The best upgrade?

[VR]

I know that conventional wisdom dictates that the easiest PC upgrade
is to increase the size of the memory.

But in my particular case,if I were to do one thing, should I increase
memory to 2GB, replace my old video card (all-in-wonder 9600, no dvi
output) or add a faster (SATA) hard drive?

Details of my system:

2 Corsair 512 MB PC3200 DDR400, Value Select
AMD Athlon 64 3800+, 2.4GHz, 512k Cache, Socket 939
Asus A8V with Audio-GB.LAN-S.ATA RAID (Socket 939) (4 memory sockets)
2 EIDE internal drives
Win XP

 

[RalfG]

Depends what effect you want to achieve. For a minor overall performance
enhancement, increase RAM or go SATA; for better monitor connectivity or a
large increase in gaming/3D graphics/video performance replace the video
card. Editing large video files could benefit from a RAM increase or a SATA
drive by way of reducing the time it takes for memory to disc data
transfers.

 

[Robert Moir]

I know that conventional wisdom dictates that the easiest PC upgrade
is to increase the size of the memory.

But in my particular case,if I were to do one thing, should I increase
memory to 2GB, replace my old video card (all-in-wonder 9600, no dvi
output) or add a faster (SATA) hard drive?

What is it that you are trying to do? When does it seem slow to you? If you
play games I'd certainly consider a faster graphics card otherwise I
wouldn't worry too much about that, as old as the 9600 series are now
they're more than adequate for 2d work in XP.

If you're doing general desktop work i'd consider memory or hard disk based
on whether or not task manager shows you're short of memory.

If you're in no desperate rush, I'd consider making do with what you have
until you can replace everything including the motherboard. While there's
nothing wrong at all with what you have now, both AMD and Intel have moved
on to much faster technologies, memories, graphics card interfaces, and you
really need to consider if spending a lot of money on your current system is
really a very good investment.

 

[VR]

What is it that you are trying to do? When does it seem slow to you? If you
play games I'd certainly consider a faster graphics card otherwise I
wouldn't worry too much about that, as old as the 9600 series are now
they're more than adequate for 2d work in XP.

If you're doing general desktop work i'd consider memory or hard disk based
on whether or not task manager shows you're short of memory.

If you're in no desperate rush, I'd consider making do with what you have
until you can replace everything including the motherboard. While there's
nothing wrong at all with what you have now, both AMD and Intel have moved
on to much faster technologies, memories, graphics card interfaces, and you
really need to consider if spending a lot of money on your current system is
really a very good investment.

 

[VR]

Ralph and Robert,

My PC takes a long while to boot and shut-down. MSCONFIG shows only
the necessary programs.
It takes a while to start Photoshop 7 (I don't start it at boot time)
and a long time to render video
in Pinnacle studio 9. The only game I play is Second Life. It also
takes a long time to load, I see
frequent freezing and it takes a while to recover after I turn the
game down (the whole PC is slow.)

Yes, I checked for Virus and warms. According to Sandra Light, my PC
is on the bottom of similarly
configured PCs.

 

[Robert Moir]

Ralph and Robert,

My PC takes a long while to boot and shut-down. MSCONFIG shows only
the necessary programs.
It takes a while to start Photoshop 7 (I don't start it at boot time)
and a long time to render video
in Pinnacle studio 9. The only game I play is Second Life. It also
takes a long time to load, I see
frequent freezing and it takes a while to recover after I turn the
game down (the whole PC is slow.)

This points towards memory and disk then, especially with video rendering I
wouldn't like to say that only one of those was important either under those
circumstances. I might consider the 2gb memory because that will help both
photoshop and your video rendering, then see how things feel to you after
that.

 

[RalfG]

Thing is, with the existing hardware in that PC none of those apps should be
loading slowly in the first place. I think that computer should be on the
quick side already without any upgrades, so being excessivly slow would
indicate there are problems in the existing configuration,
software(including malware) or hardware.

I don't use any of the software mentioned but I do have access to a 2Ghz
Athlon with only 512Meg RAM and no SATA. With just an ATI 9200 card
installed it was not particularly slow at doing any of those tasks, albeit
using other software. Granted my 3.2Ghz HT P4 with 1GB RAM and a SATA
harddrive is quicker at rendering video when editing but with an ATI X700
card installed in it the Athlon still has the faster 3D performance.

I recently looked at a pc with similar slow performance and found
configuration errors ranging from harddrive DMA being disabled in BIOS to a
plethora of ghost drivers installed in Windows, as well as some malware that
was not detected by the owner's antivirus or antispyware software. Just
cleaning that mess speeded up the computer greatly.

Certain AV software can noticeably slow down a computer all on its own. Some
software firewalls may leave files behind when uninstalled and those can
slow down a system too.

 

[Robert Moir]

Thing is, with the existing hardware in that PC none of those apps should
be loading slowly in the first place. I think that computer should be on
the quick side already without any upgrades, so being excessivly slow
would indicate there are problems in the existing configuration,
software(including malware) or hardware.

I don't use any of the software mentioned but I do have access to a 2Ghz
Athlon with only 512Meg RAM and no SATA. With just an ATI 9200 card
installed it was not particularly slow at doing any of those tasks, albeit
using other software. Granted my 3.2Ghz HT P4 with 1GB RAM and a SATA
harddrive is quicker at rendering video when editing but with an ATI X700
card installed in it the Athlon still has the faster 3D performance.

I recently looked at a pc with similar slow performance and found
configuration errors ranging from harddrive DMA being disabled in BIOS to
a plethora of ghost drivers installed in Windows, as well as some malware
that was not detected by the owner's antivirus or antispyware software.
Just cleaning that mess speeded up the computer greatly.

A very good point Ralf. I assumed that the original poster had checked all
of this before looking to upgrade the hardware but it is something they
should think about. I've seen some very poor performance out of poor hard
drive configs before now.

 

[VR]

Ralf,

I have up to date antivirus program and hardwire firewall through my
wireless router. I use SPYBOT.
I checked for DMA in the BIOS and Windows. They both report that the
DMA are enabled.