upgrading my pc?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John
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J

John

hi,

i have a 4 year old computer.

it has a pentuin 4- 1.7 ghz,
512mb of ram,
80gb hd,
64 mb gf3 graphics card,
5.1 card and speakers.

i was thinking of gettin an upgrade. to;

1gb of ram,
another 80gb hd,
128 mb gf (dunno which card, any recommendations?)
network card,
and dvd-rw

i wanted to know, is it worth gettin an upgrade with my current spec??
would the processer be able to handle the upgrade? would the graphics be any
better? would the processor be able to handle the extra ram?

has any1 got any advice? sites could use?

thanx

john
 
John,
The first thing you need to do is to define what you want to accomplish with
the upgrade and where your current bottlenecks are.

Your OS will handle pretty much any hardware you can throw at it. However,
if your OS is on a hard drive that turns at 5400 RPM it's still going to be
slow no matter how much memory you put into it. You'll also need to make
sure that the motherboard can support the additional hardware you want to put
into the system.

You should consider running performance monitoring to see where your current
bottlenecks are and proceed from there rather than just throw some hardware
at it.

You should also consider looking at a new system. There are some excellent
prices right now, and you may find that by the time you invest in the money
into your current system you are close to the price of a new system with
everything you want.
 
It's hard to say whether another 512MB of RAM will improve anything for you. It depends on what types of apps you plan on running. For general stuff like internet, email, word processing, burning cd's, playing music etc your rig can easily do that now.

If your going to upgrade your graphics card they start at the low end $70 all the way up to the expensive end. Again depends what you want to do. If it's general stuff internet, watching DVD's, looking at photo's etc, an ATI or Nvidia 128MB 9250/9550 series will easily do the job and not blow the budget.

In the end you are probably better off upgrading the whole box and in doing so you'll get a faster CPU (probably 3.0Ghz), a larger hard drive (probably 160/200GB), inbuilt network card, new graphics card, plus 1GB of RAM and a dual layer DVD burner. You can use your 5.1 card and speakers in the new rig and use your 80GB hard drive as the main disc and use the larger hard drive as a backup/storage drive or vice versa. Maybe keep you old rig and set it up as server or something. Buying a box only is pretty cheap these days. I've seen replacement upgrade boxes as described above go for about $600

| hi,
|
| i have a 4 year old computer.
|
| it has a pentuin 4- 1.7 ghz,
| 512mb of ram,
| 80gb hd,
| 64 mb gf3 graphics card,
| 5.1 card and speakers.
|
| i was thinking of gettin an upgrade. to;
|
| 1gb of ram,
| another 80gb hd,
| 128 mb gf (dunno which card, any recommendations?)
| network card,
| and dvd-rw
|
| i wanted to know, is it worth gettin an upgrade with my current spec??
| would the processer be able to handle the upgrade? would the graphics be any
| better? would the processor be able to handle the extra ram?
|
| has any1 got any advice? sites could use?
|
| thanx
|
| john
|
|
 
thanx for the input.

i'm using it for games, as well as everything you mentioned.
i've got generals; zero hour, and its sort of slowing down.

but i'm thinking of just gettin a new pc, when windows vista comes out? i
wnated to get this upgrade, cos i can get it done really cheap, (e.g. under
£150), but i'm thinking is it worth it, if it wouldnt make a difference.

John


It's hard to say whether another 512MB of RAM will improve anything for you.
It depends on what types of apps you plan on running. For general stuff like
internet, email, word processing, burning cd's, playing music etc your rig
can easily do that now.

If your going to upgrade your graphics card they start at the low end $70
all the way up to the expensive end. Again depends what you want to do. If
it's general stuff internet, watching DVD's, looking at photo's etc, an ATI
or Nvidia 128MB 9250/9550 series will easily do the job and not blow the
budget.

In the end you are probably better off upgrading the whole box and in doing
so you'll get a faster CPU (probably 3.0Ghz), a larger hard drive (probably
160/200GB), inbuilt network card, new graphics card, plus 1GB of RAM and a
dual layer DVD burner. You can use your 5.1 card and speakers in the new rig
and use your 80GB hard drive as the main disc and use the larger hard drive
as a backup/storage drive or vice versa. Maybe keep you old rig and set it
up as server or something. Buying a box only is pretty cheap these days.
I've seen replacement upgrade boxes as described above go for about $600

| hi,
|
| i have a 4 year old computer.
|
| it has a pentuin 4- 1.7 ghz,
| 512mb of ram,
| 80gb hd,
| 64 mb gf3 graphics card,
| 5.1 card and speakers.
|
| i was thinking of gettin an upgrade. to;
|
| 1gb of ram,
| another 80gb hd,
| 128 mb gf (dunno which card, any recommendations?)
| network card,
| and dvd-rw
|
| i wanted to know, is it worth gettin an upgrade with my current spec??
| would the processer be able to handle the upgrade? would the graphics be
any
| better? would the processor be able to handle the extra ram?
|
| has any1 got any advice? sites could use?
|
| thanx
|
| john
|
|
 
How serious a gamer are you? Yes, new computers are cheap... unless you
want one with guts, then they aren't cheap! $400 boxes are not suitable
for gaming and they are generally not very upgradeable if needed at a
future date! How much money do you have to spend on a new pc?

John (#2)
 
John said:
i have a 4 year old computer.

it has a pentuin 4- 1.7 ghz,
512mb of ram,
80gb hd,
64 mb gf3 graphics card,
5.1 card and speakers.

i was thinking of gettin an upgrade. to;

1gb of ram,
another 80gb hd,
128 mb gf (dunno which card, any recommendations?)
network card,
and dvd-rw

i wanted to know, is it worth gettin an upgrade with my current spec??
Click to expand...


That depends entirely on how you use your computer--what applications you
run, etc.

For example, more RAM improves performance only if it results in your using
the page file less, and that depends mostly on what apps you run. Most
people running ordinary business apps will almost never use the page file
with as much as 1GB of RAM (even 512MB is more than enough for many people)
and adding more does nothing for them. On the other hand, if you do things
like edit large photographic images, the extra 1GB could be very helpful.

would the processer be able to handle the upgrade?

Yes.


would the graphics
be any better?
Click to expand...


Depends, again, largely on what you do.

would the processor be able to handle the extra ram?
Click to expand...


Yes.
 
It's actually now January 2007.

| newspaper said vista would be out July 06, now they say Nov 06.
|
|
| "John" wrote:
|
| > hi,
| >
| > i have a 4 year old computer.
| >
| > it has a pentuin 4- 1.7 ghz,
| > 512mb of ram,
| > 80gb hd,
| > 64 mb gf3 graphics card,
| > 5.1 card and speakers.
| >
| > i was thinking of gettin an upgrade. to;
| >
| > 1gb of ram,
| > another 80gb hd,
| > 128 mb gf (dunno which card, any recommendations?)
| > network card,
| > and dvd-rw
| >
| > i wanted to know, is it worth gettin an upgrade with my current spec??
| > would the processer be able to handle the upgrade? would the graphics be
any
| > better? would the processor be able to handle the extra ram?
| >
| > has any1 got any advice? sites could use?
| >
| > thanx
| >
| > john
| >
| >
| >
 
John said:
hi,

i have a 4 year old computer.

it has a pentuin 4- 1.7 ghz,
512mb of ram,
80gb hd,
64 mb gf3 graphics card,
5.1 card and speakers.
Click to expand...
What you are talking about doing is upgrading around your old
motherboard. Why not consider what sort of motherboards you will be
able to use the present harware on that will allow you to run much
better graphics.

A new board that will take a number of chips and graphics cards that
can incorporate your present stuff would be the way to go.

What is the largest chip you can get in the present board? And would
the type of ram carry over to the new one if you do get a new mobo?
 
thanx for all the input.

much appreciated.

i think i'm going to wait, as i want a good pc, which will last 3-4 years
like this one has. so i'll probably get an expensive one, when vista is
released. (i can save up as well)

john
 
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