[captaincaveman]

hi guys, first post so go easy on me

Im looking to speed up my pc abit and wanted to make some incrementel changes but unsure which to do first

my motherboard is a winfast nf4k8ac, which i believe is a 939 socket

the processor is a 1.8ghz amd athlon x2 64 with 256k primary cache and 1024k secondary

ive got 4 ram slots 2 with 512mb and 2 with 256, i think they are pc3200

and my hard drive is an old 80gb but unsure of the speed or cache(but its from 2 pcs ago as i built this one as i went along)


I spoke to someone today, who mentioned 3 easy upgrades

1) replace the processor with an Athlon™ 64 X2 dual core 4600+(i think) which i believe to be possible with my motherboard but unsre on which as there are 2.4 and 2.5ghz avaliable

2) put a matched pair of 1G ddr's

3) replace with a newer hard drive, maybe with an 8meg cache


my question is which order is best to do these in, and will there be any noticible difference with any

hope ive given enough info

thanks

[Spencer2004]

the order seriously dosent matter, each upgrade will give some noticable difference espessially the new hard drive which will decrease the loading times of windows and applications significantly.

if you want even more speed get 2 of the same hard drives and ask the guy at the computer store to put them in raid 0 if your motherboard supports it.

[captaincaveman]

Originally Posted by Spencer2004

the order seriously dosent matter, each upgrade will give some noticable difference espessially the new hard drive which will decrease the loading times of windows and applications significantly.

if you want even more speed get 2 of the same hard drives and ask the guy at the computer store to put them in raid 0 if your motherboard supports it.

ok thatnks, yeah mine supports raid,also with the hard drive i will be moving across to sata also, so extra speed too, hees what my spec says

IDE/SATA: 2 x ATA/133 + 4 x SATA/150 (w/ RAID)
Supports RAID 0, 1, and 1+0; cross-controller (IDE & SATA)

[alex]

A faster processor will make the most immediate impact as you already have 1.5gb of ram in place. Getting a matched pair won't make any discernable difference because a matched pair only means that each of the two dimms are guaranteed to run at the same latency and speed as the other one.

I'd go against raid 0 unless you're gaming online as it's very fault intolerant. One drive fails and you've lost the data on both. And for the benefit in loading times (which will be negligable) it's just not worth the risk.

[captaincaveman]

Originally Posted by alex

A faster processor will make the most immediate impact as you already have 1.5gb of ram in place. Getting a matched pair won't make any discernable difference because a matched pair only means that each of the two dimms are guaranteed to run at the same latency and speed as the other one.

I'd go against raid 0 unless you're gaming online as it's very fault intolerant. One drive fails and you've lost the data on both. And for the benefit in loading times (which will be negligable) it's just not worth the risk.

thanks for that, yeah im not a big gamer, well thats probably obvious from my radeon x300 graphics card
This pc just seems to do things slower than my old pentium, i remember reading somewhere that amds are good for gaming but struggle with certain aspects of video conversion

The main thing i want to speed up is the time it takes to extract large zip or rar files(4gig kinda size), a similar thing with moving similar size files, also major problem areas are dvd - xvid conversions or ntsc - pal conversions, any increase in that would be a massive bonus


yeah i was worried about going down the raid route for that reason, im hoping the move from ide to sata along with a larger cache and access time/drive speed hard drive will make another difference(not that i know much about the benefits of a larger cashe actually means, its one of those things that was recommended lol)