Building a new system NOT for gaming, advice please

theblooms

Junior Member
Jun 22, 2001
12
0
0
Hey, my wife has been doing some SERIOUSLY large Word and PowerPoint documents lately (hundreds of megs each, lots and lots of pictures), and it is bringing my present XP 1600+ /768megs ram to its knees. SO, time to upgrade. I am thinking A64 3200+ on an Asus K8V SE Deluxe with 3 gigs of PC3200 and a 200 gig SATA drive.

The question is, will the board be stable with that much ram? I can get some PDP Systems 1 gig sticks for $171 each off of newegg. That is what I will be using, because I DO have a budget.

TIA for any replies.
Michael
 

classy

Lifer
Oct 12, 1999
15,219
1
81
Just upgrade the processor. You have plenty of ram IMO. I would check to see if your virus program isn't scanning all these documents while they are opening. With that much ram I would suspect something is running in the background. I for a living opened 300-600 meg files from all sorts of programs so I know how a machine acts. If you do upgrade, for what you need a nice barton and gig of memory will be more than sufficient.
 

farfromright

Junior Member
Aug 23, 2004
1
0
0
I believe Word checks all documents for viruses so that would explain a longer wait time.

I'm not sure if you can disable it but I would start looking into the Word options for the virus checker.
 

theblooms

Junior Member
Jun 22, 2001
12
0
0
Well yeah, I thought of using a faster processor only, but my present mobo (ECS K7S5A GREAT board, 3+ years of FLAWLESS service) will only do a 266MHz processor, so I would need to do an upgrade there anyway. That's why I thought of going the Athlon 64 route. If I am upgrading mobo, may as well get something that is slightly more future-proof.

But it sounds like what you are saying is that 3 gigs is overkill. My present memory is a 256 stick of PC2100 and a 512 of PC2700. So mabye I will save a couple hundred bucks and just try out 1 gig at first and see if that works.

The Asus board is only like $130 or so, and it did well in many of the reviews I read, but would you recommend something a bit less expensive? I have a half decent video card, a Gainward GF3 Ti200 Golden Sample factory OC'ed to like 200/450 or something. I actually forget. I will reuse my SB Live! and my 3com NIC, too.

Thanks for the speedy reply,
Michael
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
Super Moderator
Aug 22, 2001
30,442
27,129
146
Epox nF3 250GB add your ram+another 256mb and 3200+ with that 200gb 8mb cache SATA HDD and you will be cookin' with fire :)

Edit: I had linked the soltek but it has only 2 ram slots=WTF?
 

jdogg707

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2002
6,098
0
76
Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
Epox nF3 250GB add your ram+another 256mb and 3200+ with that 200gb 8mb cache SATA HDD and you will be cookin' with fire :)

Edit: I had linked the soltek but it has only 2 ram slots=WTF?

Agreed, 3GB of RAM is an absolute waste for anything Microsoft Office. I would say:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Retail
1GB of PC3200 DDR RAM
Epox 8KDAJ nForce3 250Gb Motherboard
200GB SATA 7200RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive
 

tcsenter

Lifer
Sep 7, 2001
18,706
430
126
Well yeah, I thought of using a faster processor only, but my present mobo (ECS K7S5A GREAT board, 3+ years of FLAWLESS service) will only do a 266MHz processor, so I would need to do an upgrade there anyway.
Going from XP1600+ to one of these would be an improvement:

Mobile Athlon XP2600+ 512K L2 (266MHz BUS) - $100.00

Mobile Athlon XP2400+ 512K L2 (266MHz BUS) - $80.00

Replace the 256MB PC2100 with another stick of 512MB PC2700 and upgrading the processor should fully satisfy the demands of Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.

Is the HDD a 7200RPM model with 4MB ~ 8MB buffer? Upgrading an older HDD alone will often yield better performance increase than RAM and processor.
 

jkresh

Platinum Member
Jun 18, 2001
2,436
0
71
I would avoid the k8v, it appears to be very picky with memory and if you are planning on going to 1gig+ it may be a bad idea, look at an nforce3 board. The k8n-e is about what you listed for the k8v and should be very good for your purposes (overkill even).
 

classy

Lifer
Oct 12, 1999
15,219
1
81
Originally posted by: tcsenter
Well yeah, I thought of using a faster processor only, but my present mobo (ECS K7S5A GREAT board, 3+ years of FLAWLESS service) will only do a 266MHz processor, so I would need to do an upgrade there anyway.
Going from XP1600+ to one of these would be an improvement:

Mobile Athlon XP2600+ 512K L2 (266MHz BUS) - $100.00

Mobile Athlon XP2400+ 512K L2 (266MHz BUS) - $80.00

Replace the 256MB PC2100 with another stick of 512MB PC2700 and upgrading the processor should fully satisfy the demands of Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.

Is the HDD a 7200RPM model with 4MB ~ 8MB buffer? Upgrading an older HDD alone will often yield better performance increase than RAM and processor.

Yea I am with you. I see no need to buy a new platform for Office.