Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core upgrade help

[RobTi]

Hi my nephew has a Dell Dimension C521 with a sempron 3100 in it, he asked me to try and upgrade it and have bumped the ram up to 4Gb with a clean Win7 install (he wanted it tried to keep Xp)and i am left with the cpu.

Now dell hasn't updated the bios so i am stuck, there are reports of being able to use up to a 6000+ cpu but i am lost as to which to try and get for him.

Looks like i can play safe and get a 5600+ which a lot say will work or a 6000+ which a few say will work.

So now as there are approx 3 different models to each speed i propose to got for the lower power ones (less strees on psu) and it will only be used for htpc and web browsing, what do you recommend?

Thanks

Robert

update i take it as long as its the same skt and die then i should be okay

[scaryjim]

OK, according to the specs from the Dell website it looks like the board is AM2 (although afaict the Sempron 3100+ was never released on AM2 ) so it will actually *take* any processor from the AM2/AM2+/AM3 families. That means you could try getting an Athlon II and see if dropping it in will work - a lot of PCs will run fine even if the BIOS doesn't recognise the CPU.

Otherwise, I'd personally look for a 4850e or 5050e, which are low power X2s that will still be a massive performance boost over a Sempron.

[pooley]

[QUOTE=

I'd personally look for a 4850e or 5050e, which are low power X2s that will still be a massive performance boost over a Sempron.[/QUOTE]

+1 so would I.