Computer Updates

[Jamie]

I'll admit it, I am no general all round computer guru... just web design. ;)

I am good enough though to recognise that my 'shed' (The computer) needs upgrading.

At the moment I am stuck with an AMD Athlon XP 1800+, 1.53 GHz and 256mb of RAM.

Not looking too cracky on the harddrive space either, got 40gb but getting close to filling it.

So, what would be required, skill wise and financial wise to upgrade to somewhere in the region of 2GHz+ and also upgrade the RAM to 512mb?

[Tjobbe]

mwuauhaha

use a calculator, much faster.


no seriously, id suggest a new mother board and double the ram, at least..

[Pauly]

I use 1.5GB of DDR Ram, 2700 + AMD with 180GB total space over 2 HD's currently, planning on upgrading late next year.

[Tjobbe]

woo!

thats lots..


I had a VERY good tip from a friend of mine recently, this may come in handy to others too:

find a good motherboard, and build from that, contact the tech support dept of that motherboard and ask them waht hardware they used to test it, what gave the best results etc etc.

carefull they dont give you a "for best results, use our own brand of ram" kind of thing, try and get them to give you a genuine answer.

[Steve]

At the moment I am stuck with an AMD Athlon XP 1800+, 1.53 GHz and 256mb of RAM.

*snip*

So, what would be required, skill wise and financial wise to upgrade to somewhere in the region of 2GHz+ and also upgrade the RAM to 512mb?

Well, for your first goal of 2ghz, your not really that far off. The 1800 in your current processor means that it preforms at the same speed that an Intel 1.8ghz would.

To upgrade your ram, it depends on a lot of things, but I'm going to assume you have the standard config of 2 ram slots, and since you have 256, chances are you have 2 sticks of 128. In this case, I would ditch both of those and replace them with a min of 2 sticks of 256 for 512, but I suggest, expecially for design 2 sticks of 512 for 1gb.


Honestly, to upgrade your processor, there is a very good chance you will have to upgrade your motherboard to. The motherboard is probably the most difficult upgrade to do, and I don't suggest it to anyone, expecially if you don't know what your doing. Everythign from getting all the screws in the exact place (and only in the exact place, wrong screws could actually fry it) to placing the heat sink so your processor doesn't over heat....It's just to much taht can go wrong.

If I were in your shoes, I would upgrade your ram to 1gb and you'll be very pleased with the results. You can always upgrade the processor later if you really want to, but I think you'll be very pleased with just the ram, which might I add is the easiest upgrade you can do. Just pop em in and your done.

1gb ram will cost you about $200-250 USD


(and in case your wondering I use 2gb of ram with a P4M2ghz which preforms about 3.12 :) )

[sonicgroup]

I agree with Steve. If you haven't had experience installing a motherboard or processor, I'd either a) just go for the RAM, or b) find a nice local computer shop to do the upgrade for you (and don't go someplace like Best Buy, Future Shop, CompUSA, etc. - they'll charge you out the ass and do a crappy job besides - find a nice little hole in the wall mom and pop shop).

I've got an Athlon XP 2800+ Barton and 1 GB of RAM with about 300 GB of storage - smokin' 8)

[the_pm]

My year old, "bargain basement" computer has a 2.4 GHz. P-IV and 1Gb. of RAM, to go along with two 120 Gb. SATA RAID-1 configured hard drives. With the tower, 450 watt power supply, four fans and various amenities, the whole thing cost me about $1,100 US. Now that I think about it, my computer turned one year old less than a week ago :)

The motherboard can handle a processor as hot as 3.8 GHz., so a new processor and a second gig of RAM will be my next upgrade. That should keep me pretty cutting-edge for another couple years. I highly recommend the RAID-1 drives. It's a little extra protection against drive failure, something I learned the hard way last year. An external drive for backups/ghosting isn't a half bad idea either, if you have a little extra cash in the end.

[Jamie]

Thanks guys for the input. I think I will just stick with the RAM for now, I have had experience with that so as you say, very simple to install.

What I am worried about is whether the processor or motherboard could take 1gb of RAM? Maybe it doesn't matter, just wondering because as I say, i'm no hardware guru. ;)

[sonicgroup]

The processor doesn't care how much memory you have. Your motherboard will likely have limits, but typically they are at least 1 GB (sometimes up to 2 or 4 on mainstream boards).

[Jamie]

Thanks Dave. That is good to know then. :)

[websterworld]

Thats almost my exact setup.
I have an AMD Athalon 1800+ at 1.54 GHz, with 1GB RAM.

Its beautiful. Most stable system I ever had, I'm using it for almost two years now without any problems. (except that I had to replace a fan because of my own stupidity)

The RAM is the most important part, 256MB is really not enough. I had as much, and you feel the difference a lot when you upgrade to a gig.

The bottleneck of this system is the mobo, Gigabyte mobo's work best. GA-7VT600 is the one I have, very advanced and very good one.

The thing that most people don't understand is that they don't need so much power in the processor. All those hyped up chips with "hyper-threading" technology... you won't feel the difference with the stupid HT enabled chip, it will maybe improve your performance 5% at best.

The most important thing in a system is a good motherboard (should be the most expensive part, look to the future with this) and a generous amount of RAM.

Anything else is not that important, the AMD Athalon 1800+ is *more then enough* for most people.

The only reasons I'd agree with to getting a better chip is if you do 3D rendering/heavy duty video editing, or want a 64bit chip.

Otherwise your just playing right into the hardware makers hands.

[ethicaldesign]

Depending upon your existing motherboard you may be able to stick in an athlon 2500 Barton and overclock it to a 3200 without modifying the chip itself (up the fsb in the motherboard to 200). That's what I'm using at the moment (runs perfectly without any overheating or crashes - though you may need a better than standard stock cooler depending upon the airflow in your case and ambient room temperatures).

You can pick up one of those chips for less thant £50 in the UK and it'll give you all the power you'd get from a geniune 3200 chip (running at a little over 2GHz) or comparible to a 3.2GHz Intel (or so they say). Albeit a little hotter (but still capable of being kept cool with suitable airflow and a decent fan)

For ram you may not need to strip out the existing chips. If you've got 3 ram slots (as is often the case) and currently 256 you could stick in a single 512 module and that would bring it up to 768 (although probably not as fast as a couple of 512Mb matched modules running in dual chanel mode I think you'd likely still see quite a performance increase for general use as the scratch disk won't be used as often). Or a single 256 module would bring it up to 512 (though I'd recommend a GB if you can aford it because upwards of 512 seems to be where the real increase is felt - at least for what I'm using mine for).

Computer building/upgrading nowadays is pretty straightforward for even inexperienced people (at least compared to how it used to be). Most computer shops will fit new parts for you for a small charge aswell if you don't want to try it yourself (maybe only add an extra £10 to £30 ontop depending where you go).

If you can post the make and model number of your existing motherboard that'll help to get an idea of the options that might be open to you.

[Graham]

1.5GB is a *hell* of a lot of RAM, 512mb used to be seen as powerful and it has risen but I would recommend less than 1.5GB as unless you have a really good CPU, the memory is wasted.

My PC currently has an athlon XP 2000+ which was really good 2 years ago but CPUs especially AMD's have increased in speed so much that older cpu's are just looking older than they are.

I'm looking at upgrading a PC to a 3200+ but that might be pricey. For a home PC I would strongly recommend the new AMD sempron. These are aimed at the home user and are still fairly powerful.

If you need any more help hardwise wise, visit www.gm-pcs.co.uk (you may recognise it's new site after a bit of modernisation)

HTH

Graham

P.S. sales@gm-pcs.co.uk should come to me!

[ethicaldesign]

Regards the memory it really depends on what you're doing with it. If you're editing large graphic files for print use in photoshop, doing 3d work for example, or a number of other things that designers quite often need to do then you basically want as much memory as you can afford to cram in. I noticed a big increase in performance for some of these tasks when I went up to 1Gig. 1.5Gig isn't such a bit step away from that. The idea that memory will be wasted unless you have a really good cpu isn't really the case. Wasted memory will have more to do with what you're actually doing with the PC than it's relationship to the processor. If all you're doing on it is editing word documents with 1.5Gig installed then no matter how fast the processor you put in there most of it's still probably going to end up wasted. I know pmod's doing a lot more than editing word files and general office stuff :)

I personally wouldn't bother with a 3200+ athlon because the 2500 Barton will do the same job at a much lower price if you overclock it a little (unless you're talking about 64bit upgrades). Might lower the life expectancy of the chip a little ofcourse, but at £50 or something that's hardly an issue because by the time it fails (if at all) it'll likely be worth pennies anyway.

Also something to be aware of with the lower end AMD chips like the sempron (and intels lower end celerons) is that they are limited compared to Bartons or full Pentiums for certain design tasks where having a bigger on-chip cache will result in significant improvements.

I'm guessing these things might be important to Jamie, because he's already got a machine that would be perfectly adequate for home use without any additional upgrades, so if he's thinking of upgrading it's likely because he's not happy with that and is using it for design work where these factors come into play more.