What Should I Upgrade?

[RGX]

Ok compared to most of your computers mine is a spec on the landscape, but at the moment its

AMD Duron 650
K7VZA Mobo
256Mb RAM
64Mb Geforce 4 MX 440
1 * 3 gig HD
1 * 10 gig HD
1* 15 gig HD
O/S Windows XP pro

At the moment i reckon its the processor thats lagging it up, I have researched my mobo and apparently it can take a maximum of a 1.1 gig Athalon, do you reckon i should upgrade to that, or go for the (gulp) new motherboard and bigger cpu? I really dont have much money to spend, so can you please name me some cheap speedy options?

[PersianBulldog]

Bigger harddrive, or GF4 TI

[Livy]

procesor should be an easy cheap ugrade.

[ck-uk]

M8 i would diffinatly upgrade to at least that 1.1 weather u go
more and new mobo really depends on how u use ur comp

What progs & how many at the same time do u run?

[RedRival]

Just upgrade the processor and go for 512k Ram. I don't see why you suffer from laggi-ness, just reduce your comp activity and things running in the background.

[CornerPocket]

Originally posted by RedRival@23 April 2003 - 09:19
Just upgrade the processor and go for 512k Ram. I don't see why you suffer from laggi-ness, just reduce your comp activity and things running in the background.

Agreed, use the highest type Ram your system allows. If you have PC100 and can use PC133 use that or if able move up to DDR, good prices can be found. The devices you have I would move up on power supply wattage. Minimum of 350W, if you have a 300W now. New Case and power supply would be cheaper, unless of course you search for a good deal on the net. You might want to try using Disk Cleanup and Defrag as well.

Start >Program Files >Accessories >System Tools >use Disk Cleanup & Defrag.


btw, the lagging, is this constant or just when running application, games??

[100%]

1.Get more RAM

2.TWEAK your machine at : http://www.tweakxp.com/

3.Learn to clean your registry with
a. Regcleaner (free): http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/regcleaner.shtml
b. Registry healer (not free) :http://www.zoneutils.com/regheal/index.htm
c.Norton Utilities has some easy cleaner fix tools

[davinda]

Yes most people are right when they say get more RAM, very cheap at the moment and no installation problems.

[3RA1N1AC]

i'd say, if you can get a 1.1ghz athlon for under $100 (it's not really worth more than about $50, but they are probably getting scarce nowadays because AMD doesn't make them anymore), go ahead and get that... and definitely get another 256mb of RAM (windows xp can benefit from it, and for less than $50 it's a worthwhile purchase).

with CPUs now reaching something like 3ghz, 1.1ghz may not sound that great... but it is actually not too bad. a 1.1ghz athlon would probably keep you satisfied for another year or so, depending on what you use it for. cutting edge video games, digital video editing, etc would prolly be a reason to upgrade the motherboard. but for office programs, filesharing, music/movie playback, keeping your motherboard and switching to a 1.1ghz CPU would be more than adequate.

also, if you haven't defragmented your hard drives in a while, that might help. hard drive fragmentation is a pretty common cause of sluggish performance.

[RGX]

My power at the moment is a 350, so no probs there, thanks for the advice, I do play alot of games and run Flash editing software (MX), and also have a lot of background programs. My mobo can take 1.5 gigs of RAM, so plenty of room to upgrade