Whats the first thing you'd upgrade?

Here's my current config. Whats the first thing you would upgrade?

[list]
[*] AMD Duron 800Mhz
[*] Crucial 256DDR 333
[*] Abit NF7-S mobo
[*] WD 20gig HDD 7200rpm
[*] GeForce 4 MX440 64mb DDR w/TV out PCI card (2 rendering pipelines :sad: )
[*] 52x24x52x / 16x CD-RW/DVD combo drive
[*] 300Watt PSU (without 12volt mobo 4-pin plug)
[] s*ty case (PSU sits on its side in front of mobo not on top, giving CPU cooler about 1 inch before it touches the PSU)
I can play games like CS with pod bot and RU without a problem. But games like Halo play soo poorly that I cant play 'em. I have a demo for Unreal 2 and Breed and those play with a little bit of lag but not so much as to prevent gameplay.

the microprocessor.. it is seriously under the mobo maximums.

Oh definately the PSU. You gotta have a great PSU. :biggrin:

I'd go processor and then double the ram. There's no such thing as too much ram...

Yak_Fighter said:
I'd go processor and then double the ram. There's no such thing as too much ram...

Baaarr!!! Yes I recently wanted to get me some more ram, but it would of cost me like ?50 for 256SDRAM. I was a bit narked as recently I thought the prices had dropped.

So if I got a second stick of Crucial 256DDR 333 ram...

What about the processor?

Obviously I have (and want) to stay with AMD cause IMO I get the better deal from them.

But what processor could I go for?

Athlon XP 2100 333Mhz for 101.00$ (Can)
Athlon XP 2500 333Mhz for 136.00$ (Can)
Athlon XP 2700 333Mhz for 183.00$ (Can)

Since I have almost no money, and dont want to spend everything I have on computers... I am definatly thinking the 2700 is out of the question. But then should I go for the 2500 cause its faster for little bit more or is there not much difference between the 2100 and the 2500?

check the clock speeds of the plus series AMD chips, some chips run faster and have smaller numbers..

IE a 2400+ runs at 2.0 ghz, but a 2500+ only runs at 1.8 ghz

check these prices

Bah, I'll continue spending my money on three "upgrades" for a while yet:

• Badminton rackets, grips, strings and shuttles.
• Caving gear
• Diving gear

I don't upgrade my PC - I just wait for it to become so old that everything is obsolete :biggrin:

Badminton - each shuttle costs ?1; each towelling grip costs ?3 (wear out fast); stringing costs ?20; rackets ?80 each.
Caving - cheaper than diving, but still looking at ?400-?1000 for a complete set of expedition-level kit.
Diving - shudder all my kit/training cost me ?1000, and that's without my own regulator, tanks, blobs, line, ponies......

So you can see why I don't spend much money on my PC these days.

Gollum said:
Bah, I'll continue spending my money on three "upgrades" for a while yet:

• Badminton rackets, grips, strings and shuttles.
• Caving gear
• Diving gear

I don't upgrade my PC - I just wait for it to become so old that everything is obsolete :biggrin:

including its owner

/runs

You may jest Orph, but you have a point too. I've not played many of the recent games because my system is too slow to do them justice. This way, I get left behind in mapping :/

for general system performance, get more ram- especially if you are running XP on that thing.

and the faster cpu is a good bet, if that mobo can handle one significantly faster.

2 things definately...

1) my house...with all the snow lately, im aging before my time....hawaii sounds good....or maybe arizona

2) i'd buy a muzzle for my wife, to keep her from bitching about all the snow lately, me aging before my time, and not moving to...hawaii...

ok....3 things then...

3) i'd just go server and network (profeesional style) with all my crapy little parts sitting in.....the dumpster....

:wink:

Doc B... :dodgy:

Dr Brasso said:
ok....3 things then...

3) i'd just go server and network (profeesional style) with all my crapy little parts sitting in.....the dumpster....

:wink:

Doc B... :dodgy:

speaking of crappy parts, i never recieved the one from you, tis no biggie, if you forgot to send it, but if you sent it and it costed you, please feel free to complain to the postal service..

whaaaa??? the mo'bo??? bulls**t...i sent it ages ago!!!!

doc B

hell jon that was waaaay before xmas even

Dr Brasso said:
whaaaa??? the mo'bo??? bulls**t...i sent it ages ago!!!!

doc B

hell jon that was waaaay before xmas even

well bud, i wasn't being rude, i simply forgot till now..

you might inquire at the post office.

sorry bud.

s**t damn and f**k a duck.....grrrr.....well, i insured it at least....honestly, it slipped my mind too....i have another, so ill get on it....this time itll be "sign for this freakin thing" mail....certified....ok?

Doc B...

Dr Brasso said:
s**t damn and f**k a duck.....grrrr.....well, i insured it at least....honestly, it slipped my mind too....i have another, so ill get on it....this time itll be "sign for this freakin thing" mail....certified....ok?

Doc B...

dude, its not important enuff to worry over, i am just sad it costed you, and its lost.

do me a favor, try to find the original first, it makes me feel badly already.

deal?

hell, why should YOU feel bad....i should have sent it certified in the firstplace....ill look into it, its the same as the other i have sitting here anyway, so ill take care of both...sorry man, it never occured to me you hadnt gotten it....

Doc B....

Dr Brasso said:
hell, why should YOU feel bad....i should have sent it certified in the firstplace....ill look into it, its the same as the other i have sitting here anyway, so ill take care of both...sorry man, it never occured to me you hadnt gotten it....

Doc B....

well as i said, i forgot, so... it wasn't missed .

thanx doc, for all the trouble :smile:

pfftt...stop it would ya?....aint no trouble at all....i love yelling at the postal workers....they take it better than most.... ...experience counts... :wink:

Doc B... :dodgy:

Dr Brasso said:
pfftt...stop it would ya?....aint no trouble at all....i love yelling at the postal workers....they take it better than most.... ...experience counts... :wink:

Doc B... :dodgy:

just do me a favor, leave the uzi at home this time, i just don't see bubba leaving your butt alone this time.

/runs very fast

He's out of ammo anyways...

Hey whats this thunderbird, and barton stuff they talk about?

Ram . . . always Ram first.

The processor is not as important as ram, being that the processes to write the information from the memory to the hard drive (VMM, because the ram ran out of space) will take longer to get to. I would suggest updating the Processor, but if I chose one thing it would be RAM. If you had double the ram in there you'd notice a major difference. In all actuality (not to pick on anyone or anything) a 2ghz processor doesn't do s**t. It sits idle most of the time waiting for crap to come back from memory, and if it isn't in memory its on the harddrive using VMM, so obviously the key is to keep more stuff in memory via getting more ram.

Just to clairify:

If you had 2 computers, same everything except ram and processor:
1st: 800 mgz 2nd: 1.5 ghz
1st: 758 Mb Ram 2nd: 128Mb Ram

These computers would run at about the same speed, with high run time applications anyway (games).

the thing is, for Video quality crap that is mostly handled by the video card, thus it having it's own processor and ram. The actual games load on the system isn't too grand, and that ram would easily cover it.

If you don't believe me, look at the 64-Bit architechtures emergine.

An 64-bit Itanium chip is clocked at 1ghz (max really), that runs about the same speed as a 3ghz 32-bit processor.

The difference is 32-bit arch is what you're using now (X86). all this means is that the ram is broken up into chunks of 32-bits.
Now, you can imagine what the 64 means in 64-bit based on that.

Now, after the CS lesson . . . I do recommend, if you had to choose, to upgrade the Ram for a more immediate performance boost. Now if we're talkin' money, well upgrading the processor is cheaper hands down (Because they're not as important to be honest). It seems that your board is fine and your ram is obviously a good speed. . .the other thing is, if you did buy a new processor you wouldn't need anything above 1.5-1.6 ghz
nothing requires more processesing then that, unless you're running a server or a world sim or some junk. (that stuff leads to multi-processors which allow pipelining which makes it even faster (cuts time in about half if done correctly) imagine a pipelined 64-bit arch . . . damn nice).

so my final suggestions are
Ram: 256Mb, or 512Mb PC 2700 (333Mgz)

and if you're aimin' for a processor
AMD XP (Athlon) 2000 (it runs at 1.6ghz)

You can find these (at least here, in my state, probably online too) for about a total of $120 max. Ram is expensive right now though, I think there's a resource demand at the moment.

But if you just want a quick performance jump ram is the way to go, you might say, you can always add ram, yes you can, but you can also always add a CPU (as long as the board takes it of course), but ram will ALWAYS give a better performance increase, especially when playing games. . . .

I hope that helps.

Sorry for the long drawn out post.

Wild Card said:
Hey whats this thunderbird, and barton stuff they talk about?

thunderbird is great, barton is better still, i think.

what you need to do is:

• look your particular mobo up via google
• verify it is exactly your board
• look at its stats closely, note what are its ranges, in particular processor sizes, and FSB speeds
• thunderbirds runs at blah,blah speeds, and bartons are even faster, as i understand it, you cannot put a barton into a thunderbird board (although, i am still learning myself, i could be mistaken)
• remember what i said, 2400+ is faster than 2500+
• you already have an 800 duron, you might do well to go with a 1.? duron (although i see no advantage, other than its bus speed setting confusions.)
• bus speeds are all important

this should get you going..

hope it helps

Thunderbird and Barton are different . . . er . . . flavors of AMD processors.

Breakdown:

AMD XP >= Intel Celeron (but the XP has math registries lol)
AMD Barton >= Intel P4 (the AMD has a larger L1 cache)

AMD Thunderbird if I'm not mistaken is an old outdated type of AMD processor, like the Duron, it has minor tweaks from the Athlons. I think durons are only used in laptops now, if at all.

Also, In all cases, AMD's are cheaper and have bigger caches.
(Even though the AMD price might be like 10 bucks more with the barton on occation, they come with retail cooling fans, most P4's are OEM and don't, and P4 fans are expensive as f**k.)

Again I hope that helps

Oh, if you're looking for server stuff, look towards the Opteron ( i think I spelt that right) for 64-bit servers, They also have a 64-bit Athlon, which, amazingly, can run 32-bit applications at least as well as the 32-bit Athlon, Intel's Itanium can't run most 32-bit applications because of the way you code for it.

There's also the Athlon MP, which is made for a multiprocessing 32-bit system. too bad not much stuff is made for piplining or else that would be a sweet buy, taking that the MP's cost less then the XPs at the moment.

I have the NF7-S board and it says it takes Duron, Athlon, and Athlon XP. But I guess I might go with the extra ram,... grr.. its 70$ though. :sad:

What would be the performance increase from adding a second stick of 256 vs getting a faster processor... Like for games.. cause alot of games now are recommending something like 1.2Ghz CPU's and I have a s**tty Duron 800 lol. And at the moment I dont have enough money to get 2 upgrades.

I'm not exactly sure what the specific are of the increase.
Hmm. if you had an insane amount of ram (512 would bust you up to 758, you said you had 256, right?) you would notice a giant increase.

See, the other thing is, it also heavily relies on your video card. If you have an amazing video card, then I would say so. By the way game specs are wrong lol. I know that sounds weird, but they are. they usually include a processor speed because it's the norm at the moment, or they want you to have a certain frequency of ram to go with it. such as, the fast your ram can read and write the faster everything goes. Most people have boards and processors which reflect their ram, you don't.

I'm pretty sure, I'd have to test it though and I can't at the moment, that you'd be able to run most games out if you upgraded your ram, and your video card is decent, which I'm sure it is . . . (I'll go up and look after I finish the post).

I can give you an example if you like.

My old computer was a 533mhz with something like 320mb of ram. at the time people were making fun of me because it was a 533 celeron, I told them to eat ass, but other then that, they were full of it. SImply because of this. I ran games faster then they did half the time. And it was because I had almost double the ram. Your situation is a little different, because your rams frequency is quite high (comparitive to 133 or 2100). So, as far as I can guess, you'll notice a nice big jump in performace increase, but to keep your processes low (damn windows background programs) you should kill most other programs while running a game that requires mundo resources. depending on your video card, you could easily play Halo, Call of Duty, or Far Cry for that matter. Because ram is where it counts :biggrin:

And, you can look at it this way as well. Even if you upgraded your systems CPU, you wouldn't need to change the board, it would just be a CPU, but the ram is going to be there for much longer, maybe a couple generations even.

So, I can't really tell you exactly the performance you're going to get, because I've never even seen your computer, I don't know your habits of using it or anything like that. But based on simple hardware, I would say, the increase is worth the money, as opposed to buying a new processor that wont do much (now you do understand that upgrading either will increase performance, I'm just stating that the performace increase will be more noticable with more ram, and more relevent to be honest.)

I hope that helps. mm damn, I need more ram too lol. 72 bucks for 512 (thats how much it is at a local hardware store, and I do mean a computer hardware store, not circuit city or some crap), I have the same frequency as you too.
mmm 1.24 gb of ram . . . that'd be sweet.

If you need another anaology of why the ram space is more important I can give the freeway analogy, just say so, It's gotten a lot of people I know to wise up, and they're much happoer since they did (it's saved them somewhere around 2000 bucks). :biggrin:

[EDIT]
Oh wait, yikes! 256 is $70?? woah . . . well I still suggest upgrading the ram, but shop around for it. If you can't find a decent price, wait, it'll go down. Or you could just blow the same 70 on a XP2000 . . . but, I think you should wait, either way everything will be cheaper. (Yikes, sorry about not noticing that.)

Now will the increase be noticable with only 256 more, so, you'd have 512 total? that would probably run the same speed as if you didn't upgrad your ram and bought a 1.4ghz processor (XP1700 I believe). So it's really up to you, I strongly suggest waiting though if you don't have much money.
[/EDIT]

[EDIT #2]
by the way, you don't have to get Crucial brand memory. You can get whatever kind, there is retail, which is basically what you would call a no-name, but the thing is, it doesn't matter, it should run the same (obviously crucial, kingston and so on have minor optimazations, but they're not enough to be noticed by a human's senses).
So that should chepen up the ram purchasing by about 20 bucks or so.
[/EDIT #2]

Well I know my ram is 333Mhz, but right now because of the Duron, its running at 200Mhz (or so says the memory check stuff on boot up)

The other thing that worries me is the video card. Cause alot of ppl are telling me its a bad vid cause its PCI and its only 64mb. I guess I will go with RAm then at the moment anyways. Maybe on Sunday. It would have to be 256 because 512 is wayyyy out of my price range.

I dont really want to get the best performance, I just want something that will run well.

Like when I start playing GTA3 for the first 5 10 minutes theres a far bit of lag, but after that it goes away. Until I start say a race where Im moving fast and so are many other vehicles then it starts to lag from time to time.

In Halo, it just constantly lags beyond playability.

CS with the realism update seems fine (I dont play on the internet I dont have it on that comp) so I play with bots instead.

the Breed demo does present constant lag but it isnt bad, for me anyways, someone whos never had lag would flip though probably.

Unreal 2 used to be laggy but its goten less laggy recently.

Im also running Win ME so that dosent eat up as much ram as crap (IMO) XP.

Yea the Crucial is 70$ (remember Im in Canada so everything is more expensive) and AZEN ram is 50$. The main reason I got Crucial is because everybody talks about it and the guy at the store told me that the AZEN ram had compatibility issues with my mobo (damn, I got succered didnt I)...

The small amount of L1 data/instruction cache on the P4 is irrelevant due to the way it's branch prediction, pipelining, and L2 cache work together. If the p4 had twice the L1 cache, it would not affect the cache hit rate or make a difference to it's performance... the Athlons and P4s work so differently that many comparisons you can make between them don't really mean anything.

As for the upgrade, I have a worse PC than that, and I got a bigger hard drive as an upgrade :smile: I looked up your motherboard and it seems to support the latest stuff... even DDR400 and the best Bartons. Since doubling the memory costs hardly anything (256 of DDR333 is ?25+VAT), I say get some more memory and a better CPU. I think if you spent that much more to get both, it would be well over double the improvement of just buying one upgrade. But if you can't afford that, I say get more memory, as having a 2ghz processor with only 256 megs of RAM seems silly to me - your CPU would be forever waiting for the swap file :smile:

[edit] You may not have got suckered, some DDR memory genuinly doesn't work with some motherboards. That lag at the start of playing a game does sound like the PC is swapping at that stage until all the commonly used data is in main memory, so that makes more RAM look like a bettern option again. As for Halo, I think that would be a CPU limitation - I have a graphics card that I know can run MOHAA well when put with a decent CPU, but on my PC it's laggy as hell. Games may not need a ton of CPU power, but there is a minimum for it to be playable. [/edit]

i still recommend you visit pricewatch

i see no reason at all why they cannot UPS deliver to you as well as to me.

many sites have 1-800 numbers as well, besides, whos to say you couldn't locate a canadian site to look thru.

pricewatch is a great site.

The store I bought my stuff from has their own website (really nicely done too) www.oemexpress.com

But yea, at the moment I only have 1 upgrade option available to me. 256DDR 333 at 70$ or Athlon XP 2100 for 105.00$ Hmm... lol

Wild Card said:
The store I bought my stuff from has their own website (really nicely done too) www.oemexpress.com

But yea, at the moment I only have 1 upgrade option available to me. 256DDR 333 at 70$ or Athlon XP 2100 for 105.00$ Hmm... lol

you're not listening, at least check pricewatch.. you have nothing to lose but time. besides, a 2100 is 58.00

lol Orph, why would I listen to you :razz: no I did check them out, but buying off the internet involves a piece of plastic to pay for it.

$105 for an XP2100? that's nuts.

A XP2200 here is $80. and that's above manufacturer price.
And just to let you know how much ram is costing, a stick of 512 double the size of what you listed, in the same frequency of course, is $76. A stick of Kingston is $86. In short your supplier sucks WC lol.

Jeff, you're saying the same thing I was, just in a different fasion.
The whole point is, if he upgraded, one and only one thing, it should be the ram . . . but anyway. I'm also well aware of the difference in float point pipelines in each processor and the difference in their cache algorithms.

By the way, get a bank card. you can use them like a credit card and there should be no monthly charge, if there is, then your bank sucks too lol.

my local telephone exchange so i can get broadband :razz:

Wild Card said:
lol Orph, why would I listen to you :razz: no I did check them out, but buying off the internet involves a piece of plastic to pay for it.

sounds of head banging against brick wall

sighs

NO IT DOESN'T

look bud, give them a call, ask questions, assuming the 1-800 number extends to your third world country.

i have bought things thru pricewatch, i sent the a money order via the US postal service.

pricewatch is nothing more than the "want ads" of the net, just like in the sunday news paper, only its on your PC.

OK. It just seemed like when you said 'AMD Barton >= Intel P4 (the AMD has a larger L1 cache)', you were listing this as the reason for the performance increase... not that I agree there is an increase in the first place but that's another issue :smile:

On a slightly related note, I do wish people would stop bashing the prescott, it was never meant to perform any better than the northwood, the whole point is that it performs the same clock for clock as the northwood, despite it's longer instruction pipeline... people talk as if a month ago, Intel were saying 'prescott is going to be the new amazingly fast thing', but they didn't - all they have ever said is that it's simply the next generation P4, allowing them to scale the chip up to the 4-5GHz range.

^^^points up^^^

you know, i don't know which is the scarier concept, that you guys possess this sort of knowledge, or that you even bother to associate with people like me :/

you guys either have to much time on your hands, or are just levels above this ol' man

do you, retain this knowledge? or just research it 5 seconds before posting?

Well, I'm in the 3rd year of a 4 year electronic engineering degree, and we have modules about processor architecture which require us to know about stuff like this. I think Crono does a Computer Science degree; in general, these focus more on the software side of things than the hardware... that may not be the case for his course though.

sighs

well i guess i will have to be content with my knowledge of military engineering and explosives.. not as glorious as electronic engineering to be sure, but just about the best this older model human can do :biggrin:

maybe i can talk one of my kids into electronics ..

Explosives sound more exiting than circuit boards :smile:

scary_jeff said:
Explosives sound more exiting than circuit boards :smile:

it has its perks, but i honestly have more interests in PC's.. as you know, i built my first one from scratch recently, it was IMO far more exciting.. besides, i haven't used any demolitions since 1985.

I like explosives, specially the one my brother made for the new year. We wrapped it around a pizza and blew it up :smile:

It made a little crater in the ground, too

i dont know man....explosives were a "make ya s**t yerself on the spot" kinda thing back in my day....damn exciting stuff....now you see it, now you dont....MAGIC!!!!

on the converse, im in the same damn boat you are Orph, and i feel like we are using one oar to try and get the same effect...kids of the pit...."STAY IN SCHOOL!"

Doc Brass... :dodgy:

if i had the resources to go back to school, id do it in a new york second....i appreciate it now a helluva lot more than i did when i was a kid....***sigh

Id upgrade my car ... f'ing rustang (i mean mustang) needs a new motor :sad:

Crono, the thing you seem to be forgeting is that I live in Canada, not the States, therefore, prices are naturally higher. The XP2100 for 105$ is about as cheap as I can get here. That would be around 70-85$ US currency.

me checks pricewatch again...

No, I'm well aware of that. I was simply saying you're getting screwed in one way or another.

And yes, I'm a CS major. Believe it or not we have to know a s**t load of electronic configurations about the architecture. I mean, how else would I be able to make things effcient?
I'm in the technical 3rd year lol. classes aren't offered sometimes when I need to take them so sigh I'm a little behind, but making it nonetheless. (An example of what I'm talking about is coding for the Itanium (Puke!) you have to know exactly where you want everything, because it doesn't do much for you.)

I appologize, WC, if you thought I thought you lived in the US. But, what I was trying to say is, you can get direct from manufacturer, if you really wanted, which will always be cheaper. I also understand, you don't have a credit card, neither do I, but I can still buy things online if I really need to. In any case, if you think something like 10% increase is vaible, so be it.

You should just go and checkout AMD's site or whatever RAM manufacturer you want to see what their prices are. THen you can leave leway of the dollar conversion and see if stores you're going to are trying to rip you off or not.