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Minor Upgrade
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Kamran
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28. June 2004 @ 07:13 |
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well I bought a new pc round about few months ago, well i just generally feel its time to upgrade it a bit nothing major just something that will increase performance of the pc. Not in the gaming area i have bought a graphics card for what i need and i not for dvd drives becaue i am happy with those aswell. Something along the lines of HD, Ram or processor but to be honest i dont want to go out and buy a new processor after just 5 months wel anyway this is my pc at the moment.
Asrock K7VM4 Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP (Model 8)
256 MB DDR-SDRAM PC 3200
Hitachi Deskstar7K250 80 GB (7200rpm, 8.5ms access, 2mb cache, -757mbit/sec raw, 29.7-61.4mbyte/sec sustained, 1" high)
Sapphire Radeon 9600SE 128MB DDR AGP 8x DVI-i TV-Out Retail Box
Pioneer DVR-107D
Lite-On Combo LTC-48161H
Also Whats PF Usage in windows task manager? and what should it be around?
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 28. June 2004 @ 07:14
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DMW
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28. June 2004 @ 08:11 |
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Hi, What speed is you CPU? It may be worth upgrading that, I know its a pain if you've only just upgraded, but I went from a 1600XP to a barton 2500XP and the difference was fantastic.
You say you don't play games so your card is fine, but what is your main application? A HDD with an 8mb cache would make a difference too, althought the Deskstars are a fine drive :) Again, personla experience, I went from a Seagate barracuda 2mb cache to a Western Digital SE 8mb Cache, difference was great, for load times, copying and general useage.
More memory is always good so it may be worth putting another 256mb in there.
All this depends on your budget and needs of course, let us know what you will be doing and how much you want to spend (also if you in UK,CND,USD etc..)
Guys on here will help gladly.
EDIT: Your PF useage is PageFile, vitual memory on your HDD. Difficult to say what it should be, depends on what your doing, mine is at 200 at the minute.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 28. June 2004 @ 08:12
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Praetor
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28. June 2004 @ 08:42 |
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I would almost clearly say to upgrade the memory but like DMW says, need a couple more details :)
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Kamran
Member
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28. June 2004 @ 09:26 |
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well i dont have a clear budget if you get me i was moving towards the ram aswell? i was wondering do they both have to be 3200 since the onei got is 3200 do i have to get another 3200? and how much should i go up by? am in the uk the budget? well under £100 and any sites wud be great
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DMW
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28. June 2004 @ 12:18 |
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Hi, the RAM doesnt HAVE to be the same, but in an ideal situation they should be.
You can put in a stick of slower memory and depending on your motherboard it should operate the 2 sticks at that speed. Some fussy boards will just give you error beeps :)
Depending how close you want to get to a £100 you could get a 512MB stick of cheap 3200 and have about £25 spare or push right to the limit of £100 and go for some 512MB corsair *nice*.
I will only recommend people I have dealt with and although there are cheap sites such as e-buyer, their support sux and that makes a big difference in my book.
Give these guys a try www.aria.co.uk
Hope this helps.
EDIT: theres also a thing about matching the FSB of your CPU to the memory speed, although ive never understood it myself. My 2700 (DDR333) worked fine with my 1600XP (266 FSB) :)
Praetor? can you enlighten us?
cheers
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 28. June 2004 @ 12:19
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Kamran
Member
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28. June 2004 @ 14:16 |
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same with me my memory is 333 while i think my xp 2000 is 266
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Praetor
Moderator
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28. June 2004 @ 18:11 |
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while I think my xp 2000 is 266
It is
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theres also a thing about matching the FSB of your CPU to the memory speed, although ive never understood it myself. My 2700 (DDR333) worked fine with my 1600XP (266 FSB) :)
Dunno but wasnt there something about the hardware design of PC2700 and PC2100 memory which prevented them from being run interchangeably?
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DMW
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29. June 2004 @ 06:59 |
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They run ok together but drop to the lowest speed, I gave a friend a stick of 256 2700 and he ran it with his 2100. Didnt realise he only had a 266 chipset when i gave it him :)
I see a lot on the net about matching chip FSB and memory speeds, only reference I can find is that ddr333 outperformed ddr400 when it was first out, alongside a barton CPU. Seems unfair to me as DDR400 was out before the chipsets had matured.
I'm not one for benchmarking but I guess there is a site somewhere that has tested it...tomshardware or anandtech maybe.
Anyway, sorry Im going a bit OT.
Get more memory :)
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Praetor
Moderator
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29. June 2004 @ 19:16 |
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They run ok together but drop to the lowest speed
Yes but you might be able to OC the memory up so that they match :)
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DMW
Member
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30. June 2004 @ 05:11 |
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Ahh, the joys of overclocking....free speed :)
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Praetor
Moderator
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30. June 2004 @ 07:39 |
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Yes indeed but with memory you will want to be careful because its not so resiliant to OCing :)
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Kamran
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30. June 2004 @ 09:06 |
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I dont want to do no oc at the mo. i was wondering however if i should bother? What i really want is a new comp soon something with pci express, the new ddr memory and a 64 bit processor so it will last me through college and uni with some upgrades and i wondering wha price i would be looking at
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DMW
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30. June 2004 @ 09:13 |
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Hi,
as far as i know there is no AMD board with DDR2 or PCI-X support....yet.
It will be here soon I'm sure, but as more appear there will be price drops....as always.
Difficult to know when to buy, but you have to take the plunge one day, or make do with what you have.
One of Praetors responses on another post was for a guy to buy a 2500Xp and an Asus motherboard...thats sound advice and wouldnt cost you a great deal, even with some added memory :)
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Kamran
Member
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30. June 2004 @ 09:44 |
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do u think it will be by te end of the year? i need the pc to ast me a good vouple of year and i only want to spend 200-300 upgrading it at a later date
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Praetor
Moderator
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30. June 2004 @ 09:57 |
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do u think it will be by te end of the year?
Prolly but it wont come cheap (neither with PCIX cards and DDR2 memory)
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i need the pc to ast me a good vouple of year and I only want to spend 200-300 upgrading it at a later date
Not gonna happen ... not for that length of time nor that amount of money.
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Kamran
Member
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30. June 2004 @ 10:00 |
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ok when will those feature fit in the £1500 range? and how much do u think i will need to spend at a later date to keep it up to descent standard
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DMW
Member
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30. June 2004 @ 11:16 |
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You can buy a pre-built NEC machine for £1,299+vat.
3.6ghz P4, 1gb DDR-2 400, PCI-X ATI Card.
I guess if you can buy it for that price you could build one for a similair price tag, just not around an AMD unfortunately.
Dificult to say how much you'll need to spend to keep it decent, things change way too quick, if you had a PCI-X Nvidia 6800, you could another later on (SLI). But this too is a while off yet.
Unfortunately, you'll have to make your choice now and HOPE it outlasts your expectations...but I doubt it will though :(
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 30. June 2004 @ 11:17
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Kamran
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30. June 2004 @ 12:24 |
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No No, I dont need any graphics card..gaming aint wot i want to use it for. i just want pci express incase at a later date i decide to upgrade because i know thats whats gonna become the norm. My main things are DDR 2 and to make it future proof.
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DMW
Member
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30. June 2004 @ 14:31 |
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No I know, I was just giving an example of that price range you mentioned £1500.
If you want DDR2 and PCI-X and an AMD CPU, you will have to wait a while. Id recommend waiting a short while when there released to, so they can iron out any bugs with chipsets etc.
Future-proofing is the biggest problem you will face, I dont think its possible to build a home PC that will last a couple of years and still be high-end, even mid-range is a push.
I think your best vet for now would be to add a 512MB stick of memory to your current setup and wait it out for a while.
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Kamran
Member
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30. June 2004 @ 14:43 |
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Thanks to everyone for ur advise, am still undecided
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Praetor
Moderator
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30. June 2004 @ 15:36 |
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ok when will those feature fit in the £1500 range? and how much do u think I will need to spend at a later date to keep it up to descent standard
Possibly but the amount of money you are gonna spend will be determined by the length of time between buying the machine and upgrading it :)
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Staff Member
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30. June 2004 @ 22:06 |
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Either you still haven't mentioned what applications you need to be able to run at a decent speed or I just missed it. Without that information any advice you get won't be particularly useful. You have a DVD burner so I think we can safely say that's one application you need to consider, and since you say it needs to get you through school that means at least a word processor. And of course you've said that it's not for games so that makes it easy to rule out a video card.
DVD backup time will improve (if you're compressing) with more memory and a faster CPU. Actually, since you only have 256MB right now, I'd say another 256 would be a good idea in general. For word processing it doesn't really matter that much since the computer spends most of it's time waiting for you to press keys, and all computers wait at the same speed. To be any more helpful than that I'd have to know more about the programs you use or expect to use.
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Kamran
Member
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1. July 2004 @ 08:44 |
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all i want to use it for is offices eg word etc, downloading burning and converting movies movies, but i wanna be able to bost in school lol so i think the xeons is a good bet?
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Praetor
Moderator
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1. July 2004 @ 09:26 |
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LOL Dunno why everyone is so crazy over Xeons lol... Xeons arent that special ... they are special when in super giant clusters of 500 or more..... which is essentially their role (mass CPU clustering and light server duty on 2-4 CPUs). Now unless you want to be messing around with that stuff I'd stay away from Xeons :)
For $3600CAD (rough currency conversion), you can get a hell of a system -- but certainly not to last you more than one year -- no doubt it will be competitve/good at the end of that year but certainly not "up there". Id prolly reccommend a FX53 & ASUS A8VDLX and couple that with 1GB of Corsair XMS and a low-midrange videocard and you should be set. ... hell even that is insane overkill for what you are intending to do with it.
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Kamran
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1. July 2004 @ 13:40 |
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take the graphocs card out of the equation because i ahve a 9600 and would it be futur upgradable or will amd abadon it
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