T'Bird to XP2100

[sprandel17]

I'm thinking about going from my old Thunderbird to something relatively cheap, like a $30 XP2100 I found on ebay because I can't stand not having SSE anymore and it's driving me insane. Do I need a new heatsink for the 2100 or can I stick with the one from the Thunderbird? If I need a new one, what one should I get?

 

[Tmagic650]

You are talking old, old, old! What motherboard are you running? Make and model? The upgrade you are talking about won't give you much gain in performance

 

[Zoatebix]

What kind of T-Bird are you running? I had a 1.33GHz one back in the day. I don't think you'll need a new cooler for the cpu, and you might not have the mounting holes around the CPU socket that you'll need for some better coolers. If you feel like searching around, probably the best Socket-A cooler that doesn't need extra mounting holes is the discontinued Scythe Katana and Katana Cu.

For $30, that's not a bad upgrade, even from a higher-end C-model T-Bird like the one I had: ~25% increase in raw performance (or more - I'm not imagining that they made some general architectural enhancements, right?) and the ability to run SSE instructions? Don't knock it, Tmagic650 ;-)

EDIT: Wikipedia comes with a grain of salt, but it says that the Athlon XP was "...roughly 10% faster than Thunderbird at the same clock speed..." here.

 

[agissi]

yeah that'll be a juicy upgrade. Things to consider-- Will an AthlonXP fit into your thunderbird socket? I dont think it will but dont know for sure.
Look up online what the stock retail axp heatsink looks like. If your heatsink and fan are signifigantly smaller than the one AMD supplies it to run with then I wouldnt keep your cooling. You can put it on there and watch your temps all you'd like, but its going to heat up 50% higher when under full load.

The athlon xp's are very fast with DDR memory, they utilize DDR memory so if your running nonddr PC133 then the processor will downclock its front side bus by half. I ran pc133 cause my dad told me DDR wasnt much faster, WRONG. The slower memory isnt just half as fast, it also slows down your cpu's connection to it by half.

 

[Zoatebix]

I didn't even think of that, agissi - I forgot entirely about Socket-A motherboards that took PC133 (and PC100?) SDRAM...

EDIT: Out of curiosity, is the 2100+ you're looking at a Thouroughbred or a Palomino (or Thorton, even)?

 

[agissi]

Yeah and in my case I had an ECS Elitegroup motherboard that took SD and DDR memory. The dimms are keyed differently.

 

[Zoatebix]

They have a different pin count, too, don't they?

 

[sprandel17]

I have the T'bird 1.33 Ghz on an ASUS K7S41GX MoBo, sockets should match up. Basically I want something with SOME increase in speed and SSE FO SHO, and it's totally worth it. Doesn't look like there's too much difference in size between the fans, but if the tempurature gets outta hand I'll run it down to the shop a couple blocks away. It doesn't say if it's the Palomino or the Thoroughbred, it just says socket A/462, authentic AMD.

 

[Zoatebix]

Hooray T-bird 1.33 GHz! I had mine on a GA-7DX (complete with bugged VIA southbridge that thankfully only acted up once) and it was the first computer I could call my own. My friend Tom built it for me, but eventually I changed every part in there so it's safe to call it the first computer I ever built as well. When my cousins' old computer got old and cranky (more because it was running Windows ME than because 1GHz Athlon), I took my old MB and a new XP 2400+ that I got on Ebay and trimmed up a fresh XP install for them.

Good luck with the upgrade!

 

[Tmagic650]

I have a Athlon XP1600+ 1.4GHz on the bench now. Asus K7N8X-X motherboard with 384MB 133MHZ SDRAM. it has a 20GB hard drive running XP SP3. The customer wants a faster system, but i will first replace the Western Digital 20GB with a Seagate 40GB

 

[sprandel17]

Yeah, last piece I have to swap out of my computer from 2000! Theres also a CD-RW drive that I don't know when it was installed but it was before the computer was mine and now I have a DVD drive so I'm gonna call this the last one. Thanks for your input!