Upgrade advice, please?!

  • Thread starter Thread starter acdcnews
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acdcnews

Hi, everybody:

I do 2-D design work on an XP box and am considering some upgrades to help
with video refresh rates and to stop the occassional "bogging down" that I'm
starting to see: ( P4 1.7 GHz, 512 MB SDRAM, nVIDIA 64 Mb AGP). I love this
machine, and am hoping upgrades will keep it "purring" for a couple more
years!

My files are sometimes in excess of 100 MB, and many times are
high-resolution, multi-layered Photoshop CS files (this is where the bogging
down is starting to show). Things have slowed down many times in Corel Draw
12 as well, especially on particularly complex vector/line-based
illustrations.

Should I worry about upgrading my video card, or should I concentrate my
funds for more RAM, or do I need both in order to improve performance in
design tasks?

Thanks much!

Ava
www.acdcgraphics.com
 
acdcnews said:
Hi, everybody:

I do 2-D design work on an XP box and am considering some upgrades to help
with video refresh rates and to stop the occassional "bogging down" that I'm
starting to see: ( P4 1.7 GHz, 512 MB SDRAM, nVIDIA 64 Mb AGP). I love this
machine, and am hoping upgrades will keep it "purring" for a couple more
years!

My files are sometimes in excess of 100 MB, and many times are
high-resolution, multi-layered Photoshop CS files (this is where the bogging
down is starting to show). Things have slowed down many times in Corel Draw
12 as well, especially on particularly complex vector/line-based
illustrations.

Should I worry about upgrading my video card, or should I concentrate my
funds for more RAM, or do I need both in order to improve performance in
design tasks?

Thanks much!

Ava
www.acdcgraphics.com
Click to expand...

You can add either more RAM, another 512 MB, or a graphic card 128 MB,
say, FX5900XT, which is a bit more reasonable right now, about 120$USD.

The hotter graphic card is GFX6600GT, which is probably still a bit
expensive,
in the range of 230$USD - 300$USD.

If you can upgrade both RAM and graphic card, probably you can "feel" some
improvement in speed. In fact, the 1GB of RAM seems better than 512 MB.
 
Ram ram ram...in 2d there isn't much that the vidcard will help with.
In your graphics programs, in preferences, when you set up your
scratch disk take a little time and thought in doing so. this will
help as much as anything.
 
I do 2-D design work on an XP box and am considering some upgrades to
I'm starting to see: ( P4 1.7 GHz, 512 MB SDRAM, nVIDIA 64 Mb AGP). I
love
this machine, and am hoping upgrades will keep it "purring" for a couple
more
bogging>> down is starting to show). Things have slowed down many times in
Corel
Draw>> 12 as well, especially on particularly complex vector/line-based
Click to expand...

Photoshop and Corel Draw will benefit the most from having 1GB
or more. A faster CPU can help to boost performance a little but the RAM
is more important right now. There are faster 2D video cards but
they are unlikely to boost performance much as well. Most of today's
more expensive video cards boost 3D performance unless you
look at workstation type ones or ones made by Matrox (i.e. P650, etc).

We are a dealer and you are welcome to contact us for more info.
 
acdc
My files are sometimes in excess of 100 MB, and many times are
high-resolution, multi-layered Photoshop CS files (this is where the
bogging down is starting to show). Things have slowed down many times
in Corel Draw 12 as well, especially on particularly complex
vector/line-based illustrations.
Click to expand...

Buy as much memory as you can afford (1GB is good, 2GB is better), then
upgrade the CPU, forget about upgrading the video card.
 
Hi, everybody:

I do 2-D design work on an XP box and am considering some upgrades to
help with video refresh rates and to stop the occassional "bogging down"
that I'm starting to see: ( P4 1.7 GHz, 512 MB SDRAM, nVIDIA 64 Mb AGP).
I love this machine, and am hoping upgrades will keep it "purring" for a
couple more years!

My files are sometimes in excess of 100 MB, and many times are
high-resolution, multi-layered Photoshop CS files (this is where the
bogging down is starting to show). Things have slowed down many times in
Corel Draw 12 as well, especially on particularly complex
vector/line-based illustrations.

Should I worry about upgrading my video card, or should I concentrate my
funds for more RAM, or do I need both in order to improve performance in
design tasks?

Thanks much!

Ava
www.acdcgraphics.com
Click to expand...

Yes a bit tricky for you. SDRAM isn't cheap when compared to DDR. I'm
thinking $20-$40 US for 128 mb SDRAM and $100+US for 256-512mb.

I agree with the others if you can afford and can physically add more
SDRAM that's the easy upgrade. Some P-4 boards max memory at 2-256mb
SDRAM chips or can only accept low density chips.

A processor upgrade would really help as in faster processing, newer
features.

If your nVidia 64 is a onboard card then you're losing memory to the
onboard memory then a new video card (128mb) would help with your apps.

Other options would be mobo/cpu combo with DDR memory and cpu fan or a
bare bones system so you just swap drives and reinstall XP.

Also, could your system slowness be cured with system
maintenance, reducing the number of open screens, open applications,
killing background and taskbar applications like IM? System maintenance
(System Works, System Mechanic) like removing never used or no longer
needed applications, deleting cookies and temporary internet files, clean
disk, clean registry (Registry Healer), cleaning spyware (Spybot 13 SD and
Adware) and last defrag the HD.
 
Great advice everyone, I really appreciate it. I think I will look into
swapping my 512 RAM card for a 1 GB and see if it's worth getting two of
them. That might hold me until it's time to get a new machine. I hate to put
too much into it. I am hoping that in a year, I will get a new workstation
anyway.

Thanks so much!

Ava :-)
 
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