How about making an older cpu faster.

[plutoniumman]

How would I make my 300 Mhz CPU faster, with out hurting it?

[liorean]

Overclock it and see to that you have really good cooling. Change to a faster operative system. Throw out memory resident stuff you don't use in the system you use currently. Add a little memory. The best solution would be to upgrade to a faster processor, though.

Oh, and if you're really lucky, you have a processor that can be extended. If so, you could see if you can find an extension chip for it.

[plutoniumman]

I think I have good cooling, the air it pumps out in the back is cool(after runing for three days).
And it has 512 Mega bytes of RAM (just one slot is empty).
And how can find out if I can get an extension chip for it?

[DsgnrsTLZAdmin]

512 mb ram? with a 300 mhz processor? time to upgrade, with that much ram you can have any speed processor you wish

[plutoniumman]

Are you sure?
will the old mother board make it any slower?

[oracleguy]

If you get a new cpu, you'll need a new motherboard and most likely you will not be able to re-use the memory either. Any new motherboard will have DDR on it and the memory in your system is almost certainly PC100 SDRAM which is incompatible.

[Celtboy]

to sum it up:

Any machine still using a 300mhz cpu is not worth upgrading - better off buying a new complete system, or new PowerSupply/Motherboard/CPU/Heatsink/RAM & keep your existing keyboard, speakers, video-card, sound card, cd-rom drive(s), floppy drive(s), mouse, monitor, and hard drive(s).

liorean had the best suggestion: You can certainly try to overclock it to get *some* performance boost, but closing memory-resident TSR's (like the applications running in your system tray when you boot up), defragging your hard drive, and MAYBE moving your swap file to a second partition/hard drive.

Other than that, I think you'll find it difficult to speed up your existing system. I know that's depressing to hear, but I don't know what else to tell ya!

Let us know if you want to go with a new system or build something else with what you've already got. Plan on spending at least $300 US.

-Celt

[plutoniumman]

I just want to turn my comp in to a gaming computer.

[liorean]

And gaming computers are the ones that need the most processor power...

[oracleguy]

If your CPU is 300mhz and your video card is of the same era, games like Half Life 2, Rise of Nations, Call of Duty, etc. that are around currently will not work. Most games made in the last year or two require at least 500-700mhz cpus, 16-32meg gfx cards that can do certain things that just weren't around when your computer was built, and 128megs of ram. That will run those games barely as most minimum requirements do. So unless you are playing games from around the same year as your computer, they simply won't run.

Not to mention the fact that your hard drive controller is incredibly slow compared to today. There have been sizable advancements in hard disk speed since those days.

I know it is depressing to hear but you can only upgrade something so far. If you want a gaming machine, better off buying or even better, building a new one.

[plutoniumman]

I know, that is why I want to turn it into a gaming computer.

[Celtboy]

Uhm....pm......

I'm not sure everyone is understanding each other.

Are you wanting to be able to play OLD games on this computer or be able to play new(er) games on it?

Example:

Half-Life (the first one) MIGHT run ok. Age of Empires *might* run ok. Warcraft 1 will run fine, warcraft 2 = questionable, warcraft 3 = no chance in hades. Solitare and Doom (original) should also run ok.


We're trying to tell you:
If you want to play those older games, then your machine can handle them just fine in their current state, and UPGRADING what you've got won't get you anywhere.


If you want to play the newer games, give up on your current system- it's too antiquated to bother upgrading (by the time you pour the $400 you'd need to see any kind of performance boost, you could have purchased a new system all together).

[liorean]

Come on, WC2 ran on DOS on a 486, SC ran on Win95 on an early Pentium. (And it didn't run any worse then than it does on a brand new Athlon today, either. It's not an especially processor heavy game.) AOE2-AOK ran on early Pentiums, though it had hard times with many players and many units. Q2, Doom95, DN 3D, HL ran just fine on a later Pentium. They are all old games, and the gaming industry have three or four years lagging, if not longer, minimum compatibility. Now, if you talk about games such as WC3, it's minimum is still a 400 MHz processor, a 600MHz processor recommended. It may have trouble with many players, many units on low end systems, but it is playable, especially the single player campaign. I'd say it's more likely that the graphics card is a problem than that the processor is one.


However, the reason the games are among the most processor heavy applications is that they use the processor very well. You will certainly feel the change in speed if you buy a 2GHz Athlon, motherboard, DDR memory and a new nVidia or ATI graphics card. It will cost, yeah, but it's worth it because, even if you can, you don't want to play games on a low-end machine.

[plutoniumman]

I want to turn it into a gaming computer for the newer games.
does that help?

[liorean]

Then throw out the processor. If it's a K6 or Athlon processor you might be able to use the old motherboard, but I would recommend you to buy a new one - one with an AGP 8x slot and DDR memory. To that I would buy at least 512 MB memory, preferably in a single stick - or double that since I'm me and I like to use loads of memory. Make sure to buy a memory that is the same speed as the maximum for the motherboard. To that I would buy a nice graphics card. ATI are really getting into the competition these days, so you could always chose a Radeon, but the nVidia GeForce cards are still top notch. Make sure the graphics card is good, it's more vital for newer games than a 200 MHz difference in processor speed is.