I am trying to decide if it is worth upgrading my system, or if I should buy a new one alltogether. What are the bottle necks for the current configuration? What should I change to make it handle graphics intensive applications better? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks! This is my system configuration: Processor a Main Circuit Board b 1.67 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP 128 kilobyte primary memory cache 256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: ECS K7VMM+ 3.1 Bus Clock: 133 megahertz BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T 04/02/01 Drives Memory Modules c,d 40.01 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity SAMSUNG CD-R/RW SW-252B [CD-ROM drive] 3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive] WDC [Hard drive] (40.02 GB) -- drive 0, s/n WD, rev 06.04G06, SMART Status: Healthy 768 Megabytes Installed Memory Slot '0' has 512 MB Slot '1' has 256 MB Slot '2' is Empty Slot '3' is Empty Local Drive Volumes c: (on drive 0) 40.01 GB Controllers Display Standard floppy disk controller Primary IDE Channel [Controller] Secondary IDE Channel [Controller] VIA Bus Master IDE Controller VISIONTEK XTASY RADEON 9100 [Display adapter]
Well it depends on how much money your willing spend on it! What sort of graphic intensive applications? Games? What are you going to primarily use it for? Do you want a bigger Hard Drive?
Yes, games are the most demanding application. I can get a bigger hd, but since the mb does not support the newer (sata) ones I would only do it if I felt I could also boost overall performance a bit. I would be tempted to buy a better video card, for example, but the board takes only AGP 4x... so I don't know how much I can do there. Any suggestions on video cards?
Well maybe not a new computer per say but you can Upgrade the mobo and CPU for sure! You can get some good Socket 939 Boards from ASUS or ABIT, an A64 3000+ CPU and a GF 6600GT! If you were to get all that you would of course need a new PSU unless you already have a good one! Would that suit your needs? Other than that you pretty much have the basic components needed for an upgrade!
yeah the system is a little dated and you'd need to upgrade the motherboard to get better graphics, then that might mean getting a new CPU and a new PSU to power it, you could then look for a mothboard with SATA connectors (pretty much all new motherboards have them) so you can get a new HDD, I'd say for basic gaming *AMD64 3000+ (socket 939 for future upgrades but if you dont want to upgrade then socket 754 is fine) *Any good motherboard...Abit, Asus, Gigabyte, DFI etc... *GeForce 6600 (GT or ultra for better performance) *Bigger HDD (Seagate/Western Digital SATA) *Good branded PSU (see this thread http://www.hardwareforums.com/showthread.php?t=5218 for advice on that) *Better cooling from the likes of Arctic Cooling (VGA cooler and new CPU cooler for lower temps, plus some Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound to lower temps that little bit more) EDIT: Maybe a new sound card if you want it as well...
