How do I improve performance?

[roberth75]

Hello!

Does anyone know if there are any programs out there (preferably freeware) that will help me identify bottlenecks in my system? I have pretty limited knowledge about computer components. I am trying to find out what upgrades would yield the best performance boost for gaming, and I'm not sure if a faster graphics card would be held back by the CPU or the other way around. Also not sure how much of an impact more memory would have (if it's even possible to upgrade a Dell system).

This is what I currently run:

Dell XPS 410 / Dimension 9200 (3 PCI, 1 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x4, 1 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN)
DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, 2,13 GHz (8 x 267)
2045 MB, 533 MHz (512 MB x4)
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS (256 MB)

Any suggestions or feedback would be much appreciated.

/Rob

 

[scorch]

it is possible to upgrade the memory at the cost of removing 2 of the memory sticks. so if you bought 2 1gb sticks of memory you would have a total of 3GB of memory wouldn't give you a real noticable peformance increase. I don't think that overclocking is an option on that dell system so you would have to see what the highest processor you could install in would be. Getting an Nvidia 8800GT or an ATI 3870 combined with a processor upgrade would yeild a noticable peformance increase. However you will have to see if your powersupply will handle the higher end video cards. As far as processor see if at least you could go with the E6700 2.66 dual core.

 

[cmashwin]

Chuck out the ram... its too slow... get a DDR2-800 2X1 matched pair, {get a faster HDD if possible..} and as scorch said, add either one of those graphics... maybe even the 8800gts (512mb).. With the faster ram, overclock your E6400 to E6700 speeds

 

[Grimmy]

When you buy a dell, that is about it. They have it setup to where its going to perform the way it is. Unless you can find pin mods, hacked bios, or replace the mb with OC features, your not going to get much more out of it.

 

[nhobo]

2GB ram is enough for most purposes. Have you got a lot of stuff running in the background? Anti-virus, security, that sort of thing really eats up cpu time. WinPatrol is a good free program for monitoring activity and controlling startups. Search for XP optimization tips. A $50 LinkSys router is a hardware firewall that eliminates the need for Windoze security or add-on security programs. Get rid of every program running that you don't absolutely need and defrag your disk. You can OC your 7900 with Rivatuner for a few m ore FPS.

Beyond that, you can't O/C your DELL. Your PSU won't handle a better video card, so you'll have to replace it if you want better graphics. You could salvage the CPU, RAM and hard drive to build a new system, but I don't know if your DELL case will take a standard ATX mobo. At the very least you are looking at $75 PSU, $100 mobo, $200 GPU + case. With that you could O/C your E6400 and really make that system sing. The 6400 is enough CPU for a good GPU, especially if O/C'd.

 

[zenmaster]

Have you tried OverClocking your 7900GS card?

 

[roberth75]

Thanks for all replies people. I guess I should start by finding out what uppgrades my XPS allows for in terms of compability. Does anyone know how to do that? Should I contact Dell about it?

 

[roberth75]

Have you tried OverClocking your 7900GS card?

No, I have not... I don't know much about OverClocking. Nhobo mentioned this Rivatuner, so I guess I'll check that. Can I do that without extra cooling?

 

[cmashwin]

Depends on how good your cooling is... Check out how hot it gets under load... GPU's can go till 80... stay below that..

 

[roberth75]

Ok. Thank you.