot 1 mobos that wont accept anything higher than an 800Mhz. Some even stop at 500.
If you run into problems you wont have computer cuport either, and you would have to bring it to a shop anyway.