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 :P

[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. :D

[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. :D
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 :P

[3RA1N1AC]

and actually, a 1.1ghz athlon is still not too bad for newer video games. i just played all the way through Splinter Cell on a 1.1ghz athlon and a radeon 9000. so if you decide to upgrade your video card later on, your athlon would still be a pretty decent CPU for new-ish games.

anyway, my guess is that you could get at least another year out of your computer, by spending about $150 (or less) on a faster CPU and more RAM.

[ooo]

what's the point of such big hard drives! im using a 18gb hard drive... runs fine...

-- dl from k-lite put in cd -- << delete
-- have one game on ur computer at once
-- microsoft products take 400mbs at most
-- os takes 500mbs at most

-- shouldn&#39;t take up that much space....

go for a better cpu for more speed

and i don&#39;t get why ram is that important... i mean you don&#39;t need such a high one a 128 - 256 is good enough. Just have 1 or 2 programs open at once... not like 10&#33; and you&#39;ll be fine

[shenlong_wc]

not eactly ...
i have a classic slot A athlon, 512mb sdram, ti4200

what i do is force windows to load things into ram instead of swap file as far as possible. TweakXP can do that for you ^_^

ram is about a billion times fater than HDD (ok, i&#39;m being extravagant ), but you&#39;ll see a definite performance increase since files are being fetched much much faster. i&#39;m currently thinking of getting another 512 , and try if i can do away with a windows swap file altogether ... lol

[Kid1A]

Proccerssor and ram dude, your gfx is fine for a bit

[Spindulik]

Originally posted by RGX@23 April 2003 - 13:41
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?
I used to like AMD until the Pentium4 came out with their 533mHz side bus speed. Duron is like the Celeron? Crippled L2cache?

An INTEL motherboard and an Intel Pentium4 work together very well. I don&#39;t believe that AMD has their own motherboard (yet). I have this wierd feeling, that intel doesn&#39;t reveal everything about their processors, on purpose, just so they can sell their motherboards (as opposed to the competitor motherboards).

First, get that CPU upgraded (with new motherboard), Then you&#39;ll need a power supply and cabinet to accomidate it.

Next, you&#39;ll need the correct memory for it(get a LOT, atleast 512mb). Then work on getting a bigger hard drive. Finally, the Video is probably the most important at this point. Don&#39;t get a cheap one from last year. Even the best computer will lag with a crappy video card. Your Geforce ain&#39;t shabby, so don&#39;t worry about it, unless you are very much into super 3D video gaming, and Autocad programming and whatever.

Finally, use all the other stuff from the old PC, sound, LAN, modem, etc..... Upgrade those things as needed.

Install Windows XP from an unpartitioned hard drive. Install XP with the NTFS system. It is all around better than FAT32, with quicker defragging and faster file access, less lag.