upgrading old computer

J

JOHN MCDONAGH

Not sure if I am in the right NG but here goes:

I recently had given to me an old computer with a motherboard
ASUS TX97-XE Smart ATX Mainboard, 50 MB of RAM and a
AMD K6/233 processor.

Of course it is very slow and I would like to upgrade to something
much faster.

Would this be as straight forward as replacing the K6/233 with a
K6/266 or is it more complicated than that.

As you can see from the above I am very much the novice in
this game but any help or advice would be much appreciated
including any oldish books which may be of help

Regards to all.
 
F

fwibbler

JOHN MCDONAGH said:
Not sure if I am in the right NG but here goes:

I recently had given to me an old computer with a motherboard
ASUS TX97-XE Smart ATX Mainboard, 50 MB of RAM and a
AMD K6/233 processor.

Of course it is very slow and I would like to upgrade to something
much faster.

Would this be as straight forward as replacing the K6/233 with a
K6/266 or is it more complicated than that.
A bit.

The K6 233 is the fastest CPU your board 'officially' supports.

However, if you download the latest BIOS for your board which has support
for K6-2 CPU then you may be able to go faster.

The manual for your board suggests that a 75mhz FSB with a multiplier of 4.5
is possible, giving you a speed of about 333Mhz.

However, later K6-2 CPUs allow a remapping of the 2.0 multiplier to a factor
of 6.0.
75fsb x 6.0 = 450mhz

On paper, the only other potential barrier is the voltage your board can
support.
According to the manual, it supports (among other voltages) 1.8, 1.9, 2.1
and 2.5 volts for the CPU.
For the K6-2 CPU (which requires about 2.2v) the 2.1 is nearest and would be
the setting to try to begin with.

If you buy a K6-2 500Mhz then it may well run quite happily at 450mhz (your
boards max speed) @ 2.1volts.
If you go for a K6-3 then it might be better to use the 2.5v setting (make
sure you use a decent heat sync and fan for both these CPUs)

How much faster this will make your machine is debatable.
More RAM can also help and if your going to the trouble of fitting a faster
CPU then it would make no sense to leave the machine crippled by so little
RAM.

Based as your board is on the TX chipset, it should support a maximum of
256MB RAM (see www.crucial.com) and your board can support SDRAM which is
what you should use (ie: use DIMMs not SIMMs)

As Windows like a fast hard drive, one of these might help too even if you
are still going to connect it to the UDMA33 IDE interface.

Finally, for maximum speed, your board /may/ be able to run the super-fast
K6-2+ or K6-III+ (note the '+') CPUs.
These have onboard L1 and L2 cache which runs at CPU clock speed rather than
the L2 cache on the motherboard which only runs at FSB speed.

All of the above is theoretical.
Your board may not like running that fast.
I had an AOpen AP5T board which many have used with the K6-2 and + CPUs, but
mine didn't like much over 300Mhz and I got better results with a Cyrix MII
333 CPU (which runs at 266mhz)

Back on planet earth, the cost of all these things (CPU, new RAM, Hard drive
etc...) will cost far more than your system will ever be worth and at best
will give you a system that while significantly faster than it is now, will
be a miniscule spec in the distance compared to even the cheapest new
hardware. (none of which bothered me when I was messing with the AOpen AP5T
board.)

Have fun.
Cheers!
 
C

Charlie Wilkes

Not sure if I am in the right NG but here goes:

I recently had given to me an old computer with a motherboard ASUS
TX97-XE Smart ATX Mainboard, 50 MB of RAM and a AMD K6/233 processor.

Of course it is very slow and I would like to upgrade to something much
faster.

Would this be as straight forward as replacing the K6/233 with a K6/266
or is it more complicated than that.

I have a box with a TX97-E (Intel Pentium). I changed the bus frequency
from the default 66mhz to 75mhz, which pushes the CPU from 233mhz to
266mhz. Any faster than that and the Pentium becomes unstable, but maybe
the K6 would do better.

Also, my board has a DIMM socket in addition to the 4 SIMM sockets, so I
replaced the SIMMs with a 128mb DIMM memory stick. If you find a place
that handles recycled PCs etc. you can probably get one of those DIMM
sticks for next to nothing.

As fwibbler said, the system isn't really worth anything, but that's not
always the point. Have fun.

Charlie
 
J

John Doe

FKS said:
Buy a Dell.

Generally speaking. Dell and maybe others have great resources on
their web site for each model they sell. If someone wants to learn
about upgrading and building but isn't skilled and knowledgeable,
buy a highly upgradable new computer (I think Dell/others have some),
enjoy it and then start doing the upgrading/building process from
there.

Good luck and have fun.
 

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