New hard drive of faster CPU?

[Nailbunny]

Ok...I'm looking to upgrade my parents machine for very little money. It is currently a PII 350 with two 3 gig drives. Now would I get a greater performance boost from upgrading the proc/MB to like a duron 800...or getting a 40gig 7200rpm hard drive?

The machine is mainly used for Word docs, internet, minimal games like Myst and solitare.

Whattya think?

-NB

 

[Hender]

To get a Duron, you'd have to replace the motherboard as well, and that's just an extra expense. It sounds like your parents don't do much that would need beyond a 350 MHz CPU, anyways.

I'd say go for the hard drive. If you have money left over, you could even grab some more RAM (it's damn cheap) and a Celeron CPU to upgrade the CPU just a little, maybe a 433 or 466 if the MB supports it. 800 MHz is overkill, and as I said, the new MB is an added cost to replace something that works perfectly and suits them just fine.

 

[Desmoquattro]

hmmm...i say the hard drive. i have a p2 350 overclocked to 466 so it's not that bad for now...funny thing is i also have a 40gb HD.

 

[Quickfingerz]

you'll get more noticable performance if you upgrade the hard drive.

Since you'll need a hard drive that has a fast access time, I'd reccomend getting a Quantum LM or a IBM 60GXP.

 

[Nailbunny]

Well the consensus seems to be the Hard Drive and maybe more memory (they have 128 right now). I was thinking the same thing. Thanks for the input.

_NB

 

[knutp]

It could happen that the motherboard has a limit of 32 gb harddrives. And I don't think they will need more than a 20 gb drive. They have a 3 gb drive now, and it isn't full?

So save a few buck, get a 20gb 7200 rpm (ibm, maxtor or quantum), and 128 mb ram extra.

 

[thorin]

RAM
HD
Proc/MB

In that order. Also you can probably easily OC that chip to 400 without any changes to the HSF or anything.

Thorin