Author Topic: Upgrading a PC (Read 1622 times)

Marty · « **on:** May 20, 2004, 02:41 »

Currently, I have a sucky 1.4GHz Celeron with 64kb cache size i believe and 100MHz bus speed. Yeah... sucks, tell me about it. It also has PC133. i was thinking, if I get more ram, it would boost my pc's overall performance, and also get an PCI Card, I could MAYBE have a gaming pc, but im not sure about the celeron. Celeron's are known for non-gaming PC's due to their low cache size. I just wanted to know how much of a boost will this give my PC, is it really worth upgrading, and with those 2 parts, will I be able to play games with GOOD graphics.

Thanks,
Marty

Sandra · « **Reply #1 on:** May 20, 2004, 02:50 »

Hi Marty and

I think you are right about the low cache being the bottleneck

Have you thought of possibly getting a secondhand full INTEL chip from E bay or similar ?
That would give you a decent L2 cache and along with a better graphics card and ram it should be possible to have a half decent gaming pc for not too much outlay

Marty · « **Reply #2 on:** May 20, 2004, 02:55 »

Personally, I don't like Intel. And with the board I have, it can only support UP TO 100MHz Front Side Bus, so yeah. I'm stuck with the celeron. But I was thinking I can buy an AMD motherboard and buy an Athlon XP 2500+ with a Borton Core, and overclock that to 3200+. Athlon 2500+'s are known for great overclocking. Then, I would have possibly DDR333 aka PC2700. I would also need to buy an AGP card, but AGP cards are like 100x better than PCI cards. But I don't know. Just really confused right now.

Sandra · « **Reply #3 on:** May 20, 2004, 03:02 »

If you can afford it then the Barton is indeed a better cpu for gaming, I wouldnt even overclock it as theyre fine running at 1833mhz.
AGP cards are better than PCI, unfortunately at the moment not 100x though, but 8x ones are quite reasonably priced now

I am moving this to the Making and Upgrading section as I think its more suited to that section :doggie:

Marty · « **Reply #4 on:** May 20, 2004, 20:02 »

Ok, now, I know exactly what I'm going to do. Since I have a low cache size, I'm going to buy a Pentium 3, 1GHz, 100MHz FSB. I think that will make it faster even though it's 1MHz, but it has a 512KB cache size which should help it. Also, I'm going to buy 512MB's of PC133 RAM from Crucial. Crucial is pretty good, and hopefully that will increase my PC's speed. At least, it should. Plus, I dont want to spend a lot. I'm only 15, and my mom and dad are paying for the CPU and RAM, and I'm getting a PCI Card for my birthday, or more RAM. Don't know which one I want, so yeah. Can anyone help me Decide?

Marty

Dack · « **Reply #5 on:** May 20, 2004, 21:07 »

It all comes down to how much you are going to pay

I would have to say definately DON'T do your suggested upgrade.

Reasons (and probable costs)?

1. Processor. You'll be slowing your processor even with an increased cache you are not going to get the same sort of performance as your existing processor. Ebay has them going for about £33.

2. Memory. This is an area where you could add some more and get a major improvement in performance. HOWEVER you will be paying a premium for SDRAM which you will not be able to use in a future upgrade. 512 SDRAM costs about £85 and you have to ask if thats going to be supported by your motherboard (are you intending 512 as one stick?)

3. Graphics card. Again you are intending to use PCI which has pretty much been superceeded by AGP. You will be paying a premium and not geting the best possible.

I'd guess you are aiming to spend about £200 for a machine you can play games on.

I built a machine for myself the other day (as I had a few components left over from other build and wanted a smaller case one).

I already had:
512 PC3200 Memory, 60G hard drive, CD-Writer, Geforce 4800 graphics card.

I bought the following to make a full system:
1 x IDeq case with Nforce 2 chipset motherboard, built in graphics and sound (£132.60)
http://www.biostar-usa.com/ideqdetails.asp?model=ideq+200n
1 x Athlon 2500xp - Barton core (£51.70)

It only comes with 2 slots (1 AGP and one PCI) but since pretty much everything is built in it didn't really matter. The built in graphics are comparible to a Geforce 440 - which is still not too bad for basic gaming system but since I had the card lying around

If I had to have bought the memory I would have been looking at an extra £60 or so. This would have given a total cost of about £240 for a much higher spec machine than the one you are proposing.

If I just wanted to put a basic machine, though still capable of playing games, together I could have done the following (approx prices):
Case + power supply - £25
Motherboard and Athlon 2000 processor (with built in graphics) - £64
Fan for processor - £6
512 DDR 2700 Memory - £60
Hard drive - Use existing
Floppy - Use existing
CD Drive - Existing
Works out at about £155 plus whatever graphics card I wanted to put in (Basic Radeon or Geforce at about £50 mark)

An example of what you could get for £200 mark is:
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=115294&cks=PRL
Just add a case and whatever bits you want to keep from your old machine.

Marty · « **Reply #6 on:** May 20, 2004, 22:22 »

Hrm. I have an E-machines T-1440. And I can't exactly understand your prices because I'm not from the UK, I'm in New Jersey. Anyways, I think that the easiest way would be to buy more ram and buy a 40GB HD @ 7200 RPM's and an 8MB Buffer Speed. That should help it out a lot. Plus, I can overclock too to about 1.6GHz... Maybe. I haven't tried yet, but celeron doesnt overclock to well, and I don't even know if they overclock. But, that's what I'm going to do. It should be about 2-3x faster with those new components in it. And, I may go for Dual Channel Ram (2x256) It would be faster then one stick of 1x512. And like I said, I'm not paying for it, my parents are. But I think for my birthday I'm going to get 1x256 and use my 1x128 still, and like a month later I'll take out the 1x128 and put in the 1x256. Also, I'll copy my one hard drive onto the other one. But, thanks for your input.

Dack · « **Reply #7 on:** May 21, 2004, 00:41 »

Sorry about that - tend to think most members of this board are from the UK.

So you've got one of these
http://www.e4allinc.info/dir1/motherboards/socket370/lomita_end_users.htm

Looking at that info it uses the Intel 810 chipset which is where a lot of your bottlenecks are. (It's integrated graphics are not good enough for todays games and doesn't allow for DDR memory or include an AGP port).

Current exchange rates are about £1 to $1.75 so you would need to multiply the figures in my first post by 1.75 to get equivalent US prices. However since most companies seem to do a direct $ to £ conversion then it may be cheaper.

As you've said - memory should be the first upgrade as your machine will be using the hard drive as virtual memory pretty much as soon as you load any application. As the hard drive is 5400 rpm then again it would slow the system down - especially when paging/using virtual memory. The new memory you intend getting though will not be compatible with newer boards for when you want to do your next upgrade (trust me computer upgrades are never finished

) If you have enough memory then the hard drive speed pretty much becomes irrelevant. 40G is not oo basd these days.

I've had a look on www.newegg.com who offer some of the lowest prices for components in the US I found (though I've had some bargains in Frys or www.outpost.com)and the prices are very similar to UK prices at the moment.

Though the cost is higher than a memory/hard drive upgrade - you would definately get more benefit from spending maybe $50 more and getting a new motherboard/processor/memory combination which would last for a few years whereas upgrading your existing machine would only be good for a few months gaming at most and who's parts could not be used in future upgrades. (Disc drive excepted)

As the price difference between 40G and 80G drives is so little (about $15) then it would also be worth considering an 80G instead of a 40G. Especially as you already have a 40G

Time to nag the parents?

Again it comes down to what you/your parents are willing to spend as to what you can buy to best improve your machine. Of course you can always sell you unused/upgraded bit on Ebay and recoup some of the cost

Marty · « **Reply #8 on:** May 21, 2004, 16:06 »

My Final Decision:

I'm going to buy a motherboard that supports DDr226 along with PC1-33. For my birthday, I'm going to buy more ram (1x256) and later on I'm going to buy that motherboard along with an Athlon xp 2000+. Also, I need to buy a new case too which isnt expensiv at all. That should speed up my pc a reasonable amount.. like 2 or 3x faster. I would also need to buy a PCI card also.