CPU upgrade question

[Surge1243]

Hi, I have a older Tyan S2390B (Trinity KT-A) motherboard with a KT133A chipset that currently has a 900 MHz Duron cpu in it. I want to upgrade it a little bit, will be doing some internet surfing, word processing, and light gaming. Which path do you think would be the best? Duron, T-Bird(which is what I assume they mean by plain AMD Athlon) or go with the XP? Also what does it mean when it says "* Note: 1.4 GHz speed is recommended with Athlon CPU Front Side Bus at 200 MHz only." Here is the link to the CPU support page of the mobo:

http://www.tyan.com/support/html/amd_athlon_duron.html

Thanks a lot!

[ROYP123]

Get the XP 1600

If you get the Duron, the max is 1.1 gig, and you won't see any difference compared to your 900.
There are two kinds of Athlon 1.4 gig. This MOB only takes the one that runs at 200 FSB... not the one that runs at 266 FSB
The XP runs at 266 FSB and is a superior chip.( less heat and faster ). Also only costs about 60.00 now at Newegg. Hope this helps.

[Cricket]

Hi Surge1243,

Actually, the KT133A chipset does support the 133MHz FSB and can take a 1.33GHz 266 T-Bird CPU (not sure why the site has the warning about only using a 200MHz 1.4GHz T-Bird and not the 266MHz 1.4GHz T-Bird...motherboard may have timing issues or something with the faster CPU).

It seems this motherboard can also take some of the earlier Athlon XP CPU's (up to the 1700+) probably with a BIOS update. Funny, cause the Athlon XP's are all 266MHz CPU's.

Normally, you want to double your current CPU speed to really get your money's worth when upgrading...but with a jump up to a 1.33GHz 266MHz T-Bird (which has more L2 cache too...256K compared to 64K for the Duron) you may see a nice improvement in performance.

Cricket

[Streams]

Originally posted by ROYP123 If you get the Duron, the max is 1.1 gig, and you won't see any difference compared to your 900.

Actually the durons max is 1.3Ghz

[Confused]

Your current CPU is plenty fast for what you are doing. For gaming the best performance increase comes from faster video cards. Word processing doesn't use near the processing power you already have. Your biggest bottleneck there would be moving data back and forth from HD. Plenty of memory helps that (stores more, thus less HD activity). And the internet, Well my original PC with a AMD K6 III 400 that my wife uses idles waiting on pages and I have cable internet service.
Chas

[glc]

For the price ($67 OEM, $78 retail with HSF), max it out, just toss an XP1700+ in it and enjoy. Update the BIOS if necessary before swapping processors. Make sure you have decent PC133 ram and a qualified power supply.

Streams: The CPU support page for that board says 1.1 is the max Duron that board takes.

[Surge1243]

Ok, thanks a lot guys! I think what I'll do is upgrade the family system that has an Athlon XP 1600+ in it and just put it in the other one. Again, thanks!