Upgrading Suggestions Required Plz

[Barry Hunter]

Folks,

I have the following spec. What I'm looking for is suggestions on what would be the best single thing to upgrade to effect overall system performance. I presume the CPU but that is only a semi-educated guess.

WinXP Pro
Asus A7V333 Mboard
512Mb RAM
GeForce 4 Ti4200 GCard
Athlon 1.4G Processor
IBM 40Gig 7200 HD

Cheers all

Barry

[Roger Faucher]

Barry:

You're right. The simplistic solution would be to replace your processor with a faster one. However, if your hard disk drive is over 90% full and causing your performance problem(s), you'll be disappointed.

Tell us more about how you use your system and what specific complaints you have and we'll be able to guide you better.

HTH

Roger

[Ronald Postma]

Hi there,
I agree completly, your motherboard support to 2Ghz. a XP2000+ would be nice I think
I always keep my disk under 80% full to keep my system work properly.
Your motherboard support to 3GB of RAM, if you use programs that use a lot of mem, it wil also help to upgrade that.

[Barry Hunter]

Thanks folks,

Roger - The HD is only 75% full so thats not too bad. The system is mainly for gaming to be honest. I bought a Ti4200 to replace a Ti500 that went pop but the performance doesnt seem as good. I would have figured on an improvement if anything. The system just lags from time to time - like takeing a couple of seconds to open a menu in windows and stuff like that.

Ronald - Thanks for the info. Although I though and Athlon XP2000 was only a 1.67G CPU. Don't I need at least a XP2400 for 2G?

Once again, thanx chaps.

Barry

[Ronald Postma]

I did not have the right figures with me, I know a 2000+ works under 2GHZ but I did not know wich one is working on 2Ghz. Should have pointed that out, sorry for the bad choice of words.

If your disk is 75% full, your lacks during opening menu's can also come by a fragmented drive.
If I were you I will delete everything you do not use (temp files and maybe some progs.)
Then defrag your HD
if you want to see how fragmantated your disk is you can type the follwing at 'Run' in the startmenu: defrag c:

You can also go to the properties of you C drive and go to the 'Extra' tab. Choose deframentation. It will also analyse your disk before it will start defragmentation.

[Roger Faucher]

Barry:

FWIW, I recently picked up a 250GB Western Digital drive for ~$150 (I did have to wait for the $100 rebate). My point is that if your budget allows it, you may want to consider a larger HDD. I have had very good results using ebay for computer parts. If you shop around, you may be able to find an 80GB drive for under $50. When purchasing an IDE (ATAPI) HDD drive, look for 7200RPM, UDMA100 (or higher), and the biggest buffer you can get (8MB?). Make sure your system has the new IDE cable with a blue, a black, and a gray connector.

Roger