hi all just recently signed up to this forum :)

 im running an:

asus k8v-se X (not the deluxe model) <<<socket 754

1 gig of ram (uprading to 2 gig shortly)

amd sempron 2800+ 1.6 Ghz cpu

creative soundblaster Xfi pro

and windows xp (dont like vista due to software issues especially within the audio creation applications)

im gonna be upgrading to either a dual core amd or even quad in a few month, but in the meantime i was wondering if anyone could recommend a better cpu to upgrade to. i realize there are slightly more powerful semprons but if that was my only option it seems silly to bother and maybe best to wait till i upgrade the motherboard.

 has anyone got any ideas to a better cpu i could get for this system?

 cheers

Welcome to the party, djfada! You could very easily obtain a used socket 754 Athlon on Ebay for very little money and get one heck of a performance gain. One of the main benefits of upgrading from the Sempron to an Athlon, aside from a faster clock-speed, is the fact that the Athlon has a lot more L2 cache onboard. I recently removed a Sempron 3000 CPU from my Compaq R4000 laptop (socket 939) and replaced it with an Athlon 4000. What a difference! The Sempron ran at 1.8Ghz, the Athlon runs at 2.4Ghz. The Sempron had a 128KB L2 cache, the Athlon has a whopping 1MB L2 cache. My wife uses my laptop a lot, and that single upgrade has made her online experience so much nicer.

cheers for replying mate :)

 yeh i checked it out a bit and seems your bang on the money with getting an athlon . this is really a little quick mod for some extra power while im waiting to build my newer machine which will be an AM2 socket setup but will be an offline D.A.W. So basically i need another machine to run the internet on and getting an athlon for this machine seems a really good idea :)

thanks a lot for the advice and happy newyear to ya :thumbsup:

 you might be able to buy some lower latancy memory to speed things up

 or  a good graphics card if you play games like the geforce 8800 

SKT 754 processors i think are expensive, and getting harder to find these days as there like a deleted range now.

I recently sold a SKT 754 AMD Athlon 64 3400 Clawhammer (2.4GHz + 512kb L2 Cache) on ebay for £50, the price of a decent mid-range AMD Dual Core processor. The board is likely to be AGP over PCI-E and again more expensive then PCI-E for power\cost ratio.

 a new motherboard would allow you to upgrade now and maybe later on if you choose the right motherboard

 If you are only looking for an upgrade that will tide you over until your new system I would go for an Athlon. If you go to the extent of getting a new motherboard to support a newer processor architecture, then you will also be looking at new ram, new CPU and a new graphics card if you don't get a motherboard that already has one integrated. At that point you are basically building a new system, which it looks like you want to hold off on doing for a while. So go for the Athlon which will yeild noticable performance gains and should be enough to keep you satisfied until you are ready to build your new system.

Guys, look at the dates =P...This thread is over 3 months old...^.^...lol.