What to do with this old pc?

Okay I had this laying around for a long time. It was my friends until he came over today and I said let me give you your garbage laptop back. <--- trolled lol. He said keep it, then later we made a deal since I sold my desktop I gave him my old windows professional for this notebook and when he upgrades his gpu on his desktop hes gonna give me his gts 250. Okay now

The laptops specs are following
Dell XPS not sure which
17inch
Pentium M running @ 2.13mhz
nvidia 6800 go
resolution on the screen is 19201200 and i like it lol
ddr2 2gb of ram
windows xp

now I know I cant get anything for it anymore so making it backup just incase of anything. Prob use the gts 250 like a vidock later on. my question is there anyway to overclock the cpu? and would the gts 250 and the overclock allow me to play current games like swtor on the lowest settings ? if not what should i do with this laptop.

 

Surprised it still works then .

Single core, old architecture, even an overclock isn't going to help that bad boy.

That isn't any good either.

...and because most manufacturers decided to put the screws to the customer you can't even take that 16:10 screen and put it into a newer 16:9 laptop.

That is probably the most valuable part in the computer. DDR2 sells at a premium now.

Hahaha...hahaha...hahaha...useless.

Maybe donate it to Goodwill or something?

 

Dump Windows 7 on it and keep it as a spare notebook or something for guests when they come over and need a computer you don't mind being ruined

 

Pentium M's are still great processors if you just do basic office work. They utterly beat up Atom's in terms of processing horsepower. I would just turn it into a download machine or a linuxbox.

 

CPU:
you can replace the M770 with an M7*5 CPU and pin mod it. For instance a pin modded M745 will run at 2.4GHz instead of it's stock 1.8GHz.

A modded M755 will run at 2.66GHz instead of stock 2.0GHz.
A modded M765 will run at 2.80GHz instead of stock 2.1GHz.

The pin mod is quite easy to do an undo. The principal here is for an M7*5 CPU to run with an FSB 133 instead of 100. Check this thread for a tutorial on how to execute the mod.

You might have to up the voltage a bit. I think the mod is worth trying since Pentium M processors are really cheap nowadays

 

I would really not put any effort in that machine. Even with a cpu overclock and a gts 250 eGPU, gaming will not be fast enough to be enjoyable. I would turn that computer into backup storage for my main computer.

 

Is it this one? Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 Review & Rating | PCMag.com

With that screen it'll be more than perfect surfboard. 1920x1200 is something you don't get anymore and it isn't even glossy?

I'd reinstall the OS, maybe replace it with Win7. Fresh start makes wonders. 2GB is enough for basic daily use, that's probably the maximum supported anyways.

 

It'd be great for web surfing, basic office stuff. Little games for kids. If you don't wanna mess wth it, put it up for sale here. Somebody hint, hint) will buy it I bet. But I couldn't even guess a starting $$$

 

The sale price will probably be higher if you sell each part individually. Selling the computer as spare parts will probably be easier than selling the entire computer (because it is very old).

 

Exactly,install Ubuntu and this thing will be flying.
Use it for light stuff like downloads and office work.

 

Take it to bed on your lap and play GTA 3, GTA Vice City, The Hitman series up to Hitman Contracts etc. Will bring back some nostalgia even though these games only go a few years back.

...or go run some old DOS/Amiga games in an emulator and relive Thunderbirds, Captain Planet, Cosworth Ford racing, Simon the Sorcerror 1 and 2.

 

LOL, actually I might put linux into it. Ill look at the pin mod for it etc. And defintly put windows 7 on it for surfing the web if a friend comes over. Surprisingly when Aion came out and my comp busted this thing played it on all low but was completely playable. I know it plays LoL cause a friend had to play on it in class. (bad thing about that is you here all the clicking from our mouses click click click click, its like a cricket have a seizure in class). Well thanks for the response guys.

 

I agree that Ubuntu will be able to give some new life to that computer. Make a dual boot setup between your current Windows XP and Ubuntu

 

I was going to suggest adding an eGPU but I don't think that a Pentium M can keep up with a modern desktop graphics card.

 

Grab a couple of usb controllers and turn it into an emu box for playing zsnes/VGBA. Resolution is great enough for two players to share a screen.