[mythtv-users] sempron 3100 v. 64 3000+

Mike Perkins mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk
Fri Feb 1 12:57:53 UTC 2008


Tom Greer wrote:
> On Jan 31, 2008 3:03 PM, Gabe Rubin <gaberubin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Jan 31, 2008 2:56 PM, John Massengale <johnrobertmassengale at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Funny, I am in the same boat, socket 754 motherboard, sempron 3100
>>>
>>> i have found athlon 64 3200+ on eBay for $30 to upgrade to, but any
>> faster
>>> than that, and the price goes up exponentially, what gives? I would
>> think it
>>> would be easy to find inexpensive cpus for this platform.
>>>
>> My guess is that there are not that many out there, and retailers have
>> long ago ran out of stock.  I am sure I can find a much nicer CPU from
>> a gen or two ago cheaper, but that won't fit the mobo.  Maybe I should
>> be looking at the 3200 route or just give up, and realize this is the
>> best performance (or near best) performance I will get out of my mobo.
>>
> 
> Fry's regularly advertises motherboard/CPU combo deals.  I recently picked
> up a ECS AM2 socket motherboard with built-in nVidia graphics and an AMD
> BE-2350 Althlon X2 CPU for about $80.
> 
> I'd pursue a deal like that rather than invest any additional money in a
> socket 754 system.
> 
I disagree slightly. I was forced to look for a replacement motherboard last 
summer when my master BE went belly-up. I couldn't afford to upgrade much, so 
looked for a like-for like which would enable me to use my Athlon 64 3000+ and 
everything else which still functioned.

Another factor was that the newer generations of boards seem to have fewer PCI 
slots, essential for those of us with many tuner cards, etc. In the end I found 
this:

http://misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=279937&CatId=234

(ECS M860 motherboard). Curiously, my bundle came, not with the standard Athlon 
2800 supplied with the m/b which many of today's Google hits supply, but 
something described as a:

Mobile AMD Athlon(tm) XP-M Processor 2800+

which drives processor detection functions in ./configure scripts nuts. But, it 
draws less power, and so far has coped with everything I've thrown at it, so I 
never bothered to swap it out for the original processor.

Mike Perkins



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