From Sempron 3800+ to Athlon 5000+: My Compaq Upgrade - 16/01/2009 by Andrew
A while back I purchased a brand new Compaq (with warranty) from an auction house for next to nothing. It was packing some very average hardware; Windows Vista Home Basic, 3800+ (2.2Ghz single core) Sempron, 512MB DDR2 RAM, 80GB SATAII drive, on-board graphics, on-board sound and a Hippo 250W power supply. Not what you'd call a power PC, in fact, it was quite obsolete when I purchased it.
On the bright side, I had a PC delivered to my door with a valid Vista licence and a 12 month warranty. Voiding the warranty only took minutes as I had already ear-marked 4GB of DDR2-800 and a 430W ANTEC PSU for it, as I knew Vista is a pig when it comes to memory consumption (900MB used after a clean boot) and that 250W PSU was going to restrict any future upgrades.
Life with my Vista box was, quite frankly, an unhappy affair. I purchased the box so that I had at least ONE Windows machine though it ended up being rarely used as it was incredibly slow. Fate, however, had plans for this box. I recently sold my main machine to fund the next upgrade so I decided to chuck a 1TB drive in the Compaq to do some Ubuntu 8.10 dual booting. Reading up on my motherboard (MCP61PM-HM aka Nettle) I found that other people were packing Athlons, the price of which has dropped considerably in the last few months. Forking over AUD$79 for an AMD 5000+ (2.6Ghz dual core, 2x512KB cache) I prepared for the upgrade.
Freshly installed and ready for the stock HSF
After the dust had settle, I nervously powered on the PC. Neither Vista nor Ubuntu had any problems and I didn't trigger a Windows activation though I have changed (not all at one time) the PSU, memory, graphics and CPU. The speed difference in Ubuntu wasn't huge but as soon as you start watching a video in full screen you notice that the CPU isn't taxed at all, where before it was working it's arse off. Vista had turned from a painful slow waste of time into a very usable and fast OS.
Refreshing my Windows Experience Index, my CPU jumped from 4.2 to 5.2, not a bad jump. My 8400GS (albeit overclocked) is holding everything back, though overclocking using Rivatune gained a few additional points.
How things looked before
After refreshing (plus 8400GS overclock)
Conclusion
Moving from a low cache 2.2Ghz to a combined 5.2Ghz with 1MB total cache has enabled me to get maybe a year more out of this machine until the calling of the Quads gets the better of me. If you happen to own an old machine that can still take a AM2 CPU then spending a handful of dollars (or euros, pesos, pounds or whatever) can give your old work horse a new lease on life.