Conclusion - Fair Price, Solid Performance
A look at our benchmark results clearly reveals that the upgrade only makes sense for gaming fans if they're also using a halfway-decent graphics card. For the benchmarks, we substituted the GeForce 3 we had originally installed with a GeForce4 Ti4600, now available used for cheap. Otherwise we recommend an average-speed NVIDIA GeForce FX or an equivalent ATI Radeon. A note of caution, however: we advise against going with a very high-end model, since alone their insatiable hunger for power can lead to problems.
The post-upgrade processor performance is more than sufficient for most standard apps - even MPEG 2 video or MP3 audio encoding with a modern complete system at the same speed is not faster enough to justify the extra expense of buying a whole new computer.
Good to see that the upgrade can be installed in just 15 minutes even by less experienced users. There is, however, one case in which the upgrade fails to deliver enhanced performance, and that is when more RAM is needed. Rambus is after all slowly becoming extinct for consumer PC applications. If you're dealing with less than 512 MB, buying a new system remains the only recourse.
