PCTech Forums

I have an older amd see below, can I upgrade this to a little better computer or is it just to old.


OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name KEVIN-KUJRQAEWK
System Manufacturer VIA Technologies, Inc.
System Model KT600-8235
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1 AuthenticAMD ~1497 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix/Award Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG, 08/01/2004
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2111)"
User Name KEVIN-KUJRQAEWK\Kevin macLean
Time Zone Atlantic Daylight Time
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 495.96 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 2.41 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Well i couldn’t really tell all that much from the information you posted but i will give you some general pointers.

You can only really upgrade in a couple ways, for example - if you want more hard drive space you can buy a second hard drive and you will be limited to either the space in your case or the amount of ports on the motherboard (if its newish it will be esata and look like this cable or if its old it will be IDE ).
So check your mobo for spare ports.

You can upgrade ram for more system memory, xp will see 3.5 gigs so the easiet way to upgrade that is to buy 2x 2GB sticks. But again, depending on how old the machine is it will take a certain kind of ram. DDR2 is standard now and fairly cheap, where as old ram DDR1 will be expensive and in my opinion - not worth doing).

You could upgrade the cpu by simply replacing it but again, depending on how old the motherboard is it may not support the newer chips.

You can upgrade the graphics card by simply buying another one (better one) but again, there are two kinds AGP and PCI-E. AGP is old technology so again, will cost more. (i also belive there may have been a simple PCI version of graphics cards but they all have pci-e now).

If you dont know the differences between any of them i suggest searching on google something like 'agp and pcie distinctions' or something like that.

What exactly do you want to upgrade? Like, what is your purpose?

Your system is too old to upgrade effeciently, a kt600 motherboard wont let u add enough to catch up to modern hardware.

However, this greatly depends on what u use the system for. If you intend on gaming then you need to start from scratch, if you only run light application, email, internet browsing and such then maxing out the memory on the current setup might get u by for a while longer.