Upgrade PC to speed it up

[1000possibleclaws]

I'm thinking of upgrading my tower over the summer. I'm on a budget, so I want to either spend minimally to get better performance short run, but might consider a more expensive overhaul as well, depending on the performance I'd get by spending more.

specs:


NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+ (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz

2046MB RAM

Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2 (6002.vistasp2_gdr.090803-2339) - I'm installing Win7 64bit after upgrading.

600watt PSU

Antec 300 case



One of the most annoying things about my system is that the motherboard is HP, and everytime I startup it makes me hit F2 in the process, because I have one less fan from the original pc it was used in. It seems HP locked the motherboard or something, because I can't remove the fan from the boot up check, or whatever that's called. I don't know much about pcs, but I'm assuming my RAM is my bottleneck? If I wanted to upgrade further, what else should I upgrade? I care more about loading speeds and multitasking than graphics, so I assume my motherboard and cpu should get upgraded, if they are getting old now.

[clocker]

Replacing the motherboard and CPU are indeed, probably the way to go but would mean new RAM as well.
The biggest bang-per-buck change you could make using your existing hardware would be a small solid state drive for the OS and loading it with Win7.

[Artemis]

One question , is the motherboard a Socket 939 board or an AM2. If it is Socket 939 you have pretty much the fastest processor for that design bar the FX60 CPU and based on whether the m/b has two RAM slots or four have maxed out the RAM as well (being HP it will probably only have two).
If on the other hand this is an AM2 based system then you can easily upgrade both RAM & CPU, check and let us know. An easy way to do this is to download & run the CPUz processor utility, it will confirm the exact CPU, RAM & Motherboard config you have.

[1000possibleclaws]

Well I think I may want to upgrade the motherboard regardless, because HP tampered with it and it might not be upgradeable without alot of hassle on every boot-up. How much would upgrading the motherboard, CPU, and getting new RAM cost, if I wanted to get a pretty fast system running Win7, but without buying the really expensive top-of-the-line equipment.

When I run Team Fortress 2 with itunes running in the background, it takes like 2 minutes to load up the game, and another minute or 2 to minimize to desktop. Would like to reduce the minimizing to around 10 seconds, would that be easy enough? What kind of price should I expect? I can always postpone the upgrade until I can afford it.




I'll also look into getting that program to check my motherboard slots. If I kept the set-up I have and add 2 gigs of RAM with 64 bit Win7, do you think it would be much faster?

[Artemis]

I'll also look into getting that program to check my motherboard slots. If I kept the set-up I have and add 2 gigs of RAM with 64 bit Win7, do you think it would be much faster?

In a word, fuck yes! I don't know what they did, but MS got it right Win7 boots and runs alot faster.

[Detale]

I never thought I'd live to see the day Art

[bpchia]

Does anyone periodically reformat their SSDs to preserve their speed?

[Twig]

Does anyone periodically reformat their SSDs to preserve their speed?

just use an ssd that supports trim , no need for reformat

[yann3804]

Install WinXP


Too much wattage (Power Supply) for that build.

I would recommend getting a better processor, buying a new motherboard.

The graphic card should leave you to approximately 1 year before an upgrade.

[LubTheStaringCat]

There was an article on Realpoor some time back about building a PC, hope It helps.
Hears the link.

http://www.realpoor.com/articles/How..._a206_f73.html