Hey Thank you all very much indeed, I think I have picked more information in this little thread than I did googling for an hour. What a great crew and what great information. Armed with the information you have all contributed too, I will now go off and further investigate the alternatives given; and if anything significant turns up I post back the information for others who like did a few searches on this fantastic forum. Thanks again....Avagoodweekendall

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Hi qbone, I,m looking at an Intel Celeron, can you advise me on this, is this the full name or is it perhaps, Intel Celeron XXXXXX?

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The Celerons start with the first one and then with every generation going up the had added an A, B, C up to D for the latest ones. They also base on a certain core. The question is now what you ant to to. Depending on the mainboard you have you might be able to upgrade your old P2 system up to a 1,1GHz Pentium3 or Celeron with coppermine core abnd socket370 FCPGA while keeping the rest or doing just a few changes (especially graphic card and ram). I did that about 2 years ago with my old Asus P2B Board with a Pentium2 350Mhz on it. Using a slot1 to FCPGA adaptercard (socket370) I was able to upgrade to the above mentioned cpus. Because of my budget I decided on a 733MHz Celeron and was able to overcloack that up to 1232MHz. Normally I run it at 1100MHz because of some cooling issues at the higher setting. For most of the above mentioned things that should be quick enough. Gaming is a bit tricky though. Your actual games should run well but the newer ones might be difficult. don't expect playing Doom3 on OCed system for example but if you add a reasonable graphiccard like a Nvidia TI4200 you might be able to run a lot of the game that are not that resource hungry. Powerleap (see link above) also build an adapter that might be able to run Pentium3 FCPGA2 up to 1,4GHz but your board needs to be compatible for it. This would be the cheapest way to upgrade because you can keep most of your old system. But your board has to allow it and there might be certain issues with that. Should you happen to have an Asus P2B mainboard with a revision of 1,04 or higher I can give you advise how to do it because I know it works. Otherwisw I can also take a look and give some advise but I can't give any warranty if it realy worked. For example you need a bios update that supports the faster cpus or it may not work. With Asus that shouldn't be a problem but certain other manufacturers don't have such a good bios support and if you happen to own an OEM board you can just forget it. And you have to do the changes on your own like chaging the cpu and so on. If you're interested in that way I need to know what board you have and a bit more information about your system to give some advice and to tell you where to look at! For example most of those boards have AGP 2x slot but actual AGP 8x are usually no longer compatible to AGP 2x because every AGP standard uses a different voltage. But there are AGP 8x card who are also compatible so you need the right one!

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Hi Free Weasel, Wow, you seem to deeply involved upgrading, I'm very impressed by your response. I suspect my mobo might be too old, it's a Micro-Star International I have added a Creative SB PCI128 (Ensoniq ES5880) Sound Card, PCI; and an add on video card, but it's details are not available without opening the tower. I have included some mobo info; but am happy to replace it with another if required, I would like some guidance or recommendations on any alternate boards from you. And thanks again for a very interesting reply. Mobo Info:- Motherboard ID 11/02/2000-i810-6A69MM49C-00 Motherboard Name MSI MS-6178 Front Side Bus Bus Type Intel GTL+ Bus Width 64-bit Real Clock 100 MHz Effective Clock 100 MHz Bandwidth 800 MB/s Chipset Bus Bus Type Intel Hub Interface Bus Width 8-bit Motherboard Physical Info CPU Sockets/Slots 1 Expansion Slots 3 PCI, 1 AMR, 1 PTI RAM Slots 2 DIMM Integrated Devices Audio, Video Form Factor Micro ATX Motherboard Size 190 mm x 240 mm Motherboard Chipset i810 Product Information http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_list.php BIOS Download http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/bios/bos/spt_bos_list.php

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Yes, I did some really intensive research before upgrading my old Pentium2 as I was low on cash and wanted to be sure I didn't want to waste my money. I needed a second faster system especially for network faming back then and also for running extensive job while still being able to work on my main system! The good news is that it's already a socket370 board but the problem is I found some strange things as I compared the cpu support table with the bios informations. Going after the CPU support table you should be able to run either a Celeron Coppermine core 900MHz or a PentiumIII Coppermine core 850MHz (8,5x100 MHz). All the 133MHz FSB based CPUs have a N/A in the table but looking into the Bios descriptions one fixed the PentiumIII 600MHz (4,5x133MHz) being detected as 594MHz. My guess is that you should be able to run all 100MHz FSB based coppermine core PentiumIII and Celeron who both go up to 1,1GHz. The 133MHz FSB based coppermine PentiumIII may also work and the highest is the 1,13GHz one. With the tualatin core CPUs you should be careful as they should be FCPGA2 based while the older one are still FCPGA. As far as I know the difference are two changed connections inside the socket370 so no FCPGA2 CPU will work on any FCPGA socket. I'm quite sure you should be able to run either a 1,1GHz Celeron or PentiumIII on that board and it's also likely the 1,13GHz PentiumIII will work. But a 133MHz FSB based CPU only makes sense if your Ram also supports 133MHz. As I wrote before just upgrading the existing board would be the cheapest version but this also depends a lot on what ram and what grapic you have inside. To make the system run properly you need at least 512MB Ram and I suggest PC133 for 133MHz. The question is if your Bios allows you to the CPU at 100MHz and the Ram at 133MHz. With the 1,13GHz PIII it has to be PC133 Ram. The second important thing for gaming is a reasonable graphic card. I saw that board may have onboard graphic but it also has a AGP slot so theoretically you might be able to run nearly any AGP card in that. The problem I I wasn't able to load and open the manual as it's packed into an EXE file I cant open on this linux terminal here. You need to take a look inside your maunal to see if your AGP slot is capable of AGP 2x or 4X. AGP 4x would ideal as you can run any exsisting AGP graphic card on that one. With AGP 2x you can run any AGP 2x and AGP 4x card but with a AGP 8x card you have to make sure it's also AGP 2x compatible as most AGP 8x cards are not! For that system I would suggest a Nvidia TI4200, TI4400 or TI4600 card. he older models cam as AGP 4x but there are also newer AGP 8x versions. For a neighbors PIII 800MHz we got a AOpen Aeolus TI4200 8x 64MB which was also AGP 2x compatible and it still works very well! The graphic card you can also add later but the problem is that the TI4x00 cards are no longer build so even now it might be difficult to still find one. The problem is I looked for a friend lately and just wasn't able to find a reasonable alternative to a TI4x00 for such an old system. Sure there are better cards but you have to pay up to twice as much if you want a card that's about as fast. If you're willing to pay more and want a modern system there are a couple of possiblities. But for any more or less modern board you need the new board, new CPU, new Ram and a new graphic card too. The drives you may take from your old machine but at least a new modern SATA harddrive (if the board supports that!) might be useful because an old slower drive would slow the whole system. At the moment socketA board a wquite cheap to get and together with a Athlon XP 3000+ or Sempron 3000+ socketA CPU you can get a nice system at a reasonable price. You should add at least 512MB DDR Ram and for gaming a reasonable graphic card to that (about the graphic the still open question ist what you want to play!). But both socketA and AGP will be running out over the next one or two years so if you upgrade again you would need everything new again! A bit more costly migth be a new Athlon64 socket939 system with PCI express instead of AGP. If you take for example a board with NForce4 SLI or NForce4 Ultra chipset and an Athlon64 3000+ Winchester or Venice you might be able to upgrade one of the new Athlon64 X2 dual core cpus later if you really need them. Or with a good board you can overclock that 3000+ and if you're lucky (like me) you may even get it up to around a 4400+ later. A little problem with socket939 board is the dual channel ram option. To make use of it you should use two identical ram modules who are put together to one logical ram module. It's faster than a single module. After what you wrote you should start again with 512MB Ram so either you take two 256MB modules or one 512MB mudule that runs in single channel mode and upgrade later to a second one. You can also upgrade the two 256MB moduels to 4 ones but you wil loose a little bit of speed then. But it might be still the best option for you because I think 512Mb would be enough for the moment for the use you described. With the graphic card we're back at the question what games you want to run. Normally I would suggest a Nvidia 6600GT as they are quite fast but they cost somewhere around 200$. Depending on your use something cheaper might be enough but on the other side I don't see the sense in buying a cheap card that's bearely fast enough and to upgrade every 1 or two years. That maybe more costly than getting a good card at areasonable price that should be fast enough for maybe 4 or 5 years. The problem is that modern games mostly need a good graphic card to run smoothly at reasoable quality while the CPU tend to be faster than required. As an example I bought a Nvidia FX5900XT about 18 months ago and ran it with my Athlon 1,2@1,33GHz for about a year. I was able to play most games that needed 1GHZ CPUs or sligtly above at a high resolution (1280x1024) at highest graphic settings and the rest at lightly below highest graphic level with my 5 year old system. Back then it was the best choice for the money I was willing to invest. Orignally I also wanted to use that card with the new system I build at the beginning of this year but another oportunity arose and I ended up with an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Board, an Athlon64 3000+ winchester (can OC from 1800 to 2700MHz but just don't need the power now), 1GHz DDR Ram and a Nvidia 6600GT instead! As mentioned above I would suggest a SATA with 7200rpm, 8MB cache and NCQ for such a system but if you have at leas a ATA100 drive it will do for a while. Now is the question what direction you want to take and especially what requirements do you have for the graphic? Or simpler what sort of games do you want to play and how old are they and will they be? If I know I may be able to make some more specific suggestions! BTW: To check your Ram and graphic card download Aida32 or Everest from the net and run it on your windows. It should show you all we need to know!

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Hello again Free Weasel, First you should be congratulated for such a detailed and informative reply. One thing that stands out is the niggling doubt that whatever I get I may have problems, first obtaining the parts for an older set up, then the possibility that with a larger drive some things may not work to well if at all. I would hate to be off line for several days trying to find an older part then waiting for it to arrive. I also use my desktop and laptop for work, the laptop is not set up for internet as the content 'must' be kept safe, financial reports, meeting notes and the like. So I am thinking I will look into a motherboard for the desktop, complete with new CPU, graphics and sound card, might even consider a P$ or ADM that will run at 1.2Gig or better, and set this up 512 meg of ram. I have been looking on the Australian E-Bay site, there seems to be some good spec's on some of the towers being sold. Have a look at http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=5211889506&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT and http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14294&item=5211167465&rd=1 There are lots more to choose from, I value your input on this. Best regards Old Salt......

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About the harddrive I just checked and with the actual beta bios version 1014 beta3 it supports up to 127GB. At the moments I run a 61,5 IBM harddrive with 7200rpm in it and never had problems running it on the P2B. (all my previous problems with the harddrive model had been before on my Athlon - two replacements before I got a stable working drive!) About your first choice I have to say that I don't like those early Pentium4 because the 1,6GHz version offered wasn't really much faster than the old Pentium3 1,4GHz. The more important problem is that they don't write what sort of Ram was used. The first Pentium4 had been sold with Rambus Ram instead of DDR Ram and with that Rambus Ram the upgrade might become quite costly as this ram was always quite costly. At least you should check that out before! The second link is only a upgrade pack without CPU and Ram! I would suggest you get yourself a system around 2GHz with a good board that also supports the fastest available CPU of that socket and PC3200 DDR Ram. Add 512MB of that PC3200 DDR Ram and you have a system that should be fast enough for a while and even upgradable by just changing the cpu later! Both Socket A (AMD) and Socket 478 (Pentium4) boards should be available at good prices with all those new sockets so it just depends on your personal preferences. For office work a Pentium4 might be the slightly better choice!

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Hello Free Weasel, I may have found the very system, but am wondering if there is any advantage in just purshasing the mother board and processor? I think I would also replace the power supply as mine is getting on a bit. Have a look at: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5214421824 Old Salt......

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A 3,2GHz P4 Prescott is surely something else than upgrading your old system. I just hope it has a quiet fan as those prescott core cpus tend to run hot. You could use your old Pentium2 case to build a new system on your own as it should be already ATX. But despite the mainboard and cpu you also need new ram and surely a new psu too because your old is very likely too weak for a system as that Pentium4 above. Just make sure your old case is an ATX and not some old AT form and that it's big enough for a normal ATX board. There are also smaller ATX cases and for those you need special boards! As I just had trouble with upgrading my brothers system because of a too small build case check not only the height but also the width. Bigger boards need to go behind the 5,25" device cage on most cases and they need enough room there because you need to install data cable and maybe even Ram modules there!

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My existing tower is a huge 40 high x 40 deep and 17 cm wide, not sure about the ATX but should be large enough for any board, it's the biggest tower I have ever had and only just fits into the under desk slot. Thanks for the heads up on the Prescott temperature, it's pretty tropical here most of the year and the last thing I need is more heat, or an item that will not cope with high ambient temperatures. is there a CPU that will cope better, perhaps a lower speed? If I can find a motherboard that comes complete with 512 ram, a CPU, sound and graphics card that are reasonable performers then I only need a new power supply, would you say 400 is enough? Thank you so much for your advice.

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ATX boards have most of their connectors build onto the board in the upper left corner and the ATX case has a vertical rectangular opening to fit them. AT boards usually only have the keybord connector onboard while all the other ones are screwed directly into the backside of the case and connected by wires to the mainboard. Only the last socket7 AT boards supported USB. And if you have a normal Pentium2 it is a ATX board. In that case your CPU looks like some sort of vertical add on card that placed in a special slot (Slot1). The problem is there had ben a few upgrade Pentium2 for socket7 but those will look just like a normal CPU in a socket on the board! If you took that Prescott I'd say better take a bigger PSU but otherwise you should be fine with 400 to 450W. Just don't take some cheap on. As there are so much differences in the output also compare the Ampere output of the different voltages and if there is written something about "peak" at those number leave it. I'v seen a 550W that had less output that any noname 350W once. If you want to go around the 3GHz level I would suggest a socket939 Athlon64 system. I have an Athlon64 3000+ Winchester core myself and even with the boxed cooler it never went above 52°C the last weeks as I had up to 32°C room temperature myself. At reaching 52°C the fan ran quite a bit faster (nearly 6000rpm) but still ran at a reasonable noise level. It wasn't the noise itself that was a little irritating but more the fact that the fan went up and down in speed because at the higher speed the temperature went soon back to the level the fan got slower so the cpu heated up to 52°C again. With only 67W maximal power intake and the build in Cool'n Quiet function the Athlon64 should be perfect for running in a high temperature area and the Athlon64 3000+ should be only slightly slower than a Pentium4 3GHz in office programs. The socket939 Athlon64 3000+ run at 1800MHz and using 90nm technology it stays a lot cooler that the Pentium4 system, especially the prescott core! For a new system I suggest to go up to the new PCI express bus. Take a look at the Asus A8N-SLI or if you want to run a Raid5 system the A8N-SLI Deluxe with build in Raid5 SATA controller. You need 3 or better 4 identical harddrives to run Raid5 but especially with 4 drives you have the advantage of a high drivespeed combined with data security because thanks to the data parity stored with the data you will be able to restore the data if one harddrive fails. But you still should do backups because if two drives fail at the same time the data are still gone! You will never need the SLI option for running two graphic cards together but in the normal version you can still use the second graphic card slot for a normal PCIe 1x card instead. Get the Athlon64 3000+ Venice (newer version of the winchester) to that and add two ram sticks to take advantage of the dual channel ram mode. You can either take 2x256MB or 2x512MB of PC3200 Ram (400MHz). Make sure to get CL2,5 or CL2. I suggest you make sure to get single sided sticks (ram only on one side not both of the stick) as the Winchester has an issue with running 4 sticks of double sided ram. In that case that ram is clocked down to 333MHz which would be a substancial loss in performance. I don't know for sure if the Venice core still has this problem so with ingle sided Ram you still have the option of upgrading your Ram by just adding two additional sticks! As long as you don't want to game the last action games you don't need any fancy graphic card for an office system so one of the slower PCI express one like a Radeon X300 or a Nvidia 6200 should be well enough. For an occasional newer game I suggest the 6600GT because this card is fast enough. And as long as you don't have already any ATA100 or ATA133 harddrive I suggest to add at least one SATA drive for the OS because old ATA33 or even ATA66 would slow you down quite a bit. They are still good enough for storing data and maybe even programms who don't need to load a lot of data but for Windows on a modern system they are a bit slow! I have the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe myself together with the Athlon64 3000+ Winchester and a MSI NX6600GT-TD128E and 1GB single sided MCI (MDT) CL2,5 PC3200 Ram. I checked it out and would be able to overclock that one to up to 2700MHz which would make it around a 4400+ or so but until now I never needed more that the normal 1800MHz, not even for gaming. So you should be fine with it for office work! At temperatures around 30°C or so I wouldn't suggest overclocking especially as you will loose warranty by it. About the SocketA Athlon XP I don't know for sure but I know they run somwhere in between the Pentium4 Prescott and the Athlon64. So especially if you have problems with high temperatures I really suggest the Athlon64. BTW: Don't take a socket754 system. They are slower and already running out of new cpus already. They run faster for the same rating and most cpus still use 130nm technology so they run hotter than the 90nm versions for socket939! I hope that helps!!!

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Thanks Free Weasel, Your advice has been of the highest quality I yet seen. You have picked up on what I was afraid might be a problem for me living in the tropics and the extra heat that can cause major problems in the box. The more I read the more I'm convinced I should be looking at a system closer to the one you have set up. I have contacted a local supplier to see what he can supply, problem is, he wants to use 3 gig Prescott CPU and add a horn with extra fan on the rear; this sounds like a bad idea to me. Based on your experience with the Athlon64 3000+ Winchester core I will ask him to revise his thoughts on what he plans to include. I will post you a copy of the spec's when they arrive and look forward to your comments, you have done an excellent job to date and I can not thank you enough for your very valuable input.

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Details of proposed System. Full Intel P4 3.00GHZ (Pre-Scott + 1MB Cache + 800FSB) Computer System 40GB Western Digital / Samsung IDE HDD 512MB DDR400 PC3200 RAM 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive 100Mbps LAN Card (Network Card) Giga Byte GA-8S661FXMP-RZ/VGA/8XAGP/AC97/LAN All-in-One M/B + Software 32MB Integrated Video Card 6-Channel Sound Max System 16x Dual Layer +/-DVDRW (DVD Burner) V.92/56K Internal Fax/Voice Modem + Communications Software Mid Omni ATX (Black/Silver) Case + Front USB 2.0 + Sound Panel + See Thru + Neon Lights + 12CMFAN + 400W P/S 1 Year Hardware Warranty $710.00 Total My response: Just a couple of points. I don't need neon lights on the case, a standard off white tower will be fine as long as has plenty of ventilation. I read that the Intel Prescott CPU runs a bit on the hot side, this is a concern as conditions here are very warm to say the least, is there a cooler running alternative? His response to the above: I will be giving you the Pre-Scott Socket 478 which is fine, the one you are talking about is the new Socket 775 which does tend to heat up more, about the case that's ok I will give you one of our good cases with a conduction tube and a fan at the back as well, and you will never have any heating problems, Does this look like good value?

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First of thanks for the praise. It's nice to be able to help! ;) About the value I'm not so sure as I'm not that used to calculating in $ because I'm from europe and the currency is Euro. Overall I think the price would be okay but I still see some things about the Prescott Pentium4. I just rechecked on a table with about all actual cpus on it. I'm not toatlly sure if the socket 478 might be cooler but what I found more likely indicates the opposite. There are two possible 3GHz Prescott P4 that fit the above description. The first is the socket 478 P4 Prescott 3GHz which uses up to 89W and the second ist the Pentium4 530 (also 3GHz) which also uses 89W on socket 478 but only 84W on socket 775. The second also rund at a slightly higher voltage (1,4V instead of 1,375V) which adds a little to the heat too. According to that data I'd guess the socket 775 should be even a little cooler than the socket 478 which is exactly opposite to the info he gave you. Compared to that the Athlon64 3000+ Winchester will only use 67W (I know for sure the socket 939 uses the same 67W) and has a build in cooling function that clocks it down if you don't need all the power and also loweres the used voltage to keep it as cool as possible! Below I give you the link to the table. It's in german but the table is self explaining I think and it's the most complete table of cpus I know! http://www.pc-erfahrung.de/ cpu_tabelle.php?cputabelle=Desktop I just find it strange that he will not build you an Athlon64 system. Somehow I get the impression he wants to get rid of those old things before the prices are really falling. I can only suggest to try one or two other computer shops to see what they have to say to that. The Prescott is definately one of the hottest cpus on the market. Sure, the 3GHz with 89W is coler than the blown up 3,6 or 3,8GHz modells with even 115W but still they tend to run hot. My cousin has one of those two. He got it from one of our big food discouters and they are well known to offer good and cheap pc's twice a year but that 3Ghz one make a lot of trouble and shuts of again and again if he tries some games and run quite hot anyway, even at moderate room temperatures. I'm quite sure it's a problem with an overheating cpu but until know he was in to much stress to really work on that! I don't know for sure but I thinks it's ine of the socket 478 cpus! At the moment intel is well known for their heat problems and I don't really understand why it is so. AMD change to 90nm technology and their cpu's (Athlon64) became quite a bit cooler while intel changed too but their cpus got hotter and hotter! I read it has to do with the internal structure of those pentium4 but I guess there would be other reasons too. BTW: Take a big tower with a lot of case fan mounts in it. That way you can alwasy add some additional fans if you run into heat problems. And a case that's build to take the air for cpu cooling directly from the outside is a good choice either. I guess that's meant with that tube. Just make sure that intake is not directly beside one of the heat outtakes on the backside because it will not help if you pull the just blow out heated air inside again!

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I found this unit on e-bay, the seller may be a good one to check out to see if he will build a system, but this looks pretty close. http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5211122352&ssPageName=MERC_VI_RSCC_Pr4_PcY_BIN_Stores

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Sorry about the delay but I was very low on time the last weekend! That Sempron is an older socketA system. The Sempron is based on the Athlon XP so it may also run a bit hotter without a good cooler but I'm not sure if it runs hotter or cooler than the original Athlon XP. For the things you want to do that system might be good enough but better check if that samsung DVD RW can burn +R/RW and -R/RW DVDs. At the end of the offer I found two Athlon64 who looked good at first sigth but that are based on socket754 and not 939. As those cpus still use 130nm technology they are again hotter than the socket939 winchester or venice. If you really want a system for hotter conditions I again suggest one of those but finally it's your decission.

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