How much improvement will I get if I upgrade CPU/Mboard?...

[Ian Roberts]

Hi

I currently have an AMD XP3000 (Barton) on an MSI K7N2 Delta board with 1Gb
DDR RAM (2 x 512Mb PC3200). HDD's are WD1200JB (master) + WD2500JB (slave).
Graphics card is an ATI AIW 8500DV.

When I first got it, it seemed that my PC could (at last) keep up with me -
but now I find thats worn off and again I'm having to wait for it to catch
up. ( BTW I regularly defrag and clear out clutter).

I'm just wondering where I go from here in terms of getting the most bang
for my bucks.

My main use is photo, video & music editing and drawing. The only "games" I
play (but not very often these days) are flight sims. So most of what I do
is very CPU and graphics intensive.

I'm so pre-occupied with work I dont have the spare time (or brain capacity)
to trawl the net for reviews so I would be very grateful for any suggestions
of hardware I should look at.

I have no specific loyalty or preference for AMD or Intel - just whichever
can provide the best (real world) performance for my purposes.

Thanks for your time.

Ian

 

[philo]

Hi

I currently have an AMD XP3000 (Barton) on an MSI K7N2 Delta board with
1Gb
DDR RAM (2 x 512Mb PC3200). HDD's are WD1200JB (master) + WD2500JB
(slave).
Graphics card is an ATI AIW 8500DV.

When I first got it, it seemed that my PC could (at last) keep up with
e -
but now I find thats worn off and again I'm having to wait for it to catch
up. ( BTW I regularly defrag and clear out clutter).

I'm just wondering where I go from here in terms of getting the most bang
for my bucks.

My main use is photo, video & music editing and drawing. The only "games"
I
play (but not very often these days) are flight sims. So most of what I do
is very CPU and graphics intensive.

I'm so pre-occupied with work I dont have the spare time (or brain
capacity)
to trawl the net for reviews so I would be very grateful for any
suggestions
of hardware I should look at.

I have no specific loyalty or preference for AMD or Intel - just whichever
can provide the best (real world) performance for my purposes.

\

if you work with large photo/video files
you may want to just keep your same machine but add more RAM.
although i get by ok with 1 gig of RAM
many of my photographer friends use 2 -3 gigs

 

[Toshi1873]

Hi

I currently have an AMD XP3000 (Barton) on an MSI K7N2 Delta board with 1Gb
DDR RAM (2 x 512Mb PC3200). HDD's are WD1200JB (master) + WD2500JB (slave).
Graphics card is an ATI AIW 8500DV.

Your only next choices are:

1) Expensive (Opteron 148 CPU along with new MB and new
ECC RAM), should be 50-60% faster, maybe, if the wind is
blowing in the right direction, and it's Tuesday, and
you led with your left foot as you stepped off the
platform.

2) More expensive (dual-CPU version of the above)

Personally, my suggestion is that you start by checking
for spyware / malware. Also avoid installing extra
applets in the system tray or at startup.

Then perhaps add another 512MB or 1024MB of RAM.

Dunno what's faster then your existing video card, but
that's probably a $500 upgrade.

 

[john doe]

I currently have an AMD XP3000 (Barton) on an MSI K7N2 Delta board
with 1Gb DDR RAM (2 x 512Mb PC3200). HDD's are WD1200JB (master) +
WD2500JB (slave). Graphics card is an ATI AIW 8500DV.
When I first got it, it seemed that my PC could (at last) keep up with
me - but now I find thats worn off and again I'm having to wait for
it to catch up. ( BTW I regularly defrag and clear out clutter).
I'm just wondering where I go from here in terms of getting the most
bang for my bucks.
My main use is photo, video & music editing and drawing. The only
"games" I play (but not very often these days) are flight sims. So
most of what I do is very CPU and graphics intensive.

Why not try asking in graphics editing groups whether you need more memory.
I think they might agree with the other answers.

Keep an eye on your hard disk drive light. If it flickers a lot (especially
when you're doing graphics stuff), that could mean you need more memory.

Are you using more programs at the same time these days? That also takes
more memory.