Upgrade 939 System

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EvilAlchemist

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I know very little about AMD numbering so I have to ask for some advice

Grandmothers Computer is a Compaq with a Sempron 3200+ 1.8ghz (Socket 939) Single Core. Motherboard is an ASUS with a G-Force 6150 Chipset.

Can anyone give me some suggestions for a CPU upgrade for this system ??

There are tons of options on ebay and the FS thread here, but I don't know enough to make an informed decision.
 
The best chip you could upgrade to is the dual core FX chip, iirc it was the FX 60?

You could also upgrade to a dual core 4200+ if you can still find a 939 one.

It may be better to just build a new rig though.
 
A dual core 939 chip would be a big performance jump, but I doubt it is worth the money.

I would try looking for a cheap Llano CPU + mobo + memory combo
 
You can find reasonably priced Skt 939 X2 cpu's at Starmicro.net. Look at the bottom of this page http://www.starmicroinc.net/category/9020/Athlon-Socket-939-/2.html and the next page after that. $45.00 for a 3800 X2 isn't all that bad and faster ones can be had for a bit more if you want to stay with skt 939. I've dealt with Starmicro many times and have not been disappointed with them in the least. The only thing I would warn you about is that your motherboard's bios might not support a dual core cpu. In that case you would need to contact Asus/Compaq and see if your motherboard can take a dual core cpu. If not you will need to flash your bios to the newer version and then drop the cpu in.
 
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you can usually find specs on Compaq/HP desktop motherboards fairly easy on their website. On there, they usually list the compatible CPUs. If you still question it, do a google search on you PC model like "Compaq *XXXX* CPU upgrade" or similar variants... I learned a lot about some older pre-built systems I keep running by looking at what others have got working in them. Often, the specs on the manufacturer's website haven't been updated since they released that specific model, so (in some cases) you could possibly use hardware beyond what they list as compatible...

TLDR: Google will find your answer.
 
if they're still floating about in fleabay etc and price is reasonable, recommend getting a opteron 165 and above (dual core for socket 939). still have my 170 in a box somewhere.
 
If you are intent on keeping the same pc the x2 4200+ or x2 3800+ are probably going to be the cheapest dual cores you can get for it.

Honestly I would get a cheap dell. There was one on slick deals for $300

Intel Core i3-2120 processor (3.30GHz)
4GB DDR3 Memory
500GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
16X DVD+/-RW Drive
Intel HD Graphics
WiFi N
Keyboard
Mouse
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Click to expand...
 
munkle said:
If you are intent on keeping the same pc the x2 4200+ or x2 3800+ are probably going to be the cheapest dual cores you can get for it.

Honestly I would get a cheap dell. There was one on slick deals for $300
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This would be the best move. Even if you upgrade your old 939 system, you will be stuck with an incredibly old and slow hard drive that will limit the performance benefit you will see. By the time you upgrade both, you're starting to approach new system territory.

A new system will have a new hard drive, more memory and (with the specs listed above) a processor that is about THREE TIMES FASTER than a 3800+ x2 939 dual-core.
 
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defaultluser said:
This would be the best move. Even if you upgrade your old 939 system, you will be stuck with an incredibly old and slow hard drive that will limit the performance benefit you will see. By the time you upgrade both, you're starting to approach new system territory.

A new system will have a new hard drive, more memory and (with the specs listed above) a processor that is about THREE TIMES FASTER than a 3800+ x2 939 dual-core.
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normally i'd agree, updating older hardware isn't generally very feasible.

however it's the OP's old lady's old lady. it's not like she'll be rocking some FPS action between some autoCAD & doing some CPU heavy scientific calculations. at best she'll be knocking out a few emails to her grand kids or browsing sites on cat care or google mapping the nearest lawn bowls venue (not knocking lawn bowls, great fun with a couple beers in the belly with mates on a sunny day).

i know this is making some fairly broad assumptions but based on her existing hardware, guessing it's a safe bet, she probably isn't doing anything terribly stressful as present.
 
defaultluser said:
This would be the best move. Even if you upgrade your old 939 system, you will be stuck with an incredibly old and slow hard drive that will limit the performance benefit you will see. By the time you upgrade both, you're starting to approach new system territory.

A new system will have a new hard drive, more memory and (with the specs listed above) a processor that is about THREE TIMES FASTER than a 3800+ x2 939 dual-core.
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+1 to this.

If the HDD is not an issue, then go with one of the sites listed above for a dual-core 939.

Otherwise, it would be worth your time and money to invest into a newer system.
Just fyi, the 939 platform is almost 8 years old, it's definitely time for an upgrade.
 
I still use a 4200+ in my work PC and it runs fine. Paired with 4GB of DDR400 ram, a 6450 GPU and an old 75GB Raptor.

Does diagnostics, HDD imaging, defragging and virus scans happily all day.

In fact I use it more then my main sig rig.
 
aphasia said:
normally i'd agree, updating older hardware isn't generally very feasible.

however it's the OP's old lady's old lady. it's not like she'll be rocking some FPS action between some autoCAD & doing some CPU heavy scientific calculations. at best she'll be knocking out a few emails to her grand kids or browsing sites on cat care or google mapping the nearest lawn bowls venue (not knocking lawn bowls, great fun with a couple beers in the belly with mates on a sunny day).

i know this is making some fairly broad assumptions but based on her existing hardware, guessing it's a safe bet, she probably isn't doing anything terribly stressful as present.
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This is almost dead on correct.

She only uses facebook and looks / prings jpgs from the camera.

She has a very fixed income so just doing anything I can to help speed it up for here.
I know that sempron is like a celeron, so i assume anything is better.
 
Yeah just get it moved over to the cheapest dual core A64 you can find on ebay etc.. Then it will just be a smoother machine to use with less egg-timer appearances.

Thing that I find with a lot of my customers is that their old single core PCs are still using the same clogged up 6+ year old build it came with from the shop. If I cant upgrade the CPU with a dual core I may have laying around then a complete clean rebuild can make a big difference.

If folks have low expectations its not a problem. Not everyone has [H]expectations.
 
EvilAlchemist said:
This is almost dead on correct.

She only uses facebook and looks / prings jpgs from the camera.

She has a very fixed income so just doing anything I can to help speed it up for here.
I know that sempron is like a celeron, so i assume anything is better.
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I dont know how much space she needs but if you can score a 32gb or 64gb ssd for $60 or less then it would help out quite a bit. I ran a 939 x2 4200+ with a ssd for quite a while as my media center and the pc felt as if it was a current gen pc. Newegg had a 32gb for about $40 the other day. If you watch slickdeals you can score 64gb ssd's for under $60 every now and then with mir. Staples had a 64gb for $40 after mir just a month ago.

One thing to watch out for is make sure you are buying a 939 chip as there are some am2 cpu's with the exact same name as the 939 chips.
 
munkle said:
I dont know how much space she needs but if you can score a 32gb or 64gb ssd for $60 or less then it would help out quite a bit. I ran a 939 x2 4200+ with a ssd for quite a while as my media center and the pc felt as if it was a current gen pc. Newegg had a 32gb for about $40 the other day. If you watch slickdeals you can score 64gb ssd's for under $60 every now and then with mir. Staples had a 64gb for $40 after mir just a month ago.

One thing to watch out for is make sure you are buying a 939 chip as there are some am2 cpu's with the exact same name as the 939 chips.
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That would be my thought also. Moving her to a cheap SSD + HDD setup would speed it up a lot.

Any dual core A64 would speed it up a bit - but not enough to spend big money on it.

Honestly I think you'd be better with a refurb Dell system from the Dell outlet or something though. A refurbished Inspiron 570 with an Althon X2 240/2GB RAM/500GB is $239 on the Dell outlet, for example - and I've seen cheaper than that from time to time.
 
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Easy low cost update I've used this for several build upgrades for older AMD systems

ASrock N68C-S UCC supports DDR2 and DDR3 up to 8Gb
Works with all 95w AM3 processors (ie not the 6 core 125w ones but up to 6 core 95w)
Inexpensive quite well featured and reliable
Add 4/8 Gb of DDR 3 ram (kingston value is just fine)
New HDD (yes newer ones are faster if you can get a decent price)
Add CPU of choice for budget end even a dual core Athlon II would be tons faster but you can pick from 2/3/4 cores depending on your needs

I had an older x2 4200 AMD dual core PC which the board died, sold the CPU (easy to sell popular buy for folks) and bought the above and a 6450 card for a bit of light gaming. Runs much faster than the older 939 dual core even the 3.2GHz Athlon II is quite good really compared to that older one
 
Found this on the HP site about the mother board:

Socket: 939 Supports the following processors:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 up to 4800+
AMD Athlon 64
AMD Sempron
 
I'm always amazed when someone essentially asks about a simple $40 ebay upgrade for their granny or mom that they then get told to spend $250+ to achieve a level of performance that will go largely unnoticed for the application and audience its intended for.

In most cases they never really notice. Remember the end customer ISN'T you! They don't run endless benchmarks. They don't run Crysis. They don't encode video. They only need it for Hotmail and Amazon.

Whether you spend $40 or $300 the end result will just be a "Oh thanks, yes that seems better!" Seen it many times.
 
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daglesj said:
I'm always amazed when someone essentially asks about a simple $40 ebay upgrade for their granny or mom that they then get told to spend $250+ to achieve a level of performance that will go largely unnoticed for the application and audience its intended for.

In most cases they never really notice. Remember the end customer ISN'T you! They don't run endless benchmarks. They don't run Crysis. They don't encode video. They only need it for Hotmail and Amazon.

Whether you spend $40 or $300 the end result will just be a "Oh thanks, yes that seems better!" Seen it many times.
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lol

$40-$50 is about the most I'd spend. I think once you break $80-$100 you'd be better off selling the old computer on craigslist and buying a $200 refurb of some sort. Just the nature of the computing market for the normal person IMO.
 
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daglesj said:
I'm always amazed when someone essentially asks about a simple $40 ebay upgrade for their granny or mom that they then get told to spend $250+ to achieve a level of performance that will go largely unnoticed for the application and audience its intended for.

In most cases they never really notice. Remember the end customer ISN'T you! They don't run endless benchmarks. They don't run Crysis. They don't encode video. They only need it for Hotmail and Amazon.

Whether you spend $40 or $300 the end result will just be a "Oh thanks, yes that seems better!" Seen it many times.
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Okay, but dropping twice as many of the same cores into a system won't do much for performance unless the user is a heavy multi-tasker. A Facebook and picture viewing person does not qualify as "multi-tasker."

Despite making a big deal of how "threaded" modern browsers like Chrome are, the reality is that they only use one process per-tab. This means that, no matter how daunting a webpage you may present it with, Chrome can only use one processor to load it. And now that modern Flash detects idle tabs and disables rendering, there's very little load on idle tabs to steal away cycles from your main CPU (don't believe me? try it with a youtube video or flash game - processor usage will drop significantly in unused tabs). I didn't see any noticeable performance improvement in pure web browsing when I upgraded from my 3200+ to an X2 3800+, and I seriously doubt she will either - browsers crave single-threaded performance.

So in the end you're just adding a CPU that probably won't get much use. Upgrading to a modern processor would yield a 2-3x single-threaded performance increase, and that's worth paying for!
 
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defaultluser said:
So in the end you're just adding a CPU that probably won't get much use. Upgrading to a modern processor would yield a 2-3x single-threaded performance increase, and that's worth paying for!
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So that and the new motherboard, the new ram and possibly a new power supply.......

Sorry chap, in my experience of dealing with such customers most days I'm not convinced.

Most find just a fresh properly setup XP rebuild is more than enough. Popping in a cheap second hand dual core just reduces the lag if they happen to open more than two apps at the same time. That happens quite a lot.

More than enough if they have been used to a dog slow single core Athlon/P4. If they want to spend $400 for a new box then fine but a lot dont, so anything you can offer for $100 or less is a deal.

Remember these folks are not [H].

"Single threaded what????? Sorry son I dozed off there...I just want to know if I can run iTunes at the same time as looking at the web without the PC grinding to a halt all the while?"
 
when i comes to PC hardware, most of the forum members (myself included) tend not to exhibit a lot of sound logic when considering/purchasing hardware.

the question posed by the OP was on a recommendation for his grandmothers PC. he obviously cares for the old bird and she is on a small budget. it would be remiss of the OP to recommend she spend 200-300 bucks on new hardware that the intended user probably won't really notice or appreciate over a 2nd hand 939 x2/opteron and maybe a new HD.

when i comes to (non tech fanatical) family, keep it cheap & simple. they probably have better things to spend time and money on.
 
when i comes to PC hardware, most of the forum members (myself included) tend not to exhibit a lot of sound logic when considering/purchasing hardware.
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Speak for yourself.

There are many professionals on here who offer very sound, logical, and wise advice for many different situations.

You've been hanging out in the Video Cards section a bit too much. ;)


As for the OP, advice has been given and links provided to such processors.
At this point, it's up to him as to what he will do.
 
It's good advice to suggest a rip out and built new. Easy reason is it's so cheap to do that mobo/ram/lower priced CPU = cheap

And a point not often mentioned longer term the power savings are not to be sniffed at either.
Heck if it's a real cheap job slap a sempron in there cost is very small indeed.

If folks said shove a meaty graphics card, top end processor, SSD, tons of ram yeah I could buy the "I'm amazed" argument, but this time I can't. Trust me my old x2 4200 struggled even with basic stuff
 
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