What all parts are you looking at re-using vs. replacing? Are you keeping just the case or do you want to re-use the motherboard as well? It would be helpful to know what model of motherboard you have as the XP2000+ had several variations.

Your current CPU would be more equivalent to like a slow Pentium M without SSE2 instructions or perhaps a Intel Tualatin on steroids. AMD equivalent to a Core 2 Duo maybe is more like a Athlon64 X2.

Your upgrade options are based on what motherboard you have, but you didn't say that so it's hard to know.

There is no Socket A CPU that is "fast enough" for Core Duo comparison.
From Athlon64, FX-62 (2,8GHz, dual core), is around Core 2 Duo E6600 performance mark (no OC).

Best you can hope for depending on the board is an Athlon XP 3200+ I believe, which is going to be in the ballpark of a bottom end 2.4ghz Pentium 4C (Northwood). If you don't have one of the later chipsets (KT600, Nforce2) you'll have to overclock the bus. The slowest of the slow core 2 duo would annihilate the 3200+ either way unfortunately.

I would go with XP and Lubuntu on this setup. You'll be able to browse to vogons and other basic tasks as well as play old games.

Note that OP asked about the equivalent of a Core Duo, not a Core 2 Duo. That lowers the bar somewhat, but is still far more than this platform could handle. Basically the Core Duo delivered about the same performance as the Athlon64 X2, clock-for-clock.

That said, OP, could you clarify what you exactly mean by "upgrade" and "keep in the spirit of AMD". That'd help us give you the answer you want.

Hey guys

Thank you for the replies and my appologies for not providing more info. I'll try and fill in the blanks.

The Time Computer comes with
Amd 2000+
MSI MS-6390 Motherboard
512mb SDRAM (2x256)
118GB Hard Drive (WD1200AB-00CBA1)
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-107D
ATAPI DVD-ROM 16XMax
Floppy Drive
Multi Card Reader

By 'Keeping with the spirit of AMD', I mean the case has an AMD sticker on the front of it and while I'd love to keep as is. I don't think I could cope using a single core CPU in conjuction with Xubuntu for very long before loosing my marbles 😜 So while I'd like to keep the CPU in the case AMD, I wouldn't mind looking at something like a dual core. At the moment I'm using an MSI Fuzzy 945gm2 with a T7200 as a main system as my GF's, it had 2gb ram and works fine for both surfing in Linux and gaming in XP. I'd say 80% of my games are late 90s, early 2000 games. Night of the Templer, Bladerunner, Star Trek Starfleet Academy.

Atm I have two CPU's laying around, the Intel T7200 and an Amd Black Edition Phenom II, I may or may not have a mobo at hand for the latter.

One thing to keep in mind, the case was designed for a Micro ATX board, nothing bigger will fit. Here in the UK Time Computers were everywhere in the mid to late 90s, every mum and dad bought one because they were cheap and basic. When my friend said he was going to chuck the case in the trash, I simply had to rescue it for sheer nostalgia.

dionb wrote:

Note that OP asked about the equivalent of a Core Duo, not a Core 2 Duo. That lowers the bar somewhat, but is still far more than this platform could handle. Basically the Core Duo delivered about the same performance as the Athlon64 X2, clock-for-clock.

That said, OP, could you clarify what you exactly mean by "upgrade" and "keep in the spirit of AMD". That'd help us give you the answer you want.

We're assuming that's just an error for core 2 duo. Wasn't the core duo just a socket m mobile chip? I'm only aware of that ever being used in macs for a brief period of time.

Hiddenevil wrote:

Hey guys […]
Show full quote

Hey guys

Thank you for the replies and my appologies for not providing more info. I'll try and fill in the blanks.

The Time Computer comes with
Amd 2000+
MSI MS-6390 Motherboard
512mb SDRAM (2x256)
118GB Hard Drive (WD1200AB-00CBA1)
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-107D
ATAPI DVD-ROM 16XMax
Floppy Drive
Multi Card Reader

By 'Keeping with the spirit of AMD', I mean the case has an AMD sticker on the front of it and while I'd love to keep as is. I don't think I could cope using a single core CPU in conjuction with Xubuntu for very long before loosing my marbles 😜 So while I'd like to keep the CPU in the case AMD, I wouldn't mind looking at something like a dual core. At the moment I'm using an MSI Fuzzy 945gm2 with a T7200 as a main system as my GF's, it had 2gb ram and works fine for both surfing in Linux and gaming in XP. I'd say 80% of my games are late 90s, early 2000 games. Night of the Templer, Bladerunner, Star Trek Starfleet Academy.

Atm I have two CPU's laying around, the Intel T7200 and an Amd Black Edition Phenom II, I may or may not have a mobo at hand for the latter.

One thing to keep in mind, the case was designed for a Micro ATX board, nothing bigger will fit. Here in the UK Time Computers were everywhere in the mid to late 90s, every mum and dad bought one because they were cheap and basic. When my friend said he was going to chuck the case in the trash, I simply had to rescue it for sheer nostalgia.

This looks like a 266mt/s fsb board max, not sure if it even can be overclocked. I would say it's pretty close to maxed out CPU wise unless you want to try overclocking that bus. XP 2600+ is probably the fastest thing it will happily run out of the box.

I would suggest a cheap matx socket AM2 motherboard, MSI has some out there. Pair that with an athlon 64 x2 (preferably a brisbane, faster the better).. You can get 2x2 GB kits of DDR2 800 nice and cheap as well..

The system will still be behind a good core 2 duo, but it will be leagues better than the old socket A rig. Your next step from there (also still affordable these days) would be to just do an AM3 rig with a more modern phenom ii setup with DDR3.. still a very viable machine, but you would be pushing into the 2009-2010 era hardware wise, if that bugs you..

Another perk to the AM2 board is you'll get PCI-E, a good video card can be had for very cheap that will run mid 2000s games with ease. Just make sure your PSU can take it.

There is no phenom-based althlon processors (AM3) to rival fastest C2D, E8600.

To get this far, you need to look at A10-6800K to match the single core performance of E8600 but supports windows 7 or later due to drivers. And to get XP compatibility, you need A10-5800K or prior which is less performance but better than nothing.

AM3 FX8350 is another option but motherboards is very expensive, hot running (125W) but single core does reach just to E8600 and supports XP.

I compared and qualified the performance by using all kinds of both amd and intel processors from that time.

Cheers,

Is AM3 supported by XP? I can't honestly remember it's been so long.

Hiddenevil wrote:

Is AM3 supported by XP? I can't honestly remember it's been so long.

As far as I know official chipset support goes all the way up to haswell era core i7 socket ~1150 or maybe a bit later. for AMD socket AM3 is supported, they probably cut XP off with AM4 but I never looked.

I ran Win XP 64 bit on my AM3 motherboard for a year or two before transitioning to Windows 7, no problems. A phenom II X4 is still a very decent processor, xubuntu would run with ease on it. I'm currently using a core 2 quad (Q6600 @ 3.6ghz) + Debian w/ Cinnamon and it's just buttery smooth, especially if you toss a cheap SSD in the mix. A higher end Phenom ii x4 (955BE?) would be a very similar if not better system.

I'm not sure when display drivers stopped being made for XP, I'm pretty sure all the way up to maxwell has official drivers.. so you could go insane and run a 980Ti if you like (double check this, I'm just fairly confident maxwell has xp drivers).

Core2duo was quite a bit faster than the athlon 64 x2. The core2duo equivalent from AMD is the Phenom II line of dual cores and tri cores.

The fastest Athlon XP is the 3200+. it is roughly on par with a Northwood P4 at 3.2ghz. I think you will need to move to AM3 or socket 775 to get the performance you are after.

As I have a spare Phenom II BE 365 3.44ghz. I'm thinking why not recycle what spares I have and make a reasonable XP rig. It is however a 125w CPU , not sure if the stock PSU will handle it. It's probable only a 350w.

Here's pretty much exactly what you're looking for if you want something that'll fit your case, is AMD, and is at least somewhat close to Core 2 Duo in performance, and isn't super power-hungry. You get:

-a Biostar AM2 motherboard (K8M800)
-2 GB of ram
-an X2 CPU/heatsink/fan (unsure exactly which CPU model)
-the I/O shield.

all for less than $40 shipped. And with those multiple IDE ports, you can connect all of your other existing hardware (hard drive, cd drive).

All you would really need on top of that is a decent AGP video card to throw in there (which is a different subject entirely, mainly depending on your budget or if you already have something laying around).

[link removed]

Yes AM2 and AM3 stuff is cheap right now (yesterday I noticed that ebay is littered with 3.6GHz Athlon IIs for $13, I doubt the price will ever go lower than that), the only problem is a power supply from an old socket A system probably won't cut it for newer boards that need more 12V rail. I know because in 2008 I upgraded from socket A to AM2 thinking the old 400W PSU would be fine but pretty soon it failed, and I was only running a 45W CPU! (I also noticed the quality of the audio output was much improved after getting a proper PSU.)

So building a cheap AM2/AM3 system is not a bad plan but it would need a different power supply most likely.

I was already going thinking I might need to swap out the PSU, not sure what with.

Honestly the conversation has evolved from upgrading, to building a new system. If you wan't to use somthing other than a socket A that means everything from the motherboard, memory, cpu, heatsink, PSU, would change in adition to the upgrades that you were planing GPU, Sound, Harddrive etc.

You may as well want to either reconsider what you want to do. And if that is no longer simply upgrading to the only thing original left is the ATX case, than these are different things. one is upgrading the other is building a new computer.

If you are going to replace everything than you should rethink everything becasue you can just use a real Core2duo, and Intel shit, or you can go more retro and build a retro PC. instead of replacing everything with inferior hardware for no reason.

Honestly If I were you, I would just leave it alone, upgrade the cpu with a faster socket A, get a better graphics card and what not. Yoou can run XP with that and porbably 98se also.

If you replace everything, than you will lose all of the retro compatibility you have, and the end result is a total waste of time.

As I think I stated from the beginning, the plan was to replace the socket A. Yes I'd like to leave it as is, but I want to balance retro gaming support with usability as an everyday daily driver. Which is why I'm doing a xubuntu / Windows XP build. One modern OS for going online and the other for backwards compatibility.

So I dug through the closet and found this stuff I've been hoarding.

I just misunderstood the use of the word upgrade.

Hiddenevil wrote:

I'd like to upgrade but keep in the spirit of Amd.