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oh god where do i begin (pc upgrading)
Forestd
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Alright heres a couple of raw specs:
Athlon 64 X2 (W) 4200+ 2.2 GHz
Geforce 8800 GT 512 MB
2 GB ram
Asus motherboard: A8M2N-LA
500 GB and 1 TB Harddrives
Corsair 550W Power Supply
Win 7 32bit
And I wanna modernize it a bit for games and such (budget is limited though).
I suspect that the low amount of ram would benefit alot from an upgrade to 4gb, question is; what kind of ram should it be, and would i potentially experience trouble in compatability with the older motherboard?
I figure the cpu could also do with some replacing. I have no idea what kinda processors the motherboard supports however, and replacing both seems expensive.
What are your thoughts? More ram is cheap, but would it do any notable difference? And what other upgrade would provide the best performance for the cost? (Graphics card or cpu)
Athlon 64 X2 (W) 4200+ 2.2 GHz
Geforce 8800 GT 512 MB
2 GB ram
Asus motherboard: A8M2N-LA
500 GB and 1 TB Harddrives
Corsair 550W Power Supply
Win 7 32bit
And I wanna modernize it a bit for games and such (budget is limited though).
I suspect that the low amount of ram would benefit alot from an upgrade to 4gb, question is; what kind of ram should it be, and would i potentially experience trouble in compatability with the older motherboard?
I figure the cpu could also do with some replacing. I have no idea what kinda processors the motherboard supports however, and replacing both seems expensive.
What are your thoughts? More ram is cheap, but would it do any notable difference? And what other upgrade would provide the best performance for the cost? (Graphics card or cpu)
Forestd on
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(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
And i usually play almost everything; shooters, rpgs, strategy. Examples of recent releases that I've played would be Dragon Age and Settlers 7 (both of which runs ok at lower settings - how it looks is less important to me compared to how it plays).
For $150 or so (don't really know about Danish prices) you could upgrade to a 5770 which would play most games a max settings at your resolution. For the same amount you could upgrade to a new motherboard + CPU. As far as I could tell with a little googleing your motherboard comes from an HP computer and I didn't see any info that it could take a modern (Athlon II or Phenom II) CPU even though in theory those can work with AM2 motherboards like yours.
If you upgraded your computer to 4 gigs of ram your 32 bit OS would only use about 3 gigs of that.
It's hard to say but I'd guess your best bet is to get a Athlon II with either 3 or 4 cores and a cheapish motherboard that takes DDR2 ram. And I guess it makes sense to buy 2 more gigs or ram since it may well get more expensive later. You can always upgrade your GPU later.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I'm using a very similar setup (the same vid card and comparable CPU) and can play almost anything at the highest setting. Just as an anecdote.
Does that seem reasonable?
Teth: In other words; the main thing thats holding my performance back atm is a lack of ram? Would that make the parts suggested unnecessary/irrelevant? (am3 socket motherboard and athlon II x3 440)
The problem with what teth is suggesting is that you have a 32 bit OS, which won't address all that RAM. Not to mention that 6GB of RAM is overkill, especially considering it forces you to buy a motherboard w/ 4 DIMM slots to hold the 2x2gb kit and the 2x1gb kit you'd need. Bottom line, don't buy more RAM unless you have Windows 7 64 bit.
If you're using an HP pre-built, that might cause trouble for a drop-in CPU upgrade. I don't know what kind of support your motherboard might have for newer Athlon IIs.
My suggestion is to save your money, and build a new machine. Keep chugging along with what you have, for now. If you absolutely must upgrade something, I'd say video card. It's the easiest thing to move to a new build anyway. Honestly, though, I'm not sure it's money well spent. The 8800 is still surprisingly competitive, so you'd probably have to spend at least 150 USD to actually upgrade.
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As I've understood it, my current motherboard needs to be replaced for almost any kind of cpu upgrade.
Which is why I looked at an ASUS, which should be able to fit into my HP cabinet (microATX format) and work with the rest of my hardware as well (additionally, the motherboard supplied by HP is also ASUS so compatability should presumebly be high)
I would just save up for a new machine a little farther down the road. If you are really impatient, you would get the most mileage out of a new video card now. Get a good one (ATI 5770 or higher), then put it in a new machine later.
If RAM isn't currently a bottleneck for what you're trying to do/play, then no (though I suspect it is). But running a 64-bit OS so you can saturate it with cheap RAM will make sure that's not a bottleneck for you now (if it is) or in the long term. Plus it allows you to utilize that 64-bit CPU to its full potential.
It's pretty much like this: the main bottlenecks in a home computer are the CPU, memory, and hard drive (and in some respects, the overall bus if you're running something really old - like older than three years). You appear to be OK except for the RAM, because 2GB is truthfully very little if you're looking to game and game at high settings. And since you have a 64-bit CPU you may as well utilize it. Since your system has a PCI Express bus, you're set there. The CPU, again, is OK. And unless your hard drive is absolute shit, that should be OK now (it's not like you have the option of looking to array controllers with write-ahead cache (which requires a battery) and fast SAS drives or anything - as long as your array controller and SATA drive(s) are OK, you won't notice a difference by upgrading). For example, striping two average SATA disks together in a RAID0 isn't going to miraculously make a desktop computer that much faster. By the way, if you want to determine if your hard drive(s) is a bottlebeck, just use perfmon to capture some perflogs and take a look at the disk queue length. It should spike, but never remain high for sustained periods of time.
I agree, this is a tough nut to upgrade. The RAM and 64 bit OS will probably get you the best performance boost for your money right now, but you'd need to get DDR2 RAM, and when you get around to upgrading your motherboard you'll wish you had DDR3. I guess I vote get the best video card you can afford for right now, and then make sure you have enough money to get upgrade processor/motherboard/memory all at once next time you upgrade.
I lied, it's closer to $450 still. Prices have not moved as much as I thought. This might not actually be the best time to upgrade.
I would also suggest to save money down the road and get a new PC. You might want get a bigger case too, micro ATX doesn't sound like a awefull lot to work with, space wise. Plus if your case doesn't adhere standards you will have problems fitting replacements components inside (example, some Dell PCs in the past used cases + PSUs which were smaller, so you couldn't fit in a standard sized one)
+ If you go the "totally new" PC route you have a spare machine - which is always helpfull if you want to look up things in the internet while messing around with your new one. It can also be used for other projects later (Linux, Mediacentre PC, File server, to name a few)
Rambling about raidsetup in Desktop PCs:
Raid setups are never a good idea for general use desktop computers IMO. (Unless you want to run a raid1 for example. But this is also a waste of money if you can do a raidsetup, you most likley can do a backup of important data yourself - and you are still out of luck, if you delete data by accident or if your machine decides to fry both HDs, or if you get hit by an virus) You need 2 HDs which require space + additional cabeling -> which make your your rig hotter. Most likley a raid0 setup isn't transferable between different motherboards which will introduce additional headaches if it comes to upgrades.
I was considering simply buying a cheap block of 1gb of ddr2 ram, that way my 32bit os would still be able to make use of it, and the other upgrades could wait until i need a new computer.
If you have 4 DIMM slots, just buy 2 512 mb sticks rather than a single 1gb stick. That'll keep your RAM running in Dual Channel mode.
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