hang-the-9 :
If you are interested in improving video quality, get a new video card (although I don't know what you have now), a faster CPU would not affect that much. More RAM will also help.
If you have SATA connnections on the motherboard (very likely as I have seen them on systems around the same age as yours), get a SATA drive and a SATA cable, maybe a ATA to SATA power adapter, don't get a new ATA drive. The new SATA drives made in the last few years will have a large performance increase over the older ATA drives.
For the Dell branding, yes the motherboard will be listed as a DELL, but you listed the chip as a DELL "Dell 2.6ghz Pentium II CPU", which reads like the CPU is a DELL, it's not. A Pentium chip will always be branded as Intel. What you have is a Dell motherboard with an Intel P4 chip. May not seem like a big difference, but it reads differently. Like when people talk about wireless routers when they mean wireless adpaters or "computer is not turning on" when the monitor is the one not turning on.
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Hi,
0M2035 is the Motherboard model #. On the board itself it was stamped AA C25595-606 , but a utility listed the board as DELL 0M2035.
The 2.6ghz Pentium 4 CPU is (obviously) by Intel. The PC is a DELL. I thought that would be clear enough!
The only reason for a CPU change would be to take advantage of hyperthreading. A small change in clock speed is not a giant step, for sure. Hyperthreading will do more than that - and, I am betting the CPU I need will be plenty cheap today at a trade show.... Its not state of the art multi-processor, its older tech.
What I was after was a CHEAP upgrade. Obviously a video card will greatly improve video performance. For $80 (or less) I could get a card with 500mb of DDR2 Ram & Direct x 10. The last time I did a major video card upgrade, my monitor burned out in 3 days. This is an older monitor, I am not out to push it with newer tech to performance levels it was never designed to do!
I have an older NVIDEA AGP 8X type card with 256k of ram on it. When I eventually go flat screen (probably when this monitor burns out), then it would make more sense to push the video performance more...
Replacing the hard drive is not for performance, only because I am almost out of space! ATA 100 is still a pretty decent speed. Serial ATA (SATA) is the newest standard. I have not price compared in quite a few years. For all I know SATA may be what is typically on the shelves these days...? Price will be a factor. It may be SATA is the same price as ATA 133 now. Don't know, haven't looked yet!
Years ago I went to trade shows to trade PC parts every year because the hardware was never what it needed to be. I probably changed 8 modems, several video cards, a couple CPU's, one motherboard, various memory, CD & DVD drives, etc... I stopped doing that when I got this machine because it has met my requirements decently. I am still on XP Pro, no plans to upgrade that either, near future... Works fine!
Back in 2002 or 2003 when I got this machine, it was a killer. It was not top of the line tech, but not far behind. Had the 800 mhz dual channel bus, 120GB drive, AGP video bus, DDR2 RAM, etc... I went to DSL and stopped upgrading then & there... replaced my CD burner with a DVD burner - when the CD burned out! Everything else is STILL original hardware. Yikes? You bet. Never had a machine hold up like that before.
When there is a genuine need, I will do a major upgrade. It may make more sense to simply replace the entire machine by then, because we are talking hardware that is physically over 8 years old... almost all of it!
Motherboard, Power Supply, Graphics Card, etc... That may be when XP support is totally gone & Windows 8 comes out... 2014?
Not planning big changes, a couple small ones - ok. Big ones, not a this time!
- Mark