Socket A Upgrade?

[booman]

I am happily posting this on my Fedora 8 Linux computer. Fedora 8 is amazing. I'm loving every minute. Its so easy to find everything I need and I've hardly had to use the shell. Everything installed automaticlly for my Radeon 8500 LE, on-board sound and network card. The only problem so far is that my Athlon is kinda slow. All this hardware was originally from an old E-machine and I put in a PC-Chips motherboard, hard-drive, and some more RAM. I think the CPU is a Athlon 2100 socket A.
I've been looking on the internet for upgrades and there isn't much but I've found a few 2800's and 3200's for a decent price.
does anyone have tips for upgrading?
I just want to make it a little faster for a few bucks, hopefully no more than $40 or $50. And, will there be any bios problems with upgrading?

[booman]

now replies yet? I'm just curious because I don't have a whole lot of experience troubleshooting AMD processors.
Here is my PC-Chips motherboard
PC-Chips M811LU
I just don't want to spend $40 on an old used processor and it won't work on my motherboard

[Gizmo]

That board uses the KT266A chipset, which means that it is pretty much limited to CPUs with 100 and 133 MHz FSB (200 or 266 MHz DDR). You can get up to a 2800+ in the 266 MHz speed, but be aware that there are also 2800+ chips that run 166 MHz FSB (333 MHz DDR), which won't work in your board.

These are the chips which should work for you:

AXDA2500DKV4C (1.87G)
AXDA2600DKV4C (2.00G)
AXDA2800DKV4C (2.13G)

Those are all Barton cores, and so have 512K of L2 cache and probably represent the best bang for the buck.

Note that all of the chips end with the letter 'C'. That letter denotes those chips as having 133 MHz FSB (266 MHz DDR), which is what you need.

[booman]

Nice Work Gizmo.
Thats the information I need.
To Ebay I go....

Now if I can figure out exactly which one I have allready in Fedora 8...

[Gizmo]

If you go to your Applications->System menu, and select the System Monitor utilty, that should tell you what you have on the 'System' tab.

[booman]

Ok, I thought that I looked in the system monitor but I must have missed that.
Thanks again.
Those specific processors are hard to find.

[Gizmo]

There were also some thoroughbreds that ran at those same speeds, but I don't know the model numbers. If you search for 2500+, or 2600+ or 2800+, and make sure that the model numbers end with the letter 'C', you should be ok.

The Bartons are more deisrable, IMO, because of the extra cache, but the T-bred was a nice chip too.

[dsio]

The Tbred-Bs did go up that high but they were flaky to say the least. The 2800+ had a reputation for running hotter than owners would have liked, and they weren't especially quick either.

The Barton 2500+ would probably be quicker in many ways than a Tbred-B 2800+, and any of the upper Bartons would be much better.

Keep in mind though, you can get a new AM2 mobo CPU and RAM for $40 $25 and $18 respectively in Australia. (512MB DDR2, basic mobo with onboards and Sempron 3200+)

[Redroar]

My old Barton 2600 ran at 266 DDR great. I'd sell it to you, but it's in my #2 box. I'm going to upgrade my sig rig to a C2D this summer, and moving the A64 to my #2, but that doesn't help you much. Unless you can wait until summer, of course.

[Samuknow]

I think I have a 2800 around here somewhere. I will look around.

[bonesaw]

i got 2200+ socket a as my linux machine. its doing its job fine but running low on ddr. anyone got a 512 stick hiding out?

[booman]

got a 512 stick hiding out

What speed? I've got a dozen PC 2700 and DDR 100. I don't even know what to do with them, but I know I can't throw them away.

[booman]

Conclusion:
I realized that I have enough hardware to build a faster machine for the linux, for now at least. I was waiting to build 3 gaming machines but I don't have all the Video Cards & RAM. But I have the BTX case, BTX motherboard, Pentium Dual Core 3.0 Ghz CPU, 2 Gig RAM DDR2 667, 120 Gig hard-drive and DVD Rom. So I put them all together and used the on-board video. Installed Fedora 8 and running great.
Now I can give away the Anthlon computer with Fedora 8 on it. It worked fine as an office computer even though it was a bit slow. I've added a network card, fire-wire card, USB card, and a Radeon 8500 LE.
Not much speed to speak of, but works fine.
Any other ideas what I can do with it?
Linux firewall?

[ccperf721p]

Let me know when you get ready to build the gaming rigs. I have a few pieces laying around and will be parting out my main rig when I get the time to assemble my other parts.

Fedora8 is a little too bloated for older machines. Might want to look into Xbuntu or Arch if you get into that situation again.

[booman]

The thing I'm worried about is that the Aopen BTX cases come with wimpy 250 watt powersupplies and I know those won't power a PCI-E video card. I can't replace the power supply because they are case specific. But I found that Thermaltake makes these small 5.25 Drive power supplies that are 250 watts. So I may have to pick up two of those for powering my smaller systems.

I'm still hoping to sell my older computers to help fund the new ones.
Until that happens, all the gear is just going to sit and wait.

[Daniel ~]

Hi booman. I'm going to leave this up a day so you can transfer your list to our Buy and sell Topic. We try to keep all commerce out of the regular forums. Just post back here and I'll know I can del your last post.":O}

[booman]

I'm not really buying/selling. I was just telling Cliff what I allready had and hoping to trade. I was going to give him my P3's anyways. No selling here.
If I have to move the post for legal reasons then I can.

[ccperf721p]

My fault, I was pimping products. I will self reprimand and consider myself warned.