Require a performance upgrade $470-315/£300-£200

helsinki98

Distinguished
Nov 19, 2009
34
0
18,530
Hi,

I'm looking to get a bit of a performance increase or advice on what to upgrade on my system (below)

CPU: Intel q6600 not overclocked (4 years old) CPU
Mobo: abit aw9d (5 years old)
Cpu cooler: arctic freezer no 7
Ram: 4gb ram ddr2 800mhz (2 year old)
GPU: Power colour ATI 4850 1gb (2 year old) GPU
PSU: Hiper 650 or 750 watt (5 years old)
hdd: 200gb maxtor (5 years old) and a 1tb samsung (year old)
drive: dvd read and write. (5 years old)
Monitor: samsung 26" flat screen tv
windows 7 64bit

I'm mainly looking to increase performance with an input of $470-315/£300-£200.

I mainly use, photoshop, googlesketchup, autocad, kerkythea (rendering program)

I need to have sketchup, autocad and photoshop open at once all running fairly large files, I also have netflix on a second monitor. I have noticed recently that my computer is freezing and taking a long time to save/open my sketchup models and autocad files, its generally getting a bit slow.

I think my ram is the main issue as on my g15 monitor I see the ram at around %90 constantly and cpu at 10%-50% unless rendering.

The lower the price the better but $415/£300 is my limit. I was thinking maybe another 4gig of ram and an ssd to hold windows and files I am actively working on then moving them to one of the larger slower drives for storing, not sure if this would solve my issues with files taking a long time to open and save though, the sketchup models can get laggy when exploding large groups and when trying to select the whole model.

The last time I tried upgrading my ram i found with 6gb windows wasn't stable and would crash, I was using a new 4gb (2x2gb sticks) and the previous 2gb (2x 1gb sticks) I had installed before. They where both ddr2 but I don't know if anything else about them was similar.

Any advice would be great, cheers
 
If you gived the price in pounds , then this is the best upgrade and you can keep all other stuffs.
MOBO : Asus P8Z68-V LX Socket 1155
http://www.ebuyer.com/281367-asus-p8z68-v-lx-socket-1155-onboard-graphics-output-8-channel-audio-atx-p8z68-v-lx
CPU : I5 2500K
http://www.ebuyer.com/251596-intel-core-i5-2500k-3-3ghz-socket-1155-6mb-cache-retail-boxed-processor-bx80623i52500k
RAM : Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz Low Profile Vengeance Memory Kit CL9 1.5V
http://www.ebuyer.com/274035-corsair-8gb-2x4gb-ddr3-1600mhz-low-profile-vengeance-memory-kit-cl9-cml8gx3m2a1600c9
TOTAL : £290.57
 

helsinki98

Distinguished
Nov 19, 2009
34
0
18,530


Thanks for the reply, that does look like my best option.

My only problem is that I don't have any windows 7 install disks and I am currently on the student upgrade only version of windows 7. I think I read about being able to do a fresh install with the windows 7 student but it required you to be able to install windows from a disk.