mobo/cpu combo to upgrade PCs

[itfellow]

Hi all,

I work in a small office (about 20+ people) and I need to upgrade PC hardware across the board. I started here a couple of months ago and found that most people are running PCs with Pentium or Pentium Pros and Windows 95. My predecessor went out and bought licenses for everyone for Windows XP, but God only knows what she intended to do with those on such outdated hardware.

Anyway, this is a small county government office, so economy is the key word here. These workstations aren't used for much (terminal emulator to connect to Unix server, sometimes Word and Excel) so doing a max upgrade would be a waste, but I want whatever upgrade I do to last at least the next few years. I've decided to upgrade the motherboard/CPUs (and memory) only, and I was looking at various combos. One combination I was considerng was this:

Abit KV7 motherboard
Athlon 2500+ CPU
512 PC2100 memory

The memory I am still debating. The board will support up to PC3200, but it is twice the price and I'm not sure the demand on the system will be enough to justify it.

Any thoughts on the above or other recommendations would be appreciated.

 

[Xemus]

The AMD systems that I've built with motherboards that have the atx12va connector wouldn't boot until I plugged that in. Caused me some alarm at first because, to my knowledge at that point, that connection was specific to the P4. It's not anymore.

http://www.closedsocket.com

 

[yada]

Actually for the work you are doing, p-lll's are better suited. I find the XP cpu's to be pretty tempermental and eassily toasted. They run hot and don't care for multi-tasking. The motherboards are about the same. No longer than they have been out I've worked on more of these than any other setup, although the P-4's are coming in too.

From a wholly commercial standpoint you may consider what you are trying to gain in o.s. against what the upgrade is going to cost in upgrading and teaching users. We've not found that in the business environment XP has that much going for it.