hardware or drivers issue (overheating) -upgrade might be needed

[mastablasta]

i don't know. hard to decide. at the moment I am just thinking. the old PC with 128MB AGP card and 1 GB ram server us well. but it used to have windows PX. something happened, possibly a combination of malware and the fact that the system disk was from 1998) so we restore it by installing Kubuntu low-fat on slightly newer disk partition that was sitting empty there. and the issue is that the card under Linux doesn't really perform well.
thanks you both for advice. it seems atoms are preety close but low power consumption.
what I plan is to give my old PC and the one with AGP card to the kids for some light games. while I get a newish one. the PC I use is also this Athlon as at the time I bought it as place holder until I could gather somecash. by the time I had the money for replacement (e.g. phenom, Athlon dualcore etc), the socket didn't fit anymore to those that were on the market. I was thinking about getting new atoms, A4 or even A6, but no matter what I always get to around 200 EUR a piece. here I calculated I could upgrade 2 for that money. I need to do another check of the market.
here is what I have:

main PC (here is where before I planned to change the CPU)
Ahtlon 64 3200+
4 GB DDR2 RAM
Radeon HD 3650 512 MB ram, PCI-e
is still running on windowsXP for now. the card, ram and CPU might not seem much by today's standards, but I can play various old games. League of Legends, Oblivion, Far cry, Left4 dead, Minecraft runs nicely, some strategy games... basically most stuff up to arorund 2010 will run nicely, 2012 stuff i play needs some tweaking but nothing new will porbably run. definitely nothing that need directX11. I think Skyrim should also run with some tweaking. since I don't have much time these days I mostly play maybe an hour or two a week some minecraft with my son or some Unreal Tournament 2004 or a quake3 engine based game (eg. padman or ET). the PC has 19" monitor usually running at 1280 x 1024.

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the other one that is now having issue with crashing should actually be quite descent PC. it was assembled from very old parts and some new tech. the upgrade was very cheap.
Celeron E3300 2.5 Ghz dual core
1,25 GB DDR ram
Radeon 9600 XT 256 MB ram, AGP
here I could replace 1,2 GB DDR with max 2x1 GB DDR2. the motherboard has a PCI express where you can add a card. I think it can run either PCI or AGP but not both. not sure at the moment. would have to check the manual. PC has old, but good monitor running at 1680 x 1050 I believe. the current card (if it wasn't messing aruond with me) should run old games from 2005, 2006 relatively good. at least it did on windows. I ran Oblivion on med-high settings with it.

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finally the old PC. only the chassis and the now nonworking disk (though smart tests seem to be indicating it is still good, so maybe it was just malware afterall). we got this one in 1998. it used to be a Pentium2 400 Mhz, the it got an upgrade to Celeron 1.6 Ghz using a socket upgrade. but after the motherboard gave in it received the current state:
Athlon 64 3200+
1 GB ddr2 ram (not sure how many Mhz it has...)
ATI Radeon 9200 - 128 MB, AGP
so this is all that needs upgrade (well apart from the first one which is actually running fast enough once it boots).
perhaps you are right. perhaps it is really time to donate these to someone that would need them. or just do some min upgrade. the monitor on this one is old 1024 x 786 LCD. I remember when I bought it it cost me 600 EUR. but I needed it so much because of my eyes and the old CRT made my eyes hurt.

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upgrade options

I was thinking maybe getting AMD R5 for the Celeron & some DDR2 ram - that would cost me about 70 EUR
And then maybe I should dump the really old one. though the option I was thinking about before was a descent AGP card upgrade (maybe good used one) and 2 GB ram. which would cost me close to 60 EUR. I could get some newer SATA drive and all together would then be close to 200 EUR. the power consumption would be quite big so in the long run it might not be a cheap upgrade.
if I exchange both it would cost me close to 400 EUR. and that's if I reuse the boxes and PSU (which are still relatively new)
the import tax is not that much. especially with USA. the issue is VAT tax. the would just add 23% to stuff during weekend I might have some time on my hands to go through this again and do some calculations.

the biggest problem I have is knowing how much I actually profit from getting newer PC and also how to know which CPU/APU is fater and how well it can perform. it takes time to go through reviews. various comparison sites don't say much. it seems many new APU still do not perform as my main computer. while I am searching something that would have at least that good GPU performance and possible a much better CPU performance.
AMD A4 is weaker (gpu), A6 is close I believe. AFAIK Atoms have weaker GPU. Celeron U = GPU is weaker. so I am more than happy to get any advice on combos like TheFu suggested.

I was also exporing mini itx but they are quite expencive if you want a bit of performance. and the issue there is lack of upgrade options.

[TheFu]

VAT tax. the would just add 23% to stuff

That sounds like robbery to me!
Make friends with someone traveling to your part of the world and have them bring stuff that is below the VAT threshold, then leave it behind. Entering the USA, there is an $800 exemption on goods brought in, for example. That is a huge, extremely powerful, PC or 3 netbooks.

Have you considered having only 1 PC and using the others as remote display devices? For non-video stuff, that works great. You can probably get away with RaspberryPi type desktops that way. Intel announced some PC-on-a-stick devices for $75 at CES this year. Should be available next month.

I held out for 5 yrs after AGP and DDR2 was dead and thought that was a long time. I think it was in 2008 when I finally bit the bullet and got a DDR3 system with PCIe/x (never remember which) which was a C2D. I've retired that box and my recent purchases have been cheap items - $99 AMD E350 APU and a Chromebook for $200 with a Celeron mobile CPU that runs faster than the C2D retired above. My most powerful systems are headless - no monitor, keyboard, mice.

OTOH, there are subtle issues that only you know with your setup.

[Elfy]

and I have jailed all the offtopic stuff

If there is anything of importance with regard to the thread - you'll have to repost it. I'm not wading through all of those to find on-topic information.

Thanks

[mastablasta]

right, we got carried away.

I am looking for Linux compatible CPU+GPU combo or APU that would have the similar or better GPU power to Radeon HD 3650 and a descent CPU for light gaming, watching you tube etc

Intel has more power in CPU but I am not convinced of their GPU part. besides they seem pricey. AMD GPU card I think maybe some R5 come close but are not that cheap. in AMD APU maybe A6 come close. Celeron U and Atoms seme to have stronger or comparable CPU, but their GPU is weak for any light gaming (e.g. old games) though they are natural candidates for media center. but Rpi already does that job just fine.

I am also checking Pentium G series, but the motherboards seem pricey (admittedly didn't look around that much yet). and the Pentiums are not that cheap either.


I was thinking upgrade might be cheapar in the short term, but having 3 or 4 PC pulling 300 or 400W each adds up. so energy efficient would be nice. no GPU's that need their own PSU please in the suggestions.

finally I am not at all familiar with NVidia as I never used one.

benchmark - let's say left for dead, stalker and such play nicely on the card. that gives me a bit of info to know where I am at with GPU power. numbers don't mean much to me at the moment.

[Mike_Walsh]

and I have jailed all the offtopic stuff

If there is anything of importance with regard to the thread - you'll have to repost it. I'm not wading through all of those to find on-topic information.

Thanks

Point taken!

Apologies, Elfy; we DID get a wee bit carried away. Probably more suited to the Cafe, I feel, upon reflection...

Regards,

Mike.

[Mike_Walsh]

Right, then.....back 'on-topic'.

Having a think about this, you say you're OK with the idea of an APU, and you've got no problems with AMD (good man!)

How about this one, for consideration:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-A6-6400K.../dp/B00CPLGFM4

It's an A6-series, the 6400K, with dual 'Richland' (Bulldozer architecture) cores (no hyperthreading, though), and the Radeon HD8470 GPU built-in. Even converting to Euros, I believe that should be well within your budget.

More detail here:-

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldo...0A6-6400K.html

There's some halfway decent mobos for the FM2 socket, down the bottom of the Amazon page. Both the MSI 'Micro' ATX and /or either of the two featured Gigabyte boards ought to work nicely for what you want, I feel. Yes, it'll mean buying new RAM, I'm afraid, but DDR3 is so ridiculously cheap nowadays, that it wouldn't add very much. You can get two sticks of DDR3 for what I pay for one of DDR1.

I'm recommending this for consideration because I'm seriously thinking about getting one myself; rebuilding my old Compaq with a new mobo, APU + RAM, and possibly a new PSU (though the one in here is a 400W one that replaced the original about 3 years ago, so it should be OK, really.....it doesn't get very heavy use with me). The 6400K uses slightly less power than the Athlon, anyhow, (for somewhat better performance) so I don't see a problem there.

It's not SO 'cutting-edge' that the Linux kernel won't recognise it, but it's got much better instruction sets than what either you or I have been used to, plus a fairly healthy speed increase.....all for a pretty reasonable outlay.

Food for thought perhaps? Of course, it goes without saying that it has to be YOUR decision at the end of the day; only you know what you actually want to do with it.....


Regards,

Mike.

[mastablasta]

that's the one i was looking for as well. i haven't managed to go webshopping yet. too many problems to be solved during weekend. besides kids wanted to play.

Anyway i was thinking A6 - 6400 K. even the weaker one 5000 that is more oriented toward mini-itx seems to give out a descent performance though boards are hard to find. as a matter of fact it seems like the only descent solution that is not too expencive. board probably needs at least 4GB ram if not more since the GPU shares the RAM or how does that work?

heh hyper-threading - wiki:

In 2013 Intel dropped SMT in favor of out-of-order execution for its Silvermont processor cores, as they found this gave better performance

well i guess as long as the performance is descent hyperthreading is not that important.

i wonder what the drawback would be in using such an APU. it is certainly cheaper than CPU+GPU card. and you can always add a card later on if needed.

[Mike_Walsh]

Well, now...

Doing a bit of research on t'web just now seems to indicate that the A6-6400k APU dedicates between 768 MB - 1 GB RAM to the GPU side of the chip, so; I'd agree that you would want at least 4 GB to run most of what you want to use it for.

This old girl of mine has 3 GB, and performance is very good for what I do with it, especially with a single-core CPU (but then, I'm not in what you'd call a hurry these days! No, I'm quite happy with her, really); 256 MB of that goes to the ATI Xpress 200 chip for video, yet it runs Unity quite happily, with NO hiccups that I can remember. If I want to increase this by 1 more GB, I'm looking at about £45-50. I have 2 x 1 GB, and 2 x 512 MB. DDR1 max size is 1 GB, and the board's got 4 slots.....you do the maths. Basically, I've got to replace 50% of the RAM, to get a 33% increase; doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

No doubt there ARE drawbacks with such a set-up (there's drawbacks to everything, one way or another), but to me, it looks a pretty good set of features. I don't want to go any higher than a dual-core; I simply cannot justify the extra cores with my 'workload' (which isn't THAT high). At most, I might be using the GIMP, with streaming audio going, and/or doing a bit of video-editing with Openshot, with the browser open (no more than 4-5 tabs). I'm NOT a 'gamer' (not even a LITTLE bit...) What on earth do I want with an i7-4770k, or something similar? I'm never going to use even HALF of its capabilities...!

You can pick these Athlons up for a song nowadays; it's hard to believe they hit the market at somewhere around the $450-500 mark when they were released back in mid-2003..! And how Intel could EVER justify some of their chips exceeding $1000 over the years beats me...

Regards,

Mike.

[mastablasta]

I managed to check local stores and came to this configuration:

GA-F2A78M-DS2	mobo	54,00 €
AMD 6420 K	apu	58,00 €
	frame	26,90 €
Kingston DDR3 1866 4GB	ram	41,40 €
1tb	disk	65,00 €
LC Super silent 600W	psu	47,40 €
	total	292,70 €

maybe I would go with another frame and add a fan to it which would cost me about 10 EUR more. so that's about 310 EUR for new PC.

but the issue that makes me wonder if it's worth it is this: http://www.cpu-world.com/benchmarks/AMD/A6-6420K.html

now if we can believe these sites, the CPU I am getting is only slightly faster than what is installed now. ok ram would be faster and I would get USB 3.0 (finally, as no PC I have, has it now and probably the GPU is better. but on the other hand I do not get that much. I need to check if I can get this kind of configuration cheaper for 100 EUR in neighbouring countries.

because otherwise it would be a lot cheaper to get two sticks of DDR2 and add a newer card (should cost about 80 EUR altogether). I mean if performance would be only 30% or 40 % better then it is not worth buying a new PC. however for that old Athlon that currently has a single ram stick this would be a better solution. rather than trying to upgrade it. unless I can find a descent AGP card then even that one with a bit more ram would work descent.

[TheFu]

Why buy a new PSU at all - you certainly don't need 600W.
What's with the new HDD or "frame"?

Aren't you going to "swap" the MB? That should mean all the old components like PSU, case and HDD get reused.

Plus my E350 APU was soldered onto the MB - did APUs stop coming with the MB? It has been a few years or is this a CPU?
I've been doing some research for a cheap replacement Plex/NAS server and came across some new dual core Celerons and Pentiums. They might hit 54W, but average is 6W. The Passmark numbers are 2x a 1st-gen Core2Duo. Of course, with Intel GPU the gaming performance would be weak. AMD really has the best option for cheap gaming systems.