Greedy Satisfaction

[Mannkind]

Now that you're reading... well, I am assuming you are if you are reading this.

My father currently has an AMD Athlon 2800+, 1GB of DDR 266 ram, 80GB HD, GeForce 4 4600 video card. Now, I *know* that he hardly ever uses that computer. Most of the time he is surfing the web on his laptop or making 'movies' using Windows Movie Maker. He says he plays games, but I know for a fact he doesn't or at least, nothing remotely stressing that computer.

Now he has went out and purchased a SATA HD and wants to 'upgrade' his computer so it won't be so 'slow' and he wants my advice.
I've been out of the game for a while, how can I keep things cheap while getting him something that he will think is faster? Is it even possible, or will he have to spend big $$$ to upgrade the machine?

 

[TriggerHappy101]

You will not see a performace jump with your new HD. (your current HD is 7200RPM?)

Check with the motherboards manufactures website and see how fast of a proccessor you can put in it. Upgrade the proccessor.

 

[morkman100]

A fresh install of XP will probably help too.

 

[Luckyboy1]

See Luckyboy's Guide For Complete Users.

The short answer is it depends and the hard drive is far from the first place to go.

 

[Shadow Conception]

Defragment the hard drive, it can help miles in system performance without having to spend a dime.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Is this an Athlon XP 2800+ or A64 we're talking about? Is the motherboard socket A or 754? His RAM looks fine, and while a HD could improve things like load times and general responsiveness it not where you should start for improving performance (IMO and as someone mentioned above). I would try and get the best processor his MB will accept and the best graphics card that's within you're budget. There are loads of great choices out there for midrange and budget AGP (guessing he's got an AGP port) graphics cards. I'd say either a 6600GT or vanilla 6800 would both be affordable and offer a considerable boost in gaming performance, but you can choose to fit your budget.