Need a new older cpu/motherboard
 

my desktop which when last upgraded 7 years ago had a state of the art athlon 1400+ processor is starting to feel a bit slow. i'd like to update it with something cheap but faster, maybe some 1-2 year old hardware. i'd like to keep it under $50. unfortunately i'm a bit confused by the number of choices out there--things aren't as simple as they used to be, where i knew that my 100 mhz processor was faster than my 66 mhz. any suggestions?

1. What are you using it for?

2. Why is it "starting" to feel slow (what have you recently added, or started doing, that you didn't do before?)?

3. What are you running/do you want to run for an OS and programs?

4. Is your swap partition getting a workout (i.e., would more RAM help?)

These questions, and others, need to be answered before anybody can give you any ideas.

Good luck.

general stuff; music playback, email, web, occasional video encoding.

nothing--i guess i should say that it IS slow. amarok, ooffice, etc take forever to load, and have slow response.

i have ubuntu gutsy on there now.

yup, that'll be part of the upgrade.

i guess basically what i'm asking is what's the best motherboard/cpu combo (probably used) that i can get for $50?

Hi,
The Atlon 1400+ is not that bad of a processor. What are attempting to do? Or want to do?

The $50 price limits will get you maybe a AMD 2300+ with a MB as a combo. Your really not gaining much. You would still need to get RAM and probably a new PSU @ least a 350W but preferably a 480W or above. Then what about other peripheral equipment? You can get combo with a AMD AM-2 MB and AMD-64 in the $80-$90 range then you have t get RAM. I just purchased a barebones w/AM-2 MB, Atlon 64 & 1GB from Tigerdirect for $140 with a $40 rebate. So some deals can be had.

Things are not that difficult with hardware. You just have too specify what you want and how you really want to use it.

I agree, you cannot improve from 1400 MHz with your budget, just get more RAM - how much have you got now? 512 MB would be optimal.

huh, i'm surprised. i figured i'd be able to improve pretty easily on a 7 year old cpu. i only have 256 megs ram now.

Hi,
You can increase your RAM to possibly improve the operations somewhat. You could change the processor for the MB. The cost for a AMD 2300+ is around $25 but that won't gain that much in processor speed therefore performance won't increase that much. Not really that noticeable for 1400+ to 2300+. Your performance gains would be seen when you move to the 3000+ range.

Add in the cost of the heat sink & fan and you have ate up the $50.

Increase the RAM as far as you can and you will see some gain.

I personally would be thinking about a barebones route to get into at least the AM-2 Athlon 64 bit arena.

I agree. 256m isn't very much to work with. My 8-year-old 733mhz works quite well with 384m RAM. I use it for the same thing as the OP...

Just my :twocents:

Cheers