Episode: 672
Title: HPR0672: How I Upgraded My PC - CPU
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0672/hpr0672.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:42:15

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Hello everybody this is Claudia Miranda from Linux Basement and on this my debut episode for Hacker Public Radio
I not only wanted to record one episode but I actually wanted to do a series of episodes entitled How I Upgraded My PC
And my reason for doing this was that I thought it would be helpful for anybody out there looking to build a new PC from scratch
To know how I went about coming to my decisions for my purchases
What research I did, what websites I looked at and the comparisons that I made
And in this episode I'm going to cover how I did that for the processor that I purchased
But before I go into that I wanted to give you a little bit of background on the PC that I currently have
And it's a PC I built back in 2003 and it's an AMD system
The processor is an AMD Athlon XP 2400 plus
The system originally had 512 megabytes of RAM and I've since upgraded to one gigabyte and it's been at that ever since
The hard drive that it's using is a 200 gigabyte SATA hard drive
And the motherboard that it's using is an Abit NF7S motherboard
And if any of you are familiar with Abit, they were a company that specialized in making motherboards specifically for the enthusiast market
They had some budget boards and stuff but they were well-known for their PC enthusiast boards
And this one in particular is one of them that was rated very good by a lot of websites
Unfortunately the company no longer exists, they actually closed shop that are around mid-2000s I would say
Just a bad luck really and even though in the end they tried to come back
It just didn't happen, they didn't have the money or the resources anymore and so they just decided to call it quits
But all in all still a very good motherboard
One of the first ones that came out of the time was serial ATA connectors
And it also has Firewire reports
And aside from that it also has the optical audio connectors
I think it's SPDIF, I don't remember, but anyway a very good board for its time
And it's done very well and still continues to do well
The video card that I purchased for this system is a or was a and still is, it's still in there
But when I purchased it it was in Sapphire Tech Radio 9600XT
And it was the Sapphire Tech is actually one of the third party companies that licensed ATI's reference design for the Radio 9600XT
Now what interested me particular about this video card is that this one was I believe the only one that came with 256 megabytes of video RAM while all the others including ATI's only had 128
And on top of that it got very good reviews from a lot of websites
One of which is the one that I will be referencing later on for this for the processor purchase that I made
But anyway so that's been my system since 2003 and it still is a very good system and runs Linux very well, still very usable
But for some of the more intensive tasks like when I was editing the ILF promo with Riklaudio Montalban as you all well know now
I did have some issues where, and even with this episode I had some issues where recording more than one track in Audacity resulted in very choppy audio on the second track
And there are moments where when I try to do more than one thing at a time, especially with Firefox, it starts to slow down a bit and it's starting to feel longitude
So despite the fact that it's still a very good system, still can keep it's own, I figured starting a new year, starting a new decade, why not start with a brand new PC
So this episode as I mentioned we're covering the processor and so the processor that I decided to go with this time around is the AMD Phenom 2 X4 965 Black Edition
Now the reason why I went with AMD, not Intel has their core series chips and they're very very good, I've always liked them since they were released
And of course the core I series are a lot more improved from their previous generations and now you have the Sandy Bridge ones that have everything on the actual processor itself including the video chipset
So very good design
Now the reason why I did not go with Intel was aside from the cost because they tend to be very expensive
The issue with Sandy Bridge was of concern to me because as you all know it's been reported that Intel Sandy Bridge chipsets have a bug in how they handle the serial ATA
I think it's the three gigabit serial ATA ports and I didn't want to spend money considering how expensive they are
I didn't want to go I mean I wouldn't go with a Sandy Bridge anyway because it's just too expensive and it's still too new
But even more black eye to the Sandy Bridge was the fact that it had this bug and so Intel just was pretty much out of question for me
And so I went ahead and I looked again to AMD and as everybody knows AMD is always known for getting a good bang out of your buck
So you get good performance for a good price and this processor is no different it's actually a very good processor
And how I came to purchasing this processor is actually from a website that I did my research on called Anantec and you can find them at www.Anantec.com
And I'll provide the link in the show notes
Now Anantec has been around for about a decade or so
So I actually use this I actually use Anantec to put together the PC that I have now, the Athlon XP2400
So it's definitely been a good resource for me for many years and what's interesting is some history on a website is that the guy who started the website, his name is Anantec, it's named after him
He started this when he was in his teens I believe he was about 14 when he started the website
And since then it's grown to be a very respectable and a highly reputable website for just reviews on very species hardware
And even benchmarking and very suffering since now they even cover Macs and they've covered Linux as well
But they're very good as far as reviews on hardware they're very very good
And I've always turned to them for recommendations on hardware
So this time around was no different, I went ahead and I checked out Anantec
And what they have, they actually have these system builder guides that they put out every few months or so
And when I purchased my phenom 2965 the review that the guide that they had out at the time was actually a, it's actually the 2010 holiday system builder guide
And that link in particular I'll put in the show notes
And they pretty much run the gamut of all the systems with the components that they recommend starting from the very low end really budget based system all the way to the high end
Take out a second mortgage dream PC so definitely they do some good coverage on there and give you some good examples
And a good way to research what would be some good components without breaking the bank
So the one that really was of interest to me was the AMD budget gaming system
And I went with this because I figured if it's a budget gaming system it's going to be powerful enough to run games
Assuming this were to be a purchase for Windows, it would be powerful enough to run games and not top of the line but still you can run some decent games that require the performance
And in that particular page they talk about the 965
And they actually say that the stock 3.4 gigahertz clock is already more than fast enough for any games
But the black edition which is the one I purchased and the one they recommended here means you can play around with overclocking without needing to raise bus or memory speed
So it's overclocked friendly, I don't find myself looking to overclock this processor but I did want to get something that was a little more high end
That's just my personal preference but anyway
Now they also mentioned that Intel does have faster processors available but for less than $200 it's going to be very difficult to match the performance of the Phenom 2965
So right there you can see that they're giving it a pretty much a good review
And so they haven't listed right now as of this recording, the processors haven't listed there for $166 US
When I purchased this I purchased it on new egg and it was selling for $159 US I believe
So definitely a good price for this amount of power now
This processor is based on the Deneb core and the speed is the 3.4 gigahertz processor has four cores
And each of those cores has a 512 kilobyte L2 cache and all four of them share the 6 megabyte L3 cache
So pretty powerful stuff there, you're pretty much covered, very good processor from what they say
I also by chance just kind of heard on another podcast called This Week in Computer Hardware
Yes, it's a Twitch show but it's actually very good and I recommend it
They do cover a lot of PC hardware there if you can overlook the Windows stuff and the Mac stuff
They really do a good job of covering stuff covering the hardware
And they spoke very highly of this particular processor the Phenom 2965
Now after I purchased this I got a dent from somebody on Identica telling me to go with another AMD Phenom 2 processor
Which is the 1090T and that one is actually based on the Fubon core which is newer than this one
It's one generation newer
Now I would have taken of his advice but the only problem aside from the fact that I already purchased the 965
I didn't feel too bad about it because to be honest the 1090T was about $50 more than I can afford
So if you do have the money, if you have $200 US dollars I don't know how much it would be anywhere else but at least here in the US it'd be about $200 on New Egg
If you have the money to spend on it buy it
That is another one that a non-tech and this we can computer hardware also speak highly of
So if you can get it that one comes with 6 cores and has a few more features than this one
It has the, I believe it has the, it's called, it's a feature that's similar to the turbo boost on the Intel chips
So the 965 doesn't have that so if you're into that it's a turbo core and this I'm getting it from Wikipedia
And I'll put that link as well in the show notes where they have a list of all the different processors from AMD, the Phenom processors
So anyway the 1090T has that feature I think that's the only thing that's really missing from the 965
But if it's that important to you then I guess just go with the 1090T but the 965 is definitely more than enough
And especially for someone like me coming from an Apple on XP 2400 plus this is definitely a major upgrade
So you know definitely if you're looking upgrade I highly recommend this processor
If you're an AMD Phen definitely check it out either of the two that I mentioned
If you're an Intel Phen you may want to consider this one it's actually very good but if you want to go until the options are already there for you
Just be aware of the issue with the Sandy Bridge at the moment
I don't know if they've actually resolved that issue I don't think they have but I'd probably hold off on that
Still very good processor I'm very happy with this purchase and I hope to be building this very soon
As a matter of fact the next episode I'm going to cover the motherboard that I've chosen
And I've already chosen it but until I actually have it in my hands I'm not going to record the second episode
But I've already done the research and I will cover that in the upcoming episode
So I hope this has been helpful for you and looking at which processor to choose for your upgrade
And I hope you'll listen to the next one where I cover the motherboard
If you'd like to send me feedback you can reach me at Claudio at Linux Basement.com
Or you can reach me on Identica as at Claudio M or on Twitter as at Claudio M72 and that would be the numbers 7 and 2
And be sure to catch Linux Basement we record every other Friday night
That may change from time to time but usually it's every other Friday night
Chad and I we talk about Linux we talk about open source software
We talk about a whole bunch of stuff and we have reviews and discussions
And you can find the RSS feeds for that at linuxbasement.com
Well there's also an IRC channel where we announce when the recordings happen live
And that's on irc.frino.net hash Linux Basement
Once again I hope this episode has been very helpful for you and I hope the following episodes will be just as helpful if not more
Thanks bye bye
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