Upgrading processor

Hello

I have a fairly old system and I know the processor is low end and I was wondering If I could replace it with something better, I don't have a lot of money and have a budget of up to £100 ( $160), can anyone recommend a processor for me. The manual for my motherboard advises that it will support Intel® CoreT M2 Quad, CoreT M2 Duo, Pentium® and Celeron in LGA775 package.

Would a better dual core or even a quad core improve things?

Details of my current set up as follows.

Motherboard MS 7504VP-PV
Processor Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2220 @ 2.4Ghz
4GB DDR 2 memory
GFX ATI Radeon HD 4870
Windows Vista
320GB Hard drive

Many thanks in advance

Darran

 

Hello,
775 processors are old type of proccesors and intel has come up with i series processors.

I m aware that you want to change the processor as you dont want to change your motherboard. But if you buy a Old type processor and later when you want to change your motherboard, you again have to buy a 775 pin board. In this way you cannot get into new type of processor.

All I recommend is you to change both Board and processor as a one time replacement.

Or you can go for Core2duo processors. Since there wont be any visible changes in performance between dual core or quad core processors.

 

Well on a budget the best choice would be to get a Core 2 Quad from Ebay or Amazon or wherever and slap that sucker in. As long as you replace the cooler properly with new thermal paste, the stock cooler that comes with the chip should work fine.

That CPU is somewhat of a bottleneck for the video card. So a quad will help.

You might look into a better PSU before you make the jump though. PSU is important and you'll need more than the stock PSU for that system to run a 4870 and a quad. A Corsair 500CX or similar would suffice. After PSU I would look at cooling. Simply an extra side or front fan somewhere will help immensely as that board is not fantastically well cooled.

That's the cheap option. The other option is a new system as that one is fairly limited.

 

There's nothing like an uninformed answer to liven up a thread!

 

hi ddp,

that's why i m asking him to change both the board and processor as a one time investment.

 

look for the CPU list on the motherboards web site. But you would be better off saving for a new board

 

You should be aware before you begin explaining how to upgrading processor. First,processors have no pins; instead, the pins are in the socket. It's very easy to accidentally bend a pin in the CPU socket when you're installing or removing an Intel processor, so you need to handle the processor very carefully.

 

Actually what he has isn't bad and i can help him with this stop thinking extreme gaming machine...

Listen up.

1. i would keep your processor it's not a bad processor at all thats not where your problems lie.

2. i would first upgrade your hard drive to a 1tb hard drive 350 gig's is way to small

3. leave vista go to amazon.com and purchase a copy of windows 7 for that board you would be better off.

4. upgrade your ram if you can go to 8 gig's great if you cannot stay with 4 the hard drive upgrade will compensate for it.

5. check your graphics card to see if it is agp or Pci express because it's harder to find a agp card then a pci express card i would go to a 512 meg card if at all possible because agp will max out at 512 megs where if you have a lci and your board supports it go higher 1 gig card

This will upgrade your machine nicely i would just start with a 1 tb hard drive upgrade first at only 99 dollars for a 1tb hard drive your machine will improve tons on a larger drive

 

This is categorically wrong. His processor is a major bottleneck for that video card in a lot of ways. It would be a bad bottleneck for an even slower card as well. The processor is most certainly a weak link.

Hard drive space is entirely subjective and has no immediate impact on the overall performance of the PC. If 320GB is fine for him, there's really no issue staying with his current drive.

A larger, newer generation hard drive will, however, be noticeably faster in many things due to platter density, cache, newer technologies, etc. It's not a totally essential thing though unless he plans on using an SSD. Relative performance differences between mechanical SATA HDDs are usually small enough not to notice in everyday usage unless one were to be a major power user.

No arguments here. Windows 7 performs significantly better than Windows Vista and has the same functionality, or better. Of course the performance difference isn't huge, but Vista is noticeably slower than XP, 7, and 8.

I agree here. More RAM is never a bad thing and having 8GB of it gives you a good cushion in today's most demanding games. Even when the game itself isn't using 4GB of RAM, the OS itself still needs quite a bit of wiggle room to play around with. I don't know how a larger hard drive will make up for less RAM though. They do two different things.

As of currently, RAM is very cheap. It can and has gotten ridiculously expensive due to the market price of the chips, so take advantage while it lasts.

He won't benefit at all from a graphics upgrade unless he has a much faster CPU. Also, we already know he has PCI-Express because he lists his video card as a Radeon HD4870; a card only ever made in PCI-Express. Unless he is playing the most demanding games at extremely high settings, 512 vs 1GB won't matter much for him. The rest of the PC needs to be upgraded before video memory becomes a major concern.

I would say this order,

1) PSU(Preferrably Corsair, Antec, or similar quality). For any sort of major upgrades a mass mfg PSU most likely isn't going to be sufficient.

2) CPU. Socket 775 quad cores are readily available in online stores and on Ebay. They are fast, hard hitting CPUs that still have plenty of power for most users. Dual core is increasingly becoming "not enough" and that CPU is also a lesser model with less features and a low clockspeed. Installation is easy, just make sure to follow the instructions on the Thermal Compound manufacturer's website. Thermal compound is vitally important and the easiest part to forget or screw up.

3) Memory. A faster kit of DDR2 in 8GB(2x4GB) can be had fairly cheaply. $50-60 I think. It certainly can never hurt to have more memory.

4) HDD. 320GB is a tad small. Hard drives are currently at decent prices and good quality 1TB drives can be had for cheap. They will give you a small performance boost over an older drive.

5) Video card. Faster cards can be had for less than $200. The HD4870 is still quite fast though. It only struggles with the newest games at high resolution. Most mainstream titles are cake for one.

6) Motherboard. Eventually, with enough new parts, you'll have almost a whole new system. Why not take the plunge and get a whole new motherboard in the future? At which point you'll at least have some sort of foundation to work with. Usually cheaper than buying a whole PC to just upgrade a few parts at a time, no?

 

I haven't had to buy DDR2 in such a long time so wouldn't have a clue about the price difference.

I did try to take the needs of a normal user into consideration. Unless he's playing lots of games it won't take much. A Core 2 quad will play games quite well though. He mentioned speeding it up though so I assume he's doing something which requires processing power. If it's games, the CPU is a botteneck first. If it's not games, the CPU is still a bottleneck.

Just my thoughts...