Duron to Athlon: can i make the change?????????

i got a 800 duron on my motherboard. i wanna upgrade to a 1.2 or 1.1 athlon, maybe a thunderbird. what exactly would i need to know to do that eg: how do i find out what kind of motherboard i have, and does it support change. lemme give you guys a few more details. Using your vastly superior knowledge of computers and your keen intellect, do you think this would be possible? my computer was a refurb that i got from compaq, before they were bought by hp and started shipping out hp computers in a compaq case. i know my pc was meant to be upgraded, becuase it has a ram capacity of 768 megs, and it is nice and roomy, not hard to get to anything like a lot of hps are, where you have to remove the drive bays just to get to the ram. help me out or at least point me in the right direction, fellows. thanks in advance. PS: i especially need accurate image and Uranium 235's VAST minds and smarts. VAST, right guys?

[Uranium-235]

Edit: vast? hahah what's a computer?

oh yeah...

Most AMD motherboards that support durons will support athlons too. Although your ram is probably PC100/1600DDR. So if you upgrade to a processor with a 133mhz bus your ram will be a bottleneck.

I hate propritary crap. Does it have a compaq post screen? or does it actually tell you the bios/motherboard info?

well lets see, i have pc133 ram, and it used to tell me that info about my motherboard, but i used tweak-me gold to remove all that so that all it says it starting winBLOWS millenium. god i wish i could get rid of WinME also, but i have no idea where i would get all the drivers for all of my computer if i wanted to do a virgin reboot. oh well, yes it did tell me my specs, i bought it way before the hp buy out.

[Uranium-235]

pc133 ram? then your cpu is the bottleneck. it can probably support athlon (make sure to get 266 (133 ddr))

you need to find out your motherboard info. see if thiers something on the board itself

I would think that since Compaq was sucked up by HP a quick (cough) call to the tech support can give you the information you are seeking.

Ask them specific questions such as...

What kind of memory does my motherboard support?

What CPU's and CPU speeds does my motherboard support?

Can I buy other memory or CPU's from 3rd party's or do I have to buy from HP/Compaq? (The reason for this is because in some instances, Compaq only used motherboards that supported their own memory)

In addition, I noticed the tech support site for Compaq is still up. You may want to begin your search there.

http://wwss1pro.compaq.com/support/home/index.asp

However, I think a call to them would be your best source for information. Just make sure you look for you serial number tag located somewhere on your PC. They will probably need it to look up the specs.[/i]

[vee_ess]

I'm going to have to disagree with Uranium-235 on this. The fact that the motherboard can support 133Mhz RAM doesn't mean it can support a 133Mhz FSB. In fact the first generation was purely 100Mhz FSB, like any motherboard based on the VIA Apollo KT133's or the original AMD chipset for the K7's. There are a few of the early T-birds that do support the 100Mhz FSB, however they are mostly out of circulation.

I would check Tech Support. If your warranty is over, I would open it up and look for the N. bridge and S. bridge to see what chipset. That is the determining factor.

or you should have a computer serial number that you can input it on the compaq site to see the specifications of your system

sometimes the details on there are confusing because they give you a list with "or"s in there...