a good bang-for-the-buck upgrade?

[paulxcook]

I've been out of the hardware game for a few years and would like to get a nice, cheap upgrade to hold me over a while longer til I have the cash to overhaul my machine.

I'm fine with my machine's performance in games. It's certainly not the fastest out there anymore, but it's fine for now.

However, when burning a dvd, ripping, or other multi-task things, my PC is slow. Even startup seems slower than it should be, and it's always been that way.

Specs:

DFI Lanparty Ultra-D 939 mobo
XFX 7900 GT
Opteron 144 OC to 2.9 ghz (watercooled)
1 GB OCZ ram (honestly don't remember what kind, it was the super high volt stuff that was popular way back when)
OCZ powerstream 600 W PSU
200 gb sata2 HDD
80 gb PATA storage HDD

Should I just drop an x2 in there? Add more RAM? Not sure what my price point is, definitely less than $200.

Thanks in advance. My research skills are pretty rusty, and I'm not even sure that reviews that pertain to my situation are even out there anymore. My rig used to be pretty awesome.

Sigh...

 

[nyker96]

You can get this guy here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819103052

it's just under 60 bucks and since your DFI can push it way high like 2.5+ you now have a pretty strong dual core for the near future. You have DDR rams I can tell ya that. As for an upgrade sure, I think spent the rest $140 on a set of 2GB DDR1-400 ram like the following:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231047

there you go. a nice sub $200 upgrade for dual core + 2GB ram.

 

[Pain999]

X2 is not a magic pill, in fact unless you can overclock it to 2.9 GHz (and most likely you can't) it will be a downgrade in most games and single threaded applications. More RAM might help with having to wait for things to unload from memory and then reload from the hard drive. I would not spend much money on trying to patch up your current system, instead save up for the core2 duo, socket 775 motherboard, and DDR2 you need to really see some sort of major difference.

 

[bloodugly]

I'd sell your current board, CPU, and RAM. Then I'd get a dual-core Allendale chip, a decent "budget" P35 board (the Abit IP35-E is 80 bucks AR at Newegg right now), and 2 gigs of DDR2-800 RAM. Considering the money you'll get from your old parts, this will be a cheap upgrade. You'll have a pretty good increase in performance (I'm assuming you'll overclock the CPU) and the P35 board will work with quads and Penryn should you decide to upgrade the CPU in the near future.

 

[paulxcook]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. bloodugly, your suggestion sounds interesting. Not sure what P35 is (told ya, out of the loop!), the mobo you reference appears to be a 775 board, so apparently P35 isn't a new socket type... Looks like a neat high-value board though. There is an Allendale on newegg for $92 called "E2180", a 2 ghz chip that supposedly overclocks well. But there's also a 2.0 ghz Allendale-equipped chip called "E4400" for $125. That one sounds more familiar, but why is it more if they're both Allendale and both 2.0 ghz? Also, people appear to like the e4300 more for overclocking? Then I can get 2 GB of Patriot mem for $57 AR! Wow! I thought memory would be the most expensive part of this upgrade.

Ok, so it looks like this:

E4300 or E4400 - about $120
Abit mobo - $80 AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/...7031&Tpk=ABIT%2bIP35-E
Patriot memory - $57 AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820220144

sell dfi ultra-d for $40
sell opty for $40
sell ocz mem for $40

$257 - $120 = $137 for a pretty big upgrade, especially since I can push the C2D alot with my WC setup. Nice!

 

[SerpentRoyal]

MWAVE is $10 cheaper.

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/vie...a=BA23929&RSKU=BA23929

 

[Munky]

Burning and ripping dvd's can easily be handled by a single core A64/Opteron cpu. If you feel your system is sluggish, clean out all the unnecessary programs running in the background. You will not see any noticeable gain from a multi-core cpu unless you work often with apps that are designed to use multiple cores, like video encoding, image processing and 3D modeling apps. Unless you plan on keeping this system for at least another year or more, I don't see any point in upgrading it; just save money until you build a new rig with newer components.