Need help upgrading a Pentium 3 Pc

[tharobap]

Hello,

I have a home built pc from many years ago. its a p3 930 Mhz, 768 of ramand a Nvidia Fx GeForce 5200 in it.

Its a secondary pc that needs a boost in speed, it lags too much. I really dont want to spend much on this.

Few questions

1. Is it advisable to upgrade the processor. If so please tell me what speed and what i need to install this. (links if possible)

2. Should i just buy ram, if so how much and what type.

(i do not really want to upgrade this to a p4 just because i think i would have to change the mother board, ram etc and i dont think i have the knowledge to do it)

Please be specific if you can as i do not know much at all about terms and hardware specs etc. THANKS ALOT in advance!

jb

 

[Kaldor]

A hammer is the best upgrade!

But seriously, an update to this machine would be more expensive than just buying a new machine as trying to track down old hardware is often more costly than just buying new stuff.

 

[tharobap]

hey Kaldor, what is a hammer? This pc runs ok. i can even run photoshop cs on it. but just want to boost it up a little. cant afford alot right now.

 

[crystal_tech]

Well i would say that that setup has reached its end of life and its time to upgrade the whole computer. From a price/performance point you could get a amd 780g with a dual core and ram for close to a few hundred bucks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130166 $79.99 mb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103289 $77.00 cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098 $39.99 ram
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104052 $49.99 psu

Total price $246.97 w/o shipping

With this setup you should be set. You can use the old hard drive but i would recommend a sataII drive and just use the cdrom on the ide chain.

 

[jludvig]

I'd recommend the new Atom motherboard with integrated dual core processor, and graphics - its 79 at newegg (although not in stock) all you need to add is RAM, you may even be able to reuse powersupply, HD, RAM and HDD from the old P3. It can even run vista and play back HD video's.
Linky: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121360

And just to make it clear: upgrading is not financially sensible - that P3 motherboard probably uses PC-133 SDRAM - very hard to find and likely expensive. I'm not sure Pentium 3's come much faster than 930mhz so I'm not sure it's even upgradable...

 

[rabidbunny]

I doubt that you'd be able to find a cheap upgrade unless you get lucky on ebay. Generally, there are a few people out there in your situation and the leftover parts on ebay are jacked up so much that it is worthless to invest the $ into it. You're better off waiting until you can get about $200 or $300 for a new, basic rig and waiting it out.

You're not going to see a huge performance increase in that rig if you want to upgrade it. It is a dinosaur and will be no matter how much you put into it. sorry, that's just the life of pc's

 

[KyleSTL]

1GB is probably the maximum your motherboard can handle, and there's very little difference in that from your current 768. Also, the fastest P3-era processor is a 1.4Ghz which is also not worth spending any amount of money on. There are no upgrades worth recommending, time to rebuild or buy a pre-built.

If you really want a boost I'd recommend a reload of your OS. Or here is a 1.4Ghz Pentium 3-S for $1 ($8 after shipping)

 

[lunyone]

I think your going to find that there really isn't much to upgrade. The RAM might be the only option, but without the mobo make and model it'll be hard to know the limitations of your memory. You could be requireing SDRAM, not sure which one you'll need. If we knew more about the mobo make and model this would help out. Knowing the make and model will also clue us into the CPU limitation that can be installed into the mobo. Most mobo's of that era had a 1 ghz CPU limitation and IIRC a 1-1.5 gb memory limit too. Not totally sure on that, but I think I'm close. I'm pretty sure that you probably have 3 SDRAM slots to put memory in and you currently have all 3 slots (3x256mb's) full. To upgrade you memory (if the mobo will allow it) you'll need to buy 1-3 sticks to upgrade your memory size. You'd need 512mb sticks to replace the current ones (1-3 of them). So taking that into consideration, here's what it would cost you for a memory upgrade (assuming your mobo supports it):
1 stick of 512mb of SDRAM (133mHz) = $41 This gives you 1x512 and 2x256 sticks = 1gb's of SDRAM.
2 sticks of 512mb of SDRAM = $82 Total is 2x512 and 1x256 sticks = $1.25gb's.
3 sticks of 512mb of SDRAM = $123 Total is 3x512mb sticks = 1.5gb's of SDRAM.
Newegg link to 512mb SDRAM, cheapest on the site.
Add a CPU upgrade (assuming your mobo supports it)
$133 shipped, obviously you can find it cheaper or get a refurbed one, but this gives you an idea.
Pentium 3 Processor (1GHz, 256KB, 133MHz FSB, Socket 370)

Total, if you upgrade to 1.5 gb's of SDRAM and up to 1 ghz CPU = ~$250 or so.
If it were up to me, I'd probably just upgrade to something like this:
$38 Duo core CPU
Intel Celeron 430 Conroe-L 1.8GHz 512KB L2 Cache LGA 775 35W Single-Core Processor - Retail
$44 mobo w/onboard graphics that'll blow the fx5200 out of the water!
Foxconn M7VMX-K LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7050 / nForce 610i Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
$25 - $10 MIR = $15!! 1gb of DDR2 667mHz. Plenty for a basic system!
SUPER TALENT 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory - Retail

Total = ~$107 - $10 MIR = $97!!! Now all you have to do is add your HD/CD/Case/PSU to the equation and your done! Not sure if you'll need PSU upgrade, but you get the idea.

 

[KyleSTL]

Add a CPU upgrade (assuming your mobo supports it)
$133 shipped, obviously you can find it cheaper or get a refurbed one, but this gives you an idea.
Pentium 3 Processor (1GHz, 256KB, 133MHz FSB, Socket 370)

Worst recommendation ever. But I totally agree with his sentiment. I was guessing the OP had two ram slots @ 256+512, but whatever, still not worth it.

 

[lunyone]

Worst recommendation ever. But I totally agree with his sentiment. I was guessing the OP had two ram slots @ 256+512, but whatever, still not worth it.

I wasn't recommending that for an upgrade, just showing the OP what he would expect to pay for an upgrade to that level of CPU.

 

[killerb255]

The OP will still need a power supply. Power supplies back then don't have the +12V 4-pin connector...

 

[crystal_tech]

from what i've seen the 930mhz p3s are slot 1 cpus. I'm not saying that socket 370 930mhz cpus are not out there. Just that I haven't seen them. I would still recommend rebuilding or buying a new pc. But if you reuse your old hard drive i WOULD back up everything you wanted to keep because once/if you switch boards you'll need to update the hal or just do a clean install of the os (Its easier to do the clean install). That is if you use the old hard drive again.

 

[zenmaster]

Dude, I've thrown away better PCs that you have.

Well, not thrown away but given away to friends/co-workers who had little children and they wanted something for them to pound on.

If you search FreeCycle and CraigsList, I'm sure you will find a better computer for little to no cost. Nothing great, but something better.

 

[geofelt]

What is slow about the current PC?
Is it slow in games?
Is it slow with hard drive access?
Is there a shortage of ram?
Is the cpu at 100%?

It would help to identify the slowest part of the current PC before trying to upgrade it.

Still, all the parts are old, and obsolete. The cheapest new PC from Dell, Lenovo, HP will be a bunch better today.

It would not pay you to upgrade. Find someone to give it to.

Only if you can find a dirt cheap cpu, vga card or ram on e-bay might it be worth doing.

It might be worth it to do some tune-up.
Reload the OS
Defrag the hard drive.
Prune the startup list.
Scan for spyware and malware.
etc...