OT: Upgrading an AMD processor

[Eberhard Roloff]

Nigel Ridley wrote:
> I have a 4 year old AMD Athlon 64 3000 Venice 939 processor on a MSI K8N Neo4 mainboard. My two 
> boys are complaining that Kubuntu 8.10 is running too slow for them.....
> 
> I am thinking about upgrading the processor to something more modern. The fastest similar 
> processor that I can find is the AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Socket 939; but there is also an Athlon 64 
> X2 4600+ Socket 939.
> 
> Are the X2 processors compatible with older mainboards? Or would a BIOS update take care of things?
> 
> Blessings,
> 
> Nigel
> 
To clarify what CPUs your board basically supports, you might have a 
look at the msi website and also see there, which improvements the more 
recent bios revisions will provide.

In general it might be better to beef up the RAM to 2GB, add a decent 
VGA card and then leave this box alone for another 3years.

I would not spend to much money on this, since imho this already is a 
rather good computer for Linux and it will continue to serve you well 
through the years, as soon as RAM and VGA are updated.

Also remeber the golden rule, that you will only realize a very small 
improvement when you upgrade to 30% more CPU freqency and up.

That means that ex. a 64 3800+ will have no noticable effect.

Also I doubt that the CPU will be your most eminent bottleneck.

Kind regards
Eberhard