A New Lease On Life - How To Make Your PC 5 Times Faster

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Base PC Configuration

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Intel Pentium II 233 MHz (barebones system)
CPU Intel Pentium II 233 MHz66 MHz FSB
Memory 1x 64 MB SDRAM PC-66 (generic)
Motherboard Abit AB-BX6, Intel 440BX Chipset
Graphics Card Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra
Intel Pentium III 800 MHz (FCPGA)
CPU Intel Pentium III 800 MHz133 MHz FSB
Memory 1x 128 MB SD-RAM PC-133 (Wichmann)
Motherboard ASUS CUSL2 Revision: 1.02Bios: 1006 Beta 011
Intel Pentium 4 1500 MHz
CPU Intel Pentium 4 1500 MHz400 MHz FSB
Memory 2 x 128 MB RIMM PC-800 (Samsung)
Motherboard ASUS P4T Revision: 1.06Bios: 1001
Hardware - general
Hard Drive 30,7 GB IBM DTLA - 307030UDMA 100, 7200 rpm, 2 MB Cache
Graphics Card
RIVA TNT2 ULTRA ASUS AGP-V 3800 (TV)Memory: 32 MB SDRAMChip speed: 145 MHzMemory speed: 200 MHz
GeForce 2 MX 200 Creative 3D Blaster GeForce 2 MXMemory: 32 MB DDR-SDRAMChip speed: 175 MHzMemory clock: 286,4 MHz
GeForce 2 ULTRA NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS ULTRAMemory: 64 MB SDRAMChip speed: 250 MHzMemory clock: 458,2 MHz
Software and Drivers
Operating System Windows 98 SE
Graphics Card Driver: Detonator Series 3 Version 6.67 (WHQL)
Chipset Driver Intel V2.60.001
IDE Driver Intel V6.03.008
Benchmarks and Settings
MPEG-4 Encoding Flask V0.6DivX V3.22bCompression: 100Data Rate: 1500 kBit720x576 Pixel, 25 fpsDeinterlace (slow)HQ Bicubic Filtering128 kBit MP3, 48.000 Hz
Sysmark 2000 Screen Setup 1024x768x16Patch 4B
Quake 3 Arena 4Patch V1.16 setup: defaultVsync: offcommand line: "timedemo 1"command line: "demo demo001"

Our base PC was manufactured in 1998 and is based on a motherboard furnished with Intel's 440BX chipset. This Abit BX6 is, however, not the original motherboard supplied with the system. The old computer originally came equipped with a board that used an Intel 440LX chipset. The Abit BX6 has turned out to be a motherboard that's easy to upgrade with faster processors. The 64 MB memory installed on the board isn't up to date any longer. Hard drive capacity has also been upgraded at some point in time as well. We'll be discussing several upgrade options and their respective prices. A summary of these prices is given at the end of the article in the form of a chart.