Athlon 64 neo 1.6 ghz upgrade?

[marshal11]

hey, my friend just got this laptop and it has a 1.6 GHz athlon 64 neo. its a single core, 1.6 GHz. nuff said. need to upgrade, anything better i could throw in for him? thanks in advance.

 

[amuffin]

Buy a new laptop.

 

[marshal11]

lol hello again amuffin XD i cant really buy a new laptop for him, he received it as a gift from his aunt XD is there any cpu i could throw in for him?

 

[amuffin]

Probably not, usually those processors are soldered in the board :/ the only thing I can think of is adding more ram, and maybe an ssd.

 

[marshal11]

there is already 2 GB of ram and it doesn't use more then 1.5 and the CPU can't even keep up with a 5400 RPM Sata2 drive.

 

[bassbeast]

hey, my friend just got this laptop and it has a 1.6 GHz athlon 64 neo. its a single core, 1.6 GHz. nuff said. need to upgrade, anything better i could throw in for him? thanks in advance.

If you are comfortable enough to make the changeover which I warn you WILL be tricky and may involve reballing then Starmicro does sell AMD mobile chips cheap. Personally if it were me I'd sell the laptop and see what you could pick up on Craigslist as you can often find older Core 2 systems or Turions for under $200 there. Just because his aunt gave it to him does he HAVE to keep it? What is he gonna want to do? Gaming? or just web surfing and email? Because frankly unless there is a compelling reason to keep it changing a mobile CPU is NOT for the faint of heart and once wrong move can brick it.

 

[esrever]

you'd be very hard pressed to get a cpu that worked with the laptop and also change the cpu.

laptops are kinda just built in 1 package, Only can upgrade ram on most of them.

 

[bassbeast]

you'd be very hard pressed to get a cpu that worked with the laptop and also change the cpu.

laptops are kinda just built in 1 package, Only can upgrade ram on most of them.

Actually for the longest time AMD used sockets instead of ball grid arrays so you actually can change chips on an AMD depending on the model, this is also why you can pick up a mobile Athlon and drop it into a socket 754 desktop board as both the AMD budget line and AMD mobile used socket 754 for quite awhile.

Basically if its socket 754 or socket F you CAN change, with anything else you are looking at a reball which is again possible but not for the faint of heart. i just looked up the AMD neo and the only one I could find was for BGA, more importantly that is pretty much the ONLY chip ever made for that socket so the whole thing is for naught as there simply isn't another chip that will fit even with a reball.

 

[marshal11]

If you are comfortable enough to make the changeover which I warn you WILL be tricky and may involve reballing then Starmicro does sell AMD mobile chips cheap. Personally if it were me I'd sell the laptop and see what you could pick up on Craigslist as you can often find older Core 2 systems or Turions for under $200 there. Just because his aunt gave it to him does he HAVE to keep it? What is he gonna want to do? Gaming? or just web surfing and email? Because frankly unless there is a compelling reason to keep it changing a mobile CPU is NOT for the faint of heart and once wrong move can brick it.

well the thing is, he cant really sell it and buy another because we are both 13 XD dont get the wrong idea, ive been fixing, upgrading and building laptops and desktops since i was 11. ive been constantly learning about computers with all my free time because i have a social disorder and i DO NOT like hanging out with anyone at all. but i love computers and everyone i know comes to me when they have a problem or just a slow computer. i wouldnt be too worried about buying a new mobo for his laptop i just dont think i could find one for his case. i actually just threw in a new motherboard for my laptop last night 😛 workin great! but the keyboard bus was loose and a few keys wouldnt work and i freaked out thinking i busted my keyboard but i went back in and reconnected the bus and everything is perfect.

 

[seumas_beathan]

Its unlikely you would be able to change the processor. Just tell him to get a new laptop

 

[bassbeast]

well the thing is, he cant really sell it and buy another because we are both 13 XD dont get the wrong idea, ive been fixing, upgrading and building laptops and desktops since i was 11. ive been constantly learning about computers with all my free time because i have a social disorder and i DO NOT like hanging out with anyone at all. but i love computers and everyone i know comes to me when they have a problem or just a slow computer. i wouldnt be too worried about buying a new mobo for his laptop i just dont think i could find one for his case. i actually just threw in a new motherboard for my laptop last night 😛 workin great! but the keyboard bus was loose and a few keys wouldnt work and i freaked out thinking i busted my keyboard but i went back in and reconnected the bus and everything is perfect.

Oh Lord its a puppy! I have concert shirts older than you kid 😀 But its good to see someone willing to get their hands dirty and learn tech. A good thing to do with laptops is NOT to overclock but to undervolt, this will get you longer battery life at the expense of raw horsepower. If you wish to try this here is a link about the chip in questionhttp://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1408608 but since these chips are all locked it is VERY rare you can squeeze more speed that way.

To get more performance your best bet is to look at the software angle, you can either use a stripped down Linux distro such as puppy Linux, this runs quite snappy on a 733MHz with 256Mb of RAM so in a 1.6GHz Neo it would really fly, or if you want to keep Windows there are options such as creating your own stripped down version of XP with Nlite or using the Black Viper list of services to kill anything absolutely not needed. If this model has a card reader you might also want to look at slapping an SDHC in there and using it for swap, this will wear out the SDHC faster but with a 4Gb under $8 who cares and anything that helps take some of the load off the 5400RPM drive will help. In the end you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse but these might give you some good ideas on where to start, good luck!