What should I upgrade? And to what?

[Little Conqueror]

I have a great but several-years-old HP computer. Current specs are:

Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz
4GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM
ATI Radeon X850
160GB HD, nowhere near full
Sound Blaster Audigy
DVD+RW/CD-RW
48x CD-ROM
9-in-1 card reader

I don't want to get rid of this computer. It still runs pretty much everything released to day at top quality without any major performance issues. But I would like to upgrade it. I'm thinking probably the processor or perhaps the graphics card. I don't think the sound card really needs to be upgraded, because I can't use surround sound or whatnot.

Suggestions?

[Phayzon]

Is your card AGP or PCI-e?

[Little Conqueror]

AGP. I don't have PCI-e slots.

[Iggy]

What makes you think they need upgrades? By the looks of it I would only replace the CD-Rom player for a DVD-player.

[Mudsling3]

You got almost the top dog in that generation and bet you can play still most games in high detail. IMO it is pointless to upgrade. Save up until Vista and DX10.

[Kevin Wolff]

It still runs pretty much everything released to day at top quality without any major performance issues. But I would like to upgrade it.
*slaps knee* Funniest thing I've read all day. Do you even read what you type?

And what do you have 4GB of RAM for?

[dlink]

get 40 xtra gigs lol

[Phait]

And what do you have 4GB of RAM for?

I know LC works with music...

[avatar_58]

*slaps knee* Funniest thing I've read all day. Do you even read what you type?

And what do you have 4GB of RAM for?

I'm with Kevin, if it runs everything great then why upgrade? I say wait until it stops running smoothly and then go for a larger upgrade (which by that time will cost less).

[Foxy]

No point doing anything to that lot. Wait for DX10.

[Mr.Sociopath]

buy a new mouse pad :p
seriously.. I don,t see any reason why you'd upgrade..you like to buy expensive stuff just for the fun of it?

[Hudson]

Currently i've got:

Athlon64 3200+ (@ 3500+)
1.25gb PC-3200 DDR
BFG Tech GeForce 6800 Ultra OC (256 AGP)

Currently I can run anything I throw at it, and can max out every game with the exception of F.E.A.R., G.R.A.W. and a few others (soft shadows and games with acronyms, etc kill my framerate).

I'm waiting until either quad-cores become available or dual-core's become cheaper, as well as DX10 and i'm just building an entire new system from scratch. By then we'll see 1GB video cards and all sorts of other technological overkill. That way i'll have a nice system that won't be outdated for at LEAST three or four days.

Could I upgrade this? Sure, however it would be like putting a bandaid on a broken leg.

[Addicted Gamer]

what for you have 4GB seriously? :P
because 32bit XP can handle only 2gb physical memory, as well as 64bit uses 2gb physical memory for programs/games and 2gb is kept for Windows all the time. kinda pointless :)

[Damien_Azreal]

Yeah, your PC is doing more addressing that much RAM instead of benefiting from it.
You could easily drop down to 2gb and still have a great system.

[Hudson]

Using extreme excess amounts of RAM can actually hinder your performance IIRC.

[Damien_Azreal]

Yep, that's the main reason I only went with 2 gigs instead of 4.

[dark_angel]

Wait for DirectX 10 cards to appear and then upgrade your whole system.
You can always overclock your CPU to gain extra framerates ( seeing that your CPU is slightly holding back your VGA).

[Little Conqueror]

I know LC works with music...

Yeah, I'm using some high-quality samples in my work now. I could get away with 2GB, but the 4GB seems to really be helping. I've even taken out two of the 1GB sticks to see if I had any performance increase or decrease, and I found that it actually took me a lot longer to compile my songs.

[Hudson]

Working with media in general (may it be audio, movies or images) more RAM is a must have.. I was referring to general use and mainly gaming.

[Addicted Gamer]

Working with media in general (may it be audio, movies or images) more RAM is a must have.. I was referring to general use and mainly gaming.

Yes!
But you forgot that we're dealing with Windows here - OSX under Mac and newer Linux distros can handle big ram very well (and Vista).

[Hudson]

This is true.

[Little Conqueror]

Nobody thinks I should go dual core/64-bit/whatever? I know absolutely nothing about the hardware side, so I don't know how I'd go about upgrading to be PCI-e compatible or whatever.

[IHerman]

I'd love to have that machine.

Windows XP (non 64) can only handle 3Gb of RAM though. A 64-bit setup would enable you to use the remaining Gb.

[Hudson]

Nobody thinks I should go dual core/64-bit/whatever? I know absolutely nothing about the hardware side, so I don't know how I'd go about upgrading to be PCI-e compatible or whatever.

If you upgrade now, I would definitely recommend a dual core system with a PCI-E video card. Preferably AMD and nVidia.

[Little Conqueror]

I'd love to have that machine.

Windows XP (non 64) can only handle 3Gb of RAM though. A 64-bit setup would enable you to use the remaining Gb.

I just checked, and it showed I only have 3GB. WTF? If you hadn't told me, I would never have known.

Hudson, what part of the system would I upgrade then? The mobo? The processor? Both?

[Kristian Joensen]

I would get a quad core CPU and a GF8800GTX(or perhaps two running in SLI), the cpu would probably require new MOBO aswell.

As for your ram related question you need a 64 bit os(aswell as a processor to run it).

Edit:

Any quad core processor would be 64 bit.

[IHerman]

I just checked, and it showed I only have 3GB. WTF? If you hadn't told me, I would never have known.We've had server issues here I investigated, otherwise I wouldn't have known either. I'm actually sorry for being right on this one. We still have 4Gb in that server by the way, 1 Gb just isn't used...

I'm not sure a quad core would give you that much of a performance gain. Set up some RAID 0 stuff. I'm not really into that, I just know it's possible to connect two hard-drives to act as one, and gain a shitload of speed that way. I know it exists and you're very likely to benefit from it more than you would with 4 cores instead of 2. There'd be plety of people here to tell you how it works.

[Kristian Joensen]

Isn't it true that media applications often make good use of parallelism and multi/-processor/multi-core systems ?

[Nessus]

Do you have a really nice computer chair? A beautiful monitor? a good qaulity surround sound system? There's more than just internals to the computing experience.

You seem to be good on hardware for now unless you have a lot of disposable money. Go buy yourself a nice new synthesizer if you have that itch for new toy.

[Dogy]

Only problem I see is your processor.

Also, take a good look at Nessus's post.

[Phait]

Do you have two widescreen monitors? I tell ya, editing music on that span is great :D Got mine for $200 each.

[Twin]

seriously, with that spec machine i don't think you need an upgrade just yet...

just save your money and when the big games comes out (crysis, DNF etc) then go for it and splash out everything you've saved a huge upgrade or even brand new PC...

my specs are the same as hudsons though i still have a geforce 6600 gt... and it can pretty much run every game i throw at it with a decent enough performance...

i say wait, unless you REALLY need to upgrade for other reasons like video editing and animation (but your rig is fast enough for that aswell :p )

[John]

Nobody thinks I should go dual core/64-bit/whatever?

You're just looking for reasons to spend your money, aren't ya? :p

[FireFly]

Isn't it true that media applications often make good use of parallelism and multi/-processor/multi-core systems ?
Yes, if you spend $1000 on a Core 2 QX6700 you'll be able to shave a few seconds off those iTunes encode times :p

[Kristian Joensen]

Hahaha :) :cool:

But seriously I once heard Pinnacle (http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Home/) mentioned as getting a 60% improvement with dual core processors. I am also sure modeling/animation packages, ray tracers, serious sound editing programs, etc will benefit greatly from Dual core and Quad core.

Future games will also make great uses of both of quad core and the GF8800.

Multi-threading is the direction of Epic, Valve AND id and therby for those developers using their engines.

Games ported from the PS3 and Xbox 360 will likely also be multi-theaded.

[FireFly]

Yes, but unless you're buying a system for professional editing work, you won't see those performance benefits for a while. I think it's better to wait because you'll either be able to buy the same quad-core CPU for less, or you'll be able to pick up a faster model.