What do I do with a Sempron 3100+?

[SaRgoT]

Hello:

I have this old computer lying around with 2gb of ram, an ATI x1650pro and a mini ATX motherboard. Before throwing it away, I would prefer to give it some use and I had thought about building an htpc to watch movies in the living room, although I doubt it would be good for 720 and 1080 quality because of the processor and graphics power. What do you think?

Thanks in advance.

[Obione]

In response to the title, changing PCs :ugly:

Dude, I changed a computer better than yours (same GPU micro a little better) but years ago and at a cost of 4 duros (300€ 4850 + E2180 + P35). I pushed it with OC and it gave me a lot of joy, I even played Metro 2033 but man, nowadays if you want to play something demanding, as I said in the first mini-paragraph.

Editing: Damn, I just read after the period and the post makes sense xD Leave it for HTPC without wanting to play anything demanding. You can find some titles that are fun (nothing demanding of course) and if not, well, that's it, surf + movies and use it for that's what it's for.

[SaRgoT]

jaja fortunately I have already changed my pc!! the one I use is a laptop i5 and I have this one lying around the house (I have edited the post). I am completely out of date with hardware issues and now when I read on the forums I get lost! People build some very serious computers to watch movies in the living room and I thought that this was not going to move anything for me, but I suppose they will put other programs on them…

Well, then I will take your advice to start with this htpc thing and save money.

Best regards and thanks for replying.

[fjavi]

@SaRgoT:

jaja fortunately I have already changed my pc!! the one I use is a laptop i5 and I have this one lying around the house (I have edited the post). I am completely out of date with hardware issues and now when I read in the forums I get lost! People build some very serious computers to watch movies in the living room and I thought that this was not going to move anything for me, but I suppose they will put other programs on them…

Well, then I will take your advice to start with this htpc thing and save money.

Best regards and thanks for replying.

It does move something and I have a sempron 3200+ I think it is and games like GTA 3, Vice city, San andreas, Max payne with XP run well, I also had a 1650 that broke and now a 7600 and those games run well even though the monitor is 1280x1024, I used to overclock it although I have had it in the storage room for a while, but I used to get into some good habits with it, but now I have other better computers and I have these so that I can get rid of the urge to tinker, I also have a pentium 4.

regards

[cobito]

For HTPC it may work at 720p, but it's a matter of trying it out.

As for gaming, I'm sure there are more games that run perfectly on that PC than there are that don't.

[Yorus]

Get rid of the x1650Pro the hard way (sell it even if it's for 10/15€) and buy the lowest possible from AMD or Nvidia but a bit current, like an AMD 5450 or an Nvidia GT210 (I assume we are talking about a Sempron socket 754 and not socket A, right?, because of having PCI Express).

In this way you could even play MKVs at 1080p, as long as the codec is among those supported for hardware acceleration, and by the way connect everything to the TV with an HDMI cable and not with VGA+RCA for audio (for example).

[_Neptunno_]

Anyway, if you get an HD5450 make sure it has HDMI, because of the issue of getting audio and video at the same time.
I had a bad experience, buying thinking that all 5450s had HDMI and I messed up with a Sapphire, which had VGA, DVI and DisplayPort.
I thought that through the DVI output I could get the sound, like in the Nvidias I've had and have... but it wasn't like that. So I was left with a :mad: face.

Well, for the rest, if you can even get a 6450 or a GT520, you'll have a decent enough machine to watch movies and download/serve files.

Regards!!

[Sylver]

I'm with the colleagues, that team for HTPC still works for you. In fact, I have a 754 doing the same function and it works pretty well for me. As long as you put a soft that doesn't weigh it down much, don't overload it with programs, and keep it clean and well cooled inside, it will work very well for you.

Regards