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Fenboy
September 13th, 2009, 09:52 AM
Hi all,
My motherboard is capable of running a more powerful processor than the Athlon 64 x2 5000 which came bundled with it. I'm thinking of replacing it with a Phenom x4 9650 (it's about as much as I can afford) and should be noticeably quicker.

My question is: Am I right to think that I can do this simple swap without the need to reinstall Jaunty? I'm pretty sure I couldn't get away with this with Windows.

Thanks

sanderj
September 13th, 2009, 11:29 AM
Yes, I'm quite sure you're right and you can just replace the CPU.

The only problems I know of when replacing hardware:
- replacing the video card with the old video card still configured in Linux
- putting in a new mother board on which the installed Ubuntu does not run at all, for example because the motherboard needs newer kernel/drivers than available in the installed Ubuntu.

Replacing a CPU seems like a harmless thing to do.

Fenboy
September 13th, 2009, 07:17 PM
Thanks for the reply. Other threads suggest that this is probably the case. I'll report back what happens when I make the switch; probably in the course of this week.

rob-ward
September 13th, 2009, 08:07 PM
I have swapped a CPU in a ubuntu computer in the past with no problems so you should be OK

Fenboy
September 20th, 2009, 03:59 PM
Just to wrap this thread up I can report that the CPU change went almost without a hitch.
The bios and Ubuntu system monitor picked up the change with no problem. But strangely when I restarted I got the "ignoring home/.dmrc" message.

I've seen this before so it was easily fixed by the following:

sudo chown -R username /home/username
chmod 755 /home/username
chmod 644 /home/username/.dmrc

Disappointingly the change doesn't seem to have made much difference to the overall speed of the machine but I guess the change from a dual to quad core will help it cope better with multi-tasking.

Thanks for your help guys.