Help needed in upgrading my computer.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Bedford
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B

Bob Bedford

Hi all,

I'm quite a newbie in the hardware field, so may somebody help ?

I've actually a p4 2.0ghz on a ASUS p4S533 (533mhz), NVidia GeForce3 Ti200
graphic 64MB, 2.5GB RAM, IDE 120GB

My programs: Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver but will soon go to
3dstudio max and Vue 5 infinite
Sometimes I play games, but not so often and don't need the top machine for
this. Far less important that the programs I use or I will use.

Now here is the upgrade I've in mind:
- Motherboard MSI P965 Neo-F
- Intel Code 2 Duo E6300
- DDRII 1x1GB Apacer DDR2 1GB PC-6400Major, 800Mhz, CL5
- graphic MSI RX1300P-TD256E, 256MB, PCI-E 16x
- 320GB Western Digital SATA-II WD3200KS, SATA-300 7200/ 8.9ms/ 16MB

Questions: Would I have a good machine, much faster than the p4 2.0ghz ?
Do the component fit together ? I mean, maybe I've a good machine and a weak
graphiccard and I should change it (maybe with a 512MB RAM, I've seen the
XFX GF 7300GT (667mhz/400mhz), 512MB DDR2 not much expensive thant the
RX1300P)
Also must I put 2 DDRII of 512MB or the system will work with only 1 DDRII
of 1GB?

Please help. I've a limited amount of money as I must include the price of
the programs (max and Infinite) and this upgrade will fit my budget.

Thanks for help.

Bob
 
Bob said:
Hi all,

I'm quite a newbie in the hardware field, so may somebody help ?

I've actually a p4 2.0ghz on a ASUS p4S533 (533mhz), NVidia GeForce3 Ti200
graphic 64MB, 2.5GB RAM, IDE 120GB

My programs: Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver but will soon go to
3dstudio max and Vue 5 infinite
Sometimes I play games, but not so often and don't need the top machine for
this. Far less important that the programs I use or I will use.

Now here is the upgrade I've in mind:
- Motherboard MSI P965 Neo-F
- Intel Code 2 Duo E6300
- DDRII 1x1GB Apacer DDR2 1GB PC-6400Major, 800Mhz, CL5
- graphic MSI RX1300P-TD256E, 256MB, PCI-E 16x
- 320GB Western Digital SATA-II WD3200KS, SATA-300 7200/ 8.9ms/ 16MB

Questions: Would I have a good machine, much faster than the p4 2.0ghz ?
Do the component fit together ? I mean, maybe I've a good machine and a weak
graphiccard and I should change it (maybe with a 512MB RAM, I've seen the
XFX GF 7300GT (667mhz/400mhz), 512MB DDR2 not much expensive thant the
RX1300P)
Also must I put 2 DDRII of 512MB or the system will work with only 1 DDRII
of 1GB?

Please help. I've a limited amount of money as I must include the price of
the programs (max and Infinite) and this upgrade will fit my budget.

Thanks for help.

Bob
Click to expand...

You can use this chart for benchmarks:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=463&model2=433&chart=186

Your P4 2GHz is basically below the bottom of the chart. The
Tomshardware
page to this day, still does not show an E6300. Thus, in the benchmarks
shown
in the chart, you should scale the results by 1.8/2.13 to compensate for
the clock difference when using the E6400 entries in the chart. I would
say,
a wild guess is your proposed E6300 is 1.5x your current processor on a
core vs core basis. And in Photoshop, where both cores work on the same
image at
the same time, you can expect more speed increase due to the dual cores.
So, stopwatch wise, this should feel like an upgrade for you.

On graphics cards, there are two aspects to performance. The clock rate,
number of parallel hardware resources, memory bandwidth are one part.
And the DirectX hardware support level (DX-9 versus DX-7) means
differences
in the way that games render (not always for the better). Generations of
graphics cards tend to overlap in terms of some of the hardware
parameters,
and some older cards really aren't that bad.

The memory on the graphics card is pretty meaningless. It is just a
scam to put 512MB of memory on a graphics card, when 256MB or even
128MB might give comparable performance in a lot of situations.
Don't be suckered into that.

It seems you are aiming pretty low for the graphics card, with the
7300GT
or an X1300. My question for you would be, will you soon decide to buy
yet another video card, when you find either of those to be too weak ?
(This is in reference to gaming. For the work you are doing, the video
cards should be acceptable. 2D desktop performance is more or less the
same with all of them. 3D is where they differ, so only your gaming is
affected by your choice of hardware. For example, I have a couple FX5200
cards, which are bottom-feeding scum, and I can play the BF2 demo at
lowest settings possible - and I'm happy with that :-) )

If you wanted to hold off for a bit, before buying a graphics card, you
could select a motherboard that has both built-in (Northbridge) graphics
plus a PCI Express x16 slot. That way, you can get some work done with
the Northbridge graphics, until you've had time to read enough reviews
to select a video card - or time to save a bit in the bank, until you
can afford a decent graphics card. I do hate to see people buy a
succession of video cards they aren't happy with.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html?modelx=33&model1=529&model2=560&chart=196

eVGA 256-P2-N443-LX Geforce 7300GT 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 $66
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130052

versus

eVGA 256-P2-N615-TX Geforce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 $130
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130062

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/ (vital statistics of video cards)

If your motherboard is dual channel, you might be better off with
2x512MB modules, rather than 1x1GB module. Unless your eventual
plan is to treat yourself to an additional matching 1GB module
for a total of 2GB :-) This is the first benchmark I could find
that shows single versus dual channel for DDR2:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=212&pid=4

Paul
 
Thanks Paul,

as said I won't play much, and not with the last games...so maybe the video
card is enough for games, but max and vue5 use direct3d and opengl feature
for managing 3d objects on screen and it would probably help to get a decent
video.

For memory I plan to go to 2x1gb soon....

Bob
 
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