Advice on upgrade

[Stan35]

My PC at the moment is a AMD 2800 barton with a Gigabyte GA 7S748 mobo, 512 Mb
pc2700DDR memory,Asus A9200SE (128Mb) vidcard, with on board sound, dvd writer, CD writer and floppy, OS XP holme sp2. what is required to improve things?
Many thanks in advance.
Stan.

 

[muckshifter]

Nothing!

No really, what is it you can't do?

 

[ChristopherP]

Only REAL problem i can see is the graphic, its not a gaming card... If you dont play games its a good machine. If you do, you have a bottleneck...

 

[floppybootstomp]

As Mucks said, it's a good machine. And why exactly do you want to upgrade? Which area do you want to improve on?

And as Chris said, the first thing that caught my eye was the Video card, it won't play Games well at all. Or the more recent ones, anyway.

You could add another 512Mb of RAM for about £55.00, that will help, but to what purpose?

 

[Stan35]

Hi

Many thanks for your replys my pc seems a bit slow if I added more memory would that
speed it up a tad also what video card do you recomend.
Thanks.
Stan

 

[floppybootstomp]

Hi

Many thanks for your replys my pc seems a bit slow if I added more memory would that
speed it up a tad also what video card do you recomend.
Thanks.
Stan

Running slow? If it is, that probably isn't a hardware problem, it's more likely a software prob.

Have you run AdAware and Spybot to see if you're infected with Spware/Adware?

Have you defragged lately?

Are you running Nortons AV/Firewall/Any Symantec software?

Have you installed all latest Microsoft updates?

Have you updated all relevant drivers? Motherboard, sound, video etc?

Updated Motherboard Bios?

All these things could make a difference.

Adding another half Gig of RAM will make a difference, but not a great deal. It's noticeable in Games and memory intensive applications, such as video rendering, but generally 512Mb is quite OK for most everday applications.

New video card? Do you play Games? If not, what do you use your computer for that would benefit from a better video card?

A few suggestions: ATI 9800 Pro, about £135.00, considerably better than what you have. Nvidia 6600GT, even better. Even an ATI 9600XT for about £100.00 would be a lot better.

It's a bit hard recommending a card though, until you've let us know what you you mostly use your computer for.

 

[psd99]

yes from whats been said so far it appears only memory will be a feasable idea!

a new harddisk should u need the space as u didnt mention this!

if u really want to be extrme, take out your cpu, put a faster one in

so overall more memory, more diskspace and faster cpu
= complete upgrade.

your pc does look pretty nippy, but if u want it to be faster and like the idea of upgrading id suggest those three areas looking at your current layout!

do some reasearch and post back your findings here, from what ive seen so far in 2 years, all the people on this place know their stuff inside out.
so test them to their wits ends!

good luck

 

[muckshifter]

my pc seems a bit slow ...

Now then ... service time I think ... Flopps covered most of that.

One he missed was MS's buy-out of a really nice program called Giant ... people here are going to be sick of me, 'cos I personally know it knocks spots off Ad-Aware & SBS&D both together.

Giant Anti-Spyware was never Free ... Microsoft haven't messed with it too much and we'll no doubt have to pay for it after the 'Beta' stage ... I for one will be putting my money where my mouth is.

I have a new Article on the subject shortly.

 

[Stan35]

Running slow? If it is, that probably isn't a hardware problem, it's more likely a software prob.

Have you run AdAware and Spybot to see if you're infected with Spware/Adware?

Have you defragged lately?

Are you running Nortons AV/Firewall/Any Symantec software?

Have you installed all latest Microsoft updates?

Have you updated all relevant drivers? Motherboard, sound, video etc?

Updated Motherboard Bios?

All these things could make a difference.

Adding another half Gig of RAM will make a difference, but not a great deal. It's noticeable in Games and memory intensive applications, such as video rendering, but generally 512Mb is quite OK for most everday applications.

New video card? Do you play Games? If not, what do you use your computer for that would benefit from a better video card?

A few suggestions: ATI 9800 Pro, about £135.00, considerably better than what you have. Nvidia 6600GT, even better. Even an ATI 9600XT for about £100.00 would be a lot better.

It's a bit hard recommending a card though, until you've let us know what you you mostly use your computer for.

Hi.
The above recomendations I already do or have done at some stage.
Re memory I have been on the crucial site and they sugest I get the DDR PC 3200 CL-3 as it is the recomened module for my PC. Being a complete newby if I just take the DDR PC 2700 out, replace with the new PC 3200 will my PC pick it up without changing any settings
Once again many thanks.
Stan

 

[Reefsmoka]

Hi.
The above recomendations I already do or have done at some stage.
Re memory I have been on the crucial site and they sugest I get the DDR PC 3200 CL-3 as it is the recomened module for my PC. Being a complete newby if I just take the DDR PC 2700 out, replace with the new PC 3200 will my PC pick it up without changing any settings
Once again many thanks.
Stan

You have an AMD 2800XP "Barton" processor which has a 333Mhz FSB. So the memory for you is PC2700 (which is 333mhz), not PC3200 (400mhz). So just get another stick of 512mb PC2700 and add it to the existing 512 you already have. You wont need to change any setting or anything else, just put the stick in the correct slot and viola, you have a gig of ram .

 

[Moco]

run as many AV programs as you can find. if you've removed all background programs running and its still slow... its more then likely a virus or adware/spyware. Dont think your clean because you run 2 AV programs. I run 6 when i think somethings wrong. Just make sure you've already stopped all background programs... Good luck. Cheers.

 

[muckshifter]

Whoa ... sorry Moco but running as many AV programs as you can find WILL give you more problems than they are worth.

Stick with one AV on your system you trust ... by all means then head over to an on-line scanner, such as HouseCall a well respected on-line scanner, for a second oppinion.

But please, don't run more than one AV on your system at any one time ... you are asking for trouble.