Upgrading based on Mainboard Model Acacia (0x00000232 - 0x00714E20)

[Hgreg]

Looking to upgrade within a 200-300$ budget:
-Processor
-Front Side Bus
-RAM size
-Video/graphics card
1st upgrade, can provide more info as needed

 

[GhislainG]

If it's this motherboard, then your upgrade options are rather limited: http://support.hp.com/lv-en/document/c01321559 What processor is installed (use CPU-Z or check in the OS if you don't know)?

Presuming it's the motherboard in the link, the fastest CPU should be the 65W Athlon 64 X2 5200+ P/N ADO5200IAA6CZ, available for as low as $2 on eBay and memory is limited to 4GB (2 x 2GB).

With such a low performance system, an entry level GPU is more than enough.

 

[Hgreg]

AMD Athlon(tm) Dual Core Processor 4450e

also, not familiar with gpu computing
and is this the same cpu recommended: http://www.amazon.com/AMD-Athlon-2-7GHz-2x512KB-Dual-Core/dp/B001FEDL0G

 

[GhislainG]

What application will you use that can take advantage of GPU computing? Since it's a 65W OEM CPU, it should work. At $6 the risk is low.

 

[Hgreg]

Gaming, video editing, etc

 

[GhislainG]

Not all video editing applications use GPU computing. As an example, After Effects, Premiere pro and CS6 can take advantage of NVidia Cuda or Windows OpenCL when using an AMD GPU.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/what-is-gpu-computing.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_computing_on_graphics_processing_units

 

[Hgreg]

what gpu would be best suited for my mainboard?

 

[GhislainG]

Will you use it in a future build? You really have an old and slow system (even with the fastest CPU that you could install). If I were you I'd try to find a used entry-level GPU: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-2.html