Posted: 12/19/2010 9:30:40 PM EDT
Ok, dealing with a 6.5 year old Alienware Area 51 
Budget: $275-400 Basic specs: OS: Windows XP Motherboard: Asus P4C800-E Processors: 2 x Pentium 4 3.2Ghz 1MB L2 Cache 800Mhz Memory: 2 x 512 DDR PC3200 (Corsair) HD: Seagate Barracuda 120GB SATA (rpm ? prob 5400) Video: ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB I am thinking the memory upgrade is the first obvious choice. I have 4 slots that I can bump up to 1GB each. Any brand recommendations? The motherboard and processors aren't going to change just due to cost. Maybe upgrade the hard drive and get the OEM Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit ? or video card to one with 1GB of on-board memory? Not looking to game, just looking to have another viable computing option. What you say friends? |
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Keep the case and power supply and disk drive, and replace the rest. Upgrading at this stage seems to be false economy. On edit: I didn't read carefully enough. RAM is pretty much RAM. Buy the ones in spec and bump it to 4GB. Do a clean install of XP and call it good. |
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I tried a thread like this a while ago and it died real fast.
Here is what I purchased to upgrade my PC AMD Phenom II 955 Black (Quad core 3.2GHz) $154.99 4GB DDR3 1600MHz (2x 2GB) $74.99 MSI 870A-G54 $99.99 $329.97 Came from a P4 3.4HT Prescott and an Intel 945-PSN with 2GB RAM. The video card is just a basic GeForce GT240 |
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Upgrade the RAM to 3-4GB (Win XP can't use much above 3gb), Win7 64 bit will use all 4GB. DDR memory is getting kind of pricey, though.
Newer 7200 RPM HDD, with decent cache. New CPU's won't have any more speed than what you have, just more cores, and with the still current lack of multithreaded apps, all they are good for is multitasking. Unless you do a lot of gaming, don't bother with the GPU. Especially as you prabably have a AGP slot, not a PCIe slot. |
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Throw it away and start over.
Not much you can use... You have DDR1 RAM. DDR2 is now over priced because it is so old. DDR3 is better and cheaper than DDR2. DDR1? You will spend a lot of cash on that alone. You'll need a new motherboard and CPU for that. And AGP is not used anymore. You'll need a new video card. XP sucks, get Win 7. You'll need a better PSU. Don't skimp on the PSU and get a no name brand. Get something like an Antec. You will need SATA compatible hard drives and DVD drives - IDE is no longer used thankfully. You might need a new case to. You'll end up throwing a lot of money at it. The results: an old expensive POS. Just build your own new PC. I spent $900 on my PC 2 years ago, and I can still run just about any game I want. Oh, and my video card cost me $250 alone. If you do not play games, you can get a $50 one. That brings you down to $700. The AMD CPUs are cheap and work nicely. Not as good as the Intel ones, but they cost less. You can easily get a nice 100% new PC for $600. Quoted:
New CPU's won't have any more speed than what you have, just more cores, and with the still current lack of multithreaded apps, all they are good for is multitasking. . Wrong. One of my AMD 9950's 2.6GHZ cores is faster than a single Pentium 4 3.2GHZ core. You need to look at nm, L1, L2 and now L3 cache. GHZ alone doesn't mean much. And plenty of applications can use multi cores. |
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Win XP wont use or show anything over 2-3Gb (can't remember which)
You'll have to run 32bit version of Win 7. Pretty sure that mobo won't run 64bit version. Your not going to see a performance increase in upgrading your HD. Even if its a 5400 rpm and you upgrade to a 10k. Your write times, read times and transfer times will end up being bottlenecked to a point. You may see a 5-30 sec difference depending on file size. Also upgrading you GPU (video card) may not work as well as you think because it will also be bottlenecked by your CPU's. 512mb vs 1gb card, you may not see much of a gain. Your best best is to save the money you would spend on a HD and GPU and buy a new Mobo and CPU. Everything works together. Upgrading just one piece doesn't make the system better. |
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I have this video card sitting to the side not being used:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127490&cm_re=5770-_-14-127-490-_-Product I still have the original box for it and whatnot. I used it for about 2 months before jumping to an even higher-end video card. If you're interested in it, PM me and we can discuss a reasonable price. I even slapped copper heatsinks on it and replaced the stock TIM with Shin-Etsu X23. It's a great card.
If you want to upgrade your hard drive, you should consider getting this drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319&cm_re=black_caviar-_-22-136-319-_-Product It's the drive I'm using as my OS drive in my $2000 build. :) As for a brand recommendation on memory? G.Skill is my #1 recommendation with Corsair being #2. |
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I have an intel Q9770 3.2giggle hurts processor
Bad ass tripple SLI Motherboard 790 chipset Duel GTX 9800 cards in SLI Lian Li case Nice PSU and two sticks of "XTREME!! 1600mhz DDR3 All waiting for you to purchase at a bargain price of $300 Shipping would be a few bucks though!!
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Your best best is to save the money you would spend on a HD and GPU and buy a new Mobo and CPU. Yep. Save a bit of scratch and get yourself a LGA1366 mobo ($200) and an Intel Core i7 930 CPU ($200). Then you can upgrade to DDR triple-channel RAM (6 GB = $120). Your new mobo will be able to accept a PCI-E x16 slot for a new, faster video card like the AMD Radeon HD 5770 ($150). You'll want to upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit ($100) so you can take full advantage of RAM over 3.5 GB. You can re-use your case and HDD if you want but I'd opt for a main drive of 1 TB ($60) for extra breathing room. If you have any money left over then I'd spend it on a CPU cooler so you can overclock the Core i7 930. |
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Your best best is to save the money you would spend on a HD and GPU and buy a new Mobo and CPU. Yep. Save a bit of scratch and get yourself a LGA1366 mobo ($200) and an Intel Core i7 930 CPU ($200). Then you can upgrade to DDR triple-channel RAM (6 GB = $120). Your new mobo will be able to accept a PCI-E x16 slot for a new, faster video card like the AMD Radeon HD 5770 ($150). You'll want to upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit ($100) so you can take full advantage of RAM over 3.5 GB. You can re-use your case and HDD if you want but I'd opt for a main drive of 1 TB ($60) for extra breathing room. If you have any money left over then I'd spend it on a CPU cooler so you can overclock the Core i7 930. I will have to check on some availability and prices. ie: I picked up a weekend job at Best Buy for the holidays and would like to see if I can get any of those at employee pricing. |
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Your best best is to save the money you would spend on a HD and GPU and buy a new Mobo and CPU. Yep. Save a bit of scratch and get yourself a LGA1366 mobo ($200) and an Intel Core i7 930 CPU ($200). Then you can upgrade to DDR triple-channel RAM (6 GB = $120). Your new mobo will be able to accept a PCI-E x16 slot for a new, faster video card like the AMD Radeon HD 5770 ($150). You'll want to upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit ($100) so you can take full advantage of RAM over 3.5 GB. You can re-use your case and HDD if you want but I'd opt for a main drive of 1 TB ($60) for extra breathing room. If you have any money left over then I'd spend it on a CPU cooler so you can overclock the Core i7 930. I will have to check on some availability and prices. ie: I picked up a weekend job at Best Buy for the holidays and would like to see if I can get any of those at employee pricing. Cool. If you have a MicroCenter store near you, I don't think BB's employee pricing can go that low so check them out if you want to buy a Core i7 930. MicroCenter sells the Core i7 930 as a loss leader, at $199 (normal street pricing is like $275). The only catch is that you can only buy in-store, not online. |
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Your best best is to save the money you would spend on a HD and GPU and buy a new Mobo and CPU. Yep. Save a bit of scratch and get yourself a LGA1366 mobo ($200) and an Intel Core i7 930 CPU ($200). Then you can upgrade to DDR triple-channel RAM (6 GB = $120). Your new mobo will be able to accept a PCI-E x16 slot for a new, faster video card like the AMD Radeon HD 5770 ($150). You'll want to upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit ($100) so you can take full advantage of RAM over 3.5 GB. You can re-use your case and HDD if you want but I'd opt for a main drive of 1 TB ($60) for extra breathing room. If you have any money left over then I'd spend it on a CPU cooler so you can overclock the Core i7 930. I will have to check on some availability and prices. ie: I picked up a weekend job at Best Buy for the holidays and would like to see if I can get any of those at employee pricing. Cool. If you have a MicroCenter store near you, I don't think BB's employee pricing can go that low so check them out if you want to buy a Core i7 930. MicroCenter sells the Core i7 930 as a loss leader, at $199 (normal street pricing is like $275). The only catch is that you can only buy in-store, not online. Nadda. However, my sister lives in DC, so she might be to swing by on my behalf. Thanks for the heads up. Much appreciated. As far as memory goes, are any brands better than others or any worth avoiding? PNY, Corsair, Kingston, etc? ETA: how is this setup? THIS |
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New CPU's won't have any more speed than what you have, just more cores, and with the still current lack of multithreaded apps, all they are good for is multitasking. . Wrong. One of my AMD 9950's 2.6GHZ cores is faster than a single Pentium 4 3.2GHZ core. You need to look at nm, L1, L2 and now L3 cache. GHZ alone doesn't mean much. And plenty of applications can use multi cores. AMD's have a history of more efficient processing, but what I said is still true. CPU's have not maintained Moores law for a few years now - show me an AMD or Intel CPU that has DOUBLED it's speed in the past 18 (or even 24) months. Speed is dead. It reached a real limit. Multi cores are the only gain, and tell me how many mainstream apps use multithreads? Can you name 10 of them? Deal with reality. |
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New CPU's won't have any more speed than what you have, just more cores, and with the still current lack of multithreaded apps, all they are good for is multitasking. . Wrong. One of my AMD 9950's 2.6GHZ cores is faster than a single Pentium 4 3.2GHZ core. You need to look at nm, L1, L2 and now L3 cache. GHZ alone doesn't mean much. And plenty of applications can use multi cores. AMD's have a history of more efficient processing, but what I said is still true. CPU's have not maintained Moores law for a few years now - show me an AMD or Intel CPU that has DOUBLED it's speed in the past 18 (or even 24) months. Speed is dead. It reached a real limit. Multi cores are the only gain, and tell me how many mainstream apps use multithreads? Can you name 10 of them? Deal with reality. Really? You clearly don't have a full grasp on this and the "deal with reality" remark at the end was cute. I'll point out one major thing wrong with your response first. Moores law doesn't state that the speed of a processor is doubled. It states that the number of transistors on a chip will be doubled. While this does somewhat equate to speed its not a direct and simple correlation. Yes with a single core processor doubling the number of transistors on a chip with increase the speed of it. Now, with multi-core processors this means that each core is now basically a processor in itself and work much much efficiently. More transistors=more cores......for now. GHz stays relatively the same, but instead of processing one line of instruction at a time it can handle 2/3/4/6 and so on depending on the number of cores. What was stated by the above poster is actually correct. Take a 2/3/4/6 core processor and put it up against a single core. You will see multi-core will win out in bench tests every time The reason you don't see much software for multi-core is they haven't caught up yet. The Hardware vs Software race is constant One will always be in the lead while the other plays catch-up, and the roles constantly switch. But I'll answer your question on that too. Most all video/audio encoding/editing software. Most 3D rendering software. Basically any software that is used to get "real" work done. Mainstream software such as games are starting to catch on and you will see a larger base of those within the next year. |
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As far as memory goes, are any brands better than others or any worth avoiding? PNY, Corsair, Kingston, etc? ETA: how is this setup? THIS The link is busted so I can't see what setup you've got there. Looks like a Core i7 870 and mobo bundle. I'd have to see what mobo you're buying but so long as you are comfortable with the limits of the LGA1156 socket you should be fine. FYI the LGA1156 socket is basically dead after 2010 because Intel will be introducing a new socket (LGA2011) in 2011. The LGA1366, while more expensive in the CPU and mobo department, will live at least through 2011 –– and has the advantage of accepting Intel's current 6-core CPU. IMO the LGA1366 has a richer upgrade path BUT it will hit you in the wallet harder. You need to make the cost/benefit work for you. As for memory, I don't have a real preference. I run Patriot memory in my current PC and in the past I have used Kingston RAM. I'm sure any big manufacturer will do well. If you really want to check out benchmarks then zip over to Maximum PC magazine's website. They usually have a ton of shootouts, with good bench data. |