Upgrade my Compaq Presario CQ5205y

[ocmdiaz714]

I want to upgrade my system to make it smooth at multitasking. I want something capable of encoding video, and run iTunes, Firefox, and Photoshop CS5 at the same time.

Here's what I have so far:

Video:
PowerColor Go! Green AX5450 512MK3-SH Radeon HD 5450 (Cedar) 512MB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

PSU: Antec Earthwatts 500W

and 2gb of OEM ram.

What's the best AM2+ processor with a TDP of 95 W that I can get? I'm also upgrading the ram to 4gb crucial memory. Sound good?

 

[patonb]

Well, according to This

Processor upgrade information
TDP: 95W
Motherboard supports the following processor upgrades:
NOTE: Only socket AM2+ processors are supported with this motherboard.
AMD Phenom II Quad-Core
AMD Phenom II Triple-Core
AMD Phenom Quad-Core (A) 9xxx series (AM2+)
AMD Phenom Triple-Core (T) 8xxx series (AM2+)
AMD Athlon X4
AMD Athlon X3
AMD Athlon X2 (B) (AM2+)

What i don 't get is, I thought Phenoms were all AM3.

So its a bit odd.

 

[PP Mguire]

Actually, Deneb (the 45nm Phenom 2's) started AM3 and the rest before like the 940BE are AM2+.

Finding a newer 95w AM2+ quad will be tough though. I'm wondering if a bios update will enable the use of 95w AM3 CPUs because you can't buy those AM2+ new anymore.

Another thing that would help speed things up big time is an SSD.

 

[ocmdiaz714]

Well, according to This



What i don 't get is, I thought Phenoms were all AM3.

So its a bit odd.

I think I'm going to stay away from eBay, I feel they might be falsely advertising them to be AM2+. I think the best I can do is AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750, wait, is the AMD Phenom X4 9750 2.4 GHz Quad-Core better?

 

[PP Mguire]

No the first series of Phenom quads were terrible.

The easiest way to tell if a chip is falsely advertised is just Google for it.

 

[ocmdiaz714]

I bought a AMD Phenom X4 9650 CPU. I currently have a Sempron LE-1300 CPU and CPU usage is at least 20% and an average of 90% when just browsing the internet causing my browser to often crash. Will the Phenom be any better?

 

[PP Mguire]

Yes.

 

[ocmdiaz714]

Yes.

Is it more powerful than a Intel Pentium E2160 dual core?

 

[PP Mguire]

In any single threaded application no. Anything that would use ALL 4 cores 100% yes, so maybe 1/4 of what you might do the Phenom would be better. The Sempron is a single core vs the Phenom 4 core. Even though the first gen Phenom chips sucked, having the extra cores helps the Phenom out a lot over the Sempron because there are more cores to offload tasks.

Toward the Pentium though, it's single threaded performance is much better than the Phenom so things like gaming and most other every day tasks would be better on it.

 

[ocmdiaz714]

I went ahead and bought an extra 2gb or ram bringing my total 4gb. Now for the SSD...I don't know anything about it other than it's suppose to speed up old computers. I'm on a budget so I figure I'll get a 32gb SSD for the OS alone. Is that good? I'm interested in SanDisk's ReadyCache 32gb drive, but from what I can tell you plug it in and you're good, you don't install the OS to it...is that better?

I hope you guys have recommendations!

By the way, I'm running Windows 7 64-bit, and I would upgrade to Windows 8, but I only have 6gb available on my HDD. I will upgrade to a portable 1tb eventually when I have the money.