Both of the following systems are used on a home network for general computing, no gaming or graphics intensive applications. There are other systems available if needed for those applications. I plan to keep these systems for as long as I can upgrade them. The case and power supply on System 1 are 10 years old (Hmm, I wonder if the PS is what is causing some of the problems I'm experiencing with this system.), the MoBo, CPU and drive are a few years old. System 2 was bought in April 2009.
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System 1 – Hardware upgrade budget $100
I plan to upgrade this system to Windows 7. No need to consider the cost of the software and suggest I use it to upgrade the hardware. Where can I get the biggest bang for my buck – CPU, RAM, or Video Card?
Is $100 worth of hardware going to make a noticeable difference in performance? I know $200 will since you can buy a MoBo, CPU and RAM for that.
Or do I hobble along for a year and save up to put together a $300 system next year at Newegg’s Black Friday sale?
CPU: 2.5GHz Intel Pentium 4 SL6GT 512Kb L2 Cache. I can buy an Intel Pentium 4 3.0 Prescott 3.0GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket 478 89W Single-Core Processor for $80 from Newegg; I might even be able to find one on eBay for less. It looks like they might go for around $40 there.
MoBo: EliteGroup PT800CE-A
RAM: 1.5GB not sure what type, MoBo supports up to 2GB of DDR400. Cost for 2GB is $50 to $70.
Video Card: MoBo has Radeon 9200 SE. It has an AGP 3.0 slot and 32-bit PCI slots. I have an Nvidia GeForce4 MX 420 AGP in a system I’m going to use for parts. Will it work on this MoBo? Will it increase system performance? Can I find a driver that will work in Windows 7? Will a PCIE video card increase performance more than my other options?
Hard Drive: 80GB 2.5” drive. I’m not sure if it is IDE or SATA. I’m guessing the hard drive is already adequate. Am I right about that?
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System 2 – Hardware upgrade budget $100
I plan to upgrade this system to Windows 7. This system is probably OK right now. It sounds like IE9 is going to offload some of the graphics processing from the CPU and I guess other applications will as well. And I’m guessing applications will continue to put greater demands on systems. So if I’m going to upgrade this system in the future where will I get my biggest bang for $100 – CPU, Video Card, RAM or Hard Drive?
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.2GHz
MoBo: Akonii P4N7050 1.0
Video: Onboard Nvidia GeForce 7050/nForce 610i. One PCIE x16 and three other PCI slots.
RAM: 1.75GB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz – Not sure why there is such an odd amount of RAM. Could some of it be shared with the graphics? The MoBo can take 2GB of PC6400 DDR2 800MHz which would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $90. Another stick of the PC5400 would be around $50.
Hard Drive: 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100. I’m going to add a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB UDMA/133 7200RPM 2MB IDE from another system to use as a backup drive. Any way I can improve performance with IDE drives? I know that if I had SATA drives I could use RAID 0 to improve performance.
-------------------------------------------------------
System 1 – Hardware upgrade budget $100
I plan to upgrade this system to Windows 7. No need to consider the cost of the software and suggest I use it to upgrade the hardware. Where can I get the biggest bang for my buck – CPU, RAM, or Video Card?
Is $100 worth of hardware going to make a noticeable difference in performance? I know $200 will since you can buy a MoBo, CPU and RAM for that.
Or do I hobble along for a year and save up to put together a $300 system next year at Newegg’s Black Friday sale?
CPU: 2.5GHz Intel Pentium 4 SL6GT 512Kb L2 Cache. I can buy an Intel Pentium 4 3.0 Prescott 3.0GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket 478 89W Single-Core Processor for $80 from Newegg; I might even be able to find one on eBay for less. It looks like they might go for around $40 there.
MoBo: EliteGroup PT800CE-A
RAM: 1.5GB not sure what type, MoBo supports up to 2GB of DDR400. Cost for 2GB is $50 to $70.
Video Card: MoBo has Radeon 9200 SE. It has an AGP 3.0 slot and 32-bit PCI slots. I have an Nvidia GeForce4 MX 420 AGP in a system I’m going to use for parts. Will it work on this MoBo? Will it increase system performance? Can I find a driver that will work in Windows 7? Will a PCIE video card increase performance more than my other options?
Hard Drive: 80GB 2.5” drive. I’m not sure if it is IDE or SATA. I’m guessing the hard drive is already adequate. Am I right about that?
-------------------------------------------------------
System 2 – Hardware upgrade budget $100
I plan to upgrade this system to Windows 7. This system is probably OK right now. It sounds like IE9 is going to offload some of the graphics processing from the CPU and I guess other applications will as well. And I’m guessing applications will continue to put greater demands on systems. So if I’m going to upgrade this system in the future where will I get my biggest bang for $100 – CPU, Video Card, RAM or Hard Drive?
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.2GHz
MoBo: Akonii P4N7050 1.0
Video: Onboard Nvidia GeForce 7050/nForce 610i. One PCIE x16 and three other PCI slots.
RAM: 1.75GB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz – Not sure why there is such an odd amount of RAM. Could some of it be shared with the graphics? The MoBo can take 2GB of PC6400 DDR2 800MHz which would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $90. Another stick of the PC5400 would be around $50.
Hard Drive: 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100. I’m going to add a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB UDMA/133 7200RPM 2MB IDE from another system to use as a backup drive. Any way I can improve performance with IDE drives? I know that if I had SATA drives I could use RAID 0 to improve performance.
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