[senior moment]

I have a Medion MD8800 with MSI MS-7204 mainboard, Chipset Intel i945P and an Intel Pentium D 830 3.0GHz processor socket 775 LGA.

What other CPUs would work with this board? I’ve searched the net but I'm just not sure which would work.

Any help gratefully received.

[Carbon]

Not a whole lot of anything worthwhile. Those motherboards are very old and not designed for modern processors, only Pentium 4s and Celerons. So you'll need a new motherboard with the processor, though your RAM is DDR2 so you won't need to replace that. Any existing graphics cards should work.

[senior moment]

Originally Posted by Carbon

Not a whole lot of anything worthwhile. Those motherboards are very old and not designed for modern processors, only Pentium 4s and Celerons. So you'll need a new motherboard with the processor, though your RAM is DDR2 so you won't need to replace that. Any existing graphics cards should work.

Would this work
Intel Pentium 4 Processor 550
Spec No: SL7J8
CPU Speed: 3.40GHz
PCG: 04B
Bus Speed: 800MHz
Bus/Core Ratio: 17
L2 Cache Size: 1 MB
L2 Cache Speed: 3.40GHz
Package: LGA775
Man. Tech: 90 nm
Core Stepping: D0
CPUID String: OF34h
Thermal Design Power: 115W
Thermal Spec: 72.8C
VID Voltage Range: 1.4V
Supports: HT Technology


I just want to watch HD TV streamed from my Satellite Box it works in Standard Definition and almost works (stops & starts) in High Definition.

[Carbon]

If that's your only goal you could give it a shot but in general usually throwing money at old systems isn't very cost effective and you're stuck with the huge heat and power requirements of a P4. If you can get it for really cheap, I'd go for it.

[Razer]

DO NOT get that P4, it's far worse than your Pentium D. Pentium D is basically two P4's stuck together, it's a mile faster than that P4. HT makes things slower sometimes too, so don't be fooled. For HD, you need a graphics card, you're using the Intel chipset. A graphics card from ATi will shift some of the strain to the card and away from your processor. Look into one of them.

[Carbon]

It's possible the clock speed difference would make more of a difference to HD playback than having two physical cores. But you're super right on the other: a cheap graphics card might allow the OP to do this.

[Razer]

I doubt the 400MHz would make much, if any, difference. It'd be more clogged having the whole OS run through it, rather than spread over 2 cores. I'd go for a graphics card personally..

EDIT: Had a look at the thing on the internet, it doesn't say what motherboard it is, although it says that a nVidia 6700XL was high end which means it's pretty old and as such, I doubt Core 2 would work, I doubt even Core would work tbh.. It's probably better saving up for a new system.

[senior moment]

Thanks for your replies and advice.

Along with the CPU - Intel Pentium D 3.0Ghz (830), I've got 3 Gig DDRAM, Graphics card - NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT.
I've found an article on overclocking the cpu to see if it would then work with HD but when I go into the BIOS I can't find the settings to alter the FSB/DRAM, DRAM/CPU/MCH voltages and memory latencies as per the article.

[Razer]

Because you have a system that was prebuilt, they remove the options for overclocking, dumbing down the BIOS. Needs to be flashed which voids warranty etc.

You're much better off getting a cheerful dual core system mate, if you can.