Burn Bios, Burn!
As most of you know my system ain't quite "state-of-the-art" and is running close to 3 years of age now. Through the years it turned out I was more of a gamer than I had first realized and now I regret some of the hardware choices I made back then. So what is one to do? Upgrade!
The biggest bottleneck most likely is the graphics card, a Hercules Kyro Prophet 4000XT, but since I'm a bit short on cash at the moment that is to be addressed in future times. After this the CPU comes into perspective and nowadays a 1.5GHz can be found for under a hundred dollars, so I decided that was the most likely option.
First of course I needed to find out the specs of my motherboard. Browsing through the Asus A7V133 manual I quickly discovered that it only supported up to 1.3GHz processors. Though I clearly remembered reading somewhere that people had managed to successfully use 2.2GHz Athlons on this mobo. As I browsed around for answers I found out an updated bios would do the trick, the latest version supporting indeed up to 2.2GHz CPUs. Excited by this prospect I got to work.
It's a good thing flash-programs are more alert these days. I was about to flash my bios when the Asus flash-program stated I attempted to flash an incompatible bios version to my mobo. After a quick look it turned out that, although I have an A7V133 manual, I have an older A7V mobo! >:( Disillusioned by this I quickly gave up hope at getting a higher speed processor to run on this mobo.
Being half way in the process I decided it couldn't hurt to update my bios anyway, as I also noticed there was a newer bios for the A7V. And thus I did so and, to complete everything, I also installed the latest VIA 4in1 drivers. Expecting merely some bugfixes, extended support for peripheral devices and little to no speed ups I ran some benchmarks afterwards. And then... I was pleasantly surprised:
A7V bios v.1007 + VIA 4in1 (old)
--------------------------------
3DMark 2001: no score (refusing to run)
3DMark 2000: 2388 3D marks
UT2003 Antalus Botmatch: 10.145502 score
UT2003 Antalus FlyBy: 22.353460 score
A7V bios v.1011 + VIA 4in1 (latest)
-----------------------------------
3DMark 2001: 1575 3D marks (it runs!)
3DMark 2000: 4036 3D marks
UT2003 Antalus Botmatch: 18.354294 score
UT2003 Antalus FlyBy: 60.143585 score
Conclusions:
- Forget about a new CPU, I'll just save up for an ATI9700
- The best upgrades are free updates
- At least I can play UT2003 at more than 5 FPS now ;)
The biggest bottleneck most likely is the graphics card, a Hercules Kyro Prophet 4000XT, but since I'm a bit short on cash at the moment that is to be addressed in future times. After this the CPU comes into perspective and nowadays a 1.5GHz can be found for under a hundred dollars, so I decided that was the most likely option.
First of course I needed to find out the specs of my motherboard. Browsing through the Asus A7V133 manual I quickly discovered that it only supported up to 1.3GHz processors. Though I clearly remembered reading somewhere that people had managed to successfully use 2.2GHz Athlons on this mobo. As I browsed around for answers I found out an updated bios would do the trick, the latest version supporting indeed up to 2.2GHz CPUs. Excited by this prospect I got to work.
It's a good thing flash-programs are more alert these days. I was about to flash my bios when the Asus flash-program stated I attempted to flash an incompatible bios version to my mobo. After a quick look it turned out that, although I have an A7V133 manual, I have an older A7V mobo! >:( Disillusioned by this I quickly gave up hope at getting a higher speed processor to run on this mobo.
Being half way in the process I decided it couldn't hurt to update my bios anyway, as I also noticed there was a newer bios for the A7V. And thus I did so and, to complete everything, I also installed the latest VIA 4in1 drivers. Expecting merely some bugfixes, extended support for peripheral devices and little to no speed ups I ran some benchmarks afterwards. And then... I was pleasantly surprised:
A7V bios v.1007 + VIA 4in1 (old)
--------------------------------
3DMark 2001: no score (refusing to run)
3DMark 2000: 2388 3D marks
UT2003 Antalus Botmatch: 10.145502 score
UT2003 Antalus FlyBy: 22.353460 score
A7V bios v.1011 + VIA 4in1 (latest)
-----------------------------------
3DMark 2001: 1575 3D marks (it runs!)
3DMark 2000: 4036 3D marks
UT2003 Antalus Botmatch: 18.354294 score
UT2003 Antalus FlyBy: 60.143585 score
Conclusions:
- Forget about a new CPU, I'll just save up for an ATI9700
- The best upgrades are free updates
- At least I can play UT2003 at more than 5 FPS now ;)