hi a newbie would like some advice please.

[boudica]

hi, have recently bought a bundle from maplins in the uk, it has a foxconn 748K7AA motherboard, with a sempron 2400+ processor and 512 mb ram. could some lovely person please help me with getting the best performance out of this combo? it was the best i could afford at the time, and i would like to get as much power out of it as possible. my cpu is running at 2 gigs at the mo, is this the best i can get or can i squeeze a little more out of it?

sorry if this isnt exactly a detailed question, but i am new to the whole upgrading thingy, my previous jurrasic pc was an athlon 600 mhz :lol:

any advice would be appreciated. thanks in advance.

 

[KagedShadow]

What exactly are you trying to make the PC do or play. Like, do you want it to play games and edit video or are you gonna be surfing the net and writing emails?

 

[Darkchyld]

What it looks like you've got there is an ultra budget system. You also didn't mention what video. A quick check on Newegg shows that choices for the Sempron are limited. Myself I'd go looking for a Motherboard with the Nforce 2 chipset then set things up for stability. TigerDirect has the Chaintec 7NJL6 MB for $50.00 USD. The Sapphire 9600 PRO videoi card is $60.00 USD on Newegg. That will net you some gameing capibilty and make the most of tha Sempron, IMHO, .
Most of your performance is going to software related. Once Windows is installed check out this site:
www.answersthatwork.com
Pare down the process in the background to just what you need and go forth.
DC

 

[ChipDeath]

hi, have recently bought a bundle from maplins in the uk

:roll:


@OP:
OK... Your Sempron runs on a 166Mhz (333DDR) bus. your board supports a 200Mhz FSB, and the Socket A semprons are all later bartons (less half the cache of course...). All of which probably means you should be able to just adjust FSB in BIOS to be 200Mhz instead of 166, and that should put you at 2Ghz bang on.

The problems you may have with this:
1) Your CPU simply can't cope with 2Ghz.
Not likely.... Read on.
2) Your CPU needs a bit more voltage to run at 2Ghz.
This is possible - I have no idea what the stock Vcore is for these. Seeing as it's basically an older Athlon though, I could say you shouldn't need more than around 1.65 to hit 2Ghz, probably a lot less (I have an old 1700+ that does 2Ghz with 1.4V)
3) Your RAM cannot cope with 200Mhz
Do you know what speed your RAM is? if it's PC3200+, then it should be ok, but you may need to relax memory timings a little, and/or increase memory voltage. failing all that, there should be a divider setting (memory speed) that lets you run the memory slower than the FSB, so you could leave the memory at 166Mhz while the CPU FSB is increased.

Of course, this is all assuming you have the options to modify these things in the BIOS. Some don't. I would be suprised if you don't at least have the option of selected 200Mhz FSB, since the board officially supports it, but you may not have any options in between. You may also not have any voltage adjustment options, in which case you just had better hope the stock voltage is enough

If anything I said here raises questions, or sounds like greek to you, then most answers should be found in the sticky threads in the various overclocking sections, or of course there is google. :tongue:

 

[boudica]

hiya again, sorry for the lack of info wasn't sure what you needed exactly, the chipset on the mobo is a sis something or other, cant remember offhand what it is, but as far as i know it doesnt have built in graphics, my actual graphics card, is a geforce 5200 pci card (couldnt get an agp8 at the time of buying it 🙁 ) with 128 ram, and my ram is pc3200.


basically i am a bit of a gamer and a net nerd, and although what i have got at the mo isnt top spec, it certainly does what i want on a the limited budget i have. i just want to squeeze as much out of it as i can. only reason i wanted to upgrade was cos of Oblivion and i will have to make do with minimum specs on that at the mo, but what the hell lol.

i have tried various settings on the bios, and the best i can seem to get out of it is the 2ghz, and that is with a jumper set on the mobo, without the jumper setting i cant seem to get any better than 1.6ghz without it locking up totally. 2ghz is good enough i guess for what i want it to do, but im a greedy so and so, and want to squeeze as much out of it as i can lol.

i did actually try google before posting on here by the way thanks for all the help 😀

 

[ChipDeath]

What BIOS options do you have? if you can't set the FSB any faster, then you won't be able to get beyond 2Ghz.

You could maybe increase performance if it lets you change RAM timings though. If it does, try lowering them a little.

 

[Darkchyld]

Your MB has a SiS 748 Chipset. Don't knock it too badly. You've got a good net cruzer. 😀 As for Oblivian, I don't know the system specs yet,
( I too am awiting that title 8) ), but I'll wager they'er steep for the best eye-candy. ( Gotta go check out their web site now you got me thinking of it ). As far as OC'ing I don't think you'll get much more from the Sempron and the MB just isn't an "enthusiast" peice of hardware. If the settings you've got now are stable, keep them. Save the pennies and go for a video card now. Other parts later as budget permits..

Just went to website:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/oblivion_faq.htm
I my be upgradeing soon too..
DC