Upgrade for NFORCE3-A Motherboard with AMD Sempron processor

NFORCE3-A Motherboard with AMD Sempron processor installed. 1 GB RAM installed.Supports socket 754 AMD K8 processors. I also have the video card. PNY GeForce 6200 DDR 256MB AGP card.

I took it out of the case to make a gaming machine for Transformers.

Can I use these parts to make a serviceable PC for web surfing, Itunes, word processing and some light photo work? Should I upgrade the processor? What would be the highest level processor that I could use in this mobo?

Or is it too old? I have XP disc.

 

As it stands, the PC should be fine for basic surfing, downloading, iTunes, and office work. It should be OK for some very basic photo type stuff like editing photos, burning photos, etc. Semprons are the 3-legged-dogs of the AMD family (akin to Celerons from Intel) and are OK for basic computing, but not really for gaming, multimedia, or home-theater type of uses. If you simply format the hard drive, install WinXP clean with the drivers and SP3, it should function just fine as a basic system. Unfortunately, the socket 754 platform is obsolete, and was somewhat short lived as it arrived on the scene when things were changing VERY quickly from socket 462 to 754 to 939 to AM2. Since 754 was kind of in the middle, it was quickly surpassed by faster/better processors, so an upgrade is not really possible or cost effective.

Anyway- I hope this bit of info helps! :-D