Hi, I have an older computer I'm not using. I'd like to make it a backup dual monitor setup, as I also have an extra matrox g450 PCI that I'm not using anymore (I was running 4 screens, but now I'm happy with 2). It's built around an Intel SE440BX mainboard. It has a pentium II 300 chip, and uses PC100 ram. On pricewatch I see the PIII 450 chips going for like $65, and PC100 ram is practically free. The PIII450 is the fastest chip the board will support, and I thought I'd bring the ram up to half a gig. I'm planning on running esignal and neoticker on this machine, so I'd like some advice on whether the upgrade is worthwhile, and if there is a notable improvement in speed (win2k) to be gained by swapping out the PII300 for the P3 450, or if they're both just going to be kinda slow. I do plan on actively using it for trading and running some indicator setups, so it will be doing math and working pretty hard. But if neither chip will really do the job, I won't bother. Thanks!
Well, this is a little off topic. I don't know whether such an upgrade will be especially beneficial, but how about this idea... Keep your PII as a fully ready back-up for your trader. (That's what I've done with my PII, 350... 4 cards and all, ready to go.) You can't sell it for much, and you never know when a power supply or hard drive will crap out on your primary trader. PS I don't know if your MB will take 512 Ram... I have the same and have been under the impression it will only take 3 X 64 = 192
Bung, you're better off getting a P4 system. If money is tight, get an AMD system. I was just using my old P2 300 on the 440BX 200+MB ram running XP Pro that I have not used for a year + (kids using it now) and just opening a web page is slow (on my broadband) as compared to my P3 laptop and P4 desktop. As gnome pointed out, you're going to run into Ram limitations. And, I don't even know if you can just swap out the Pentium chip. If you need a Bios upgrade...you're going to have a very unhappy experience. Also you're going to need a p3 that works on a multiple of you board speed of 100mhz, and not the 133 variety. You system is slow not just on the processor and ram, it's the whole thing. Everything on it is slow, including important things like the motherboard and harddrive. You are running 100mhz board and a 4,200 rpm hard drive with a limited throughput of 33mb/s. Ancient stuff. What you want, if Intel: P4 with the A or B chips. A chips run on 400 FSBus and B runs on 533 FSB boards. Get DDR ram, as that's the future. You want to be able to upgrade in the future, get DDR333 or at least 266. Hard drive IDE 7K RPM. Motherboard that supports the ram speed and FSB of your Intel chip. For AMD systems: I don't know. LOL It's a worthwhile jump for you from P2 to P4, believe me. Don't even try to use the old harddisk on the new system. You can keep your mouse, keyboard, monitor, video cards, CD DVD drives, Floppy and maybe the case.
I have upgraded a Celeron 300 to a PIII 450 and I noticed a great improvement. Your M/B should be suitable also for PIII 500-550-600 (Slot 1/100Mhz - likely not PIII Coppermine @133 Mhz, but you should check on M/B manual). At least 256 MB ram has to be installed: rember that also the sdram @133 Mhz is suitable on that M/B. I think that it can do the work as a backup system: in order to see if it is possible, try to use the softwares you need on the present system and consider a speed improvement > 50% in case of upgrade to a PIII450, and >100% to a PIII 600. In any case check on the M/B manual or on the manifacturer's web site whether the M/B supports the PIII without bios upgrades.
You will get a small bump by going up a processor notch or two, same with the memory but its kind of like whipping a dead horse compared to an athlon or p4. I had the same deal with a p3 800. I put in a new mb and athlon 1700 since I could reuse my 133 memory with the new mb. Cost maybe 140.