to upgrade or not to upgrade???

[kugelmass]

I am K6-2 500 chrysalis
play no 3D games
now considering to tramsform into butterfly
you all beeinng Athlons/Durons about GHz tell me:
is any difference in everyday life?
Windows run faster, Word, Excel, IE more speedy?
is there any good to bee GHz butterfly (except 3D gaming)?

upgrade cheap as dirt, but maybe better to have a good dinner instead?

 

[Mitzi]

I guess if you are just running standard office applications doing a major upgrade wouldn't do you much good.

But how much RAM you got? RAM is so cheap nowadays it may be worth sticking more in if you have less that 256Mb.

 

[Deanodarlo]

Generally, if you can double your speed in CPU Mhz and memory bandwidth, you'll definitely notice an improvement.

In your case, you can triple CPU Mhz, and definately quadruple your memory bandwidth so I'd say do it.

A hard drive upgrade only might be another good choice if surfing the net and using office is all you do, as this really is a noticeable improvement within windows.

If you plan to run newer versions of operating systems in the future it's also useful.

I don't play 3D games either, but going from a K6-III 400 with 5200 ATA 66 hard drive to a Duron 1Gig with 7200RPM ATA 100 hard drive really made using windows much more snappy.

 

[Alex]

sure but i mean if youre ok with your stuff right now and its not painfully slow to open apps n stuff then why waste the money? prices will only go downhill as time goes on so if ya dont really need it then dont bother....

 

[Athlon4all]

No. It really won't be any better. I know because I had a K6-2 475 system and I had loads of issues with it, anyway when I decided to build a new rig, I got a Duron 800, and I really haven't noticed a difference in office apps performance. The only thing that I would do is get a 7200RPM drive, and maybe some RAM ($40 for 256MB) other than that, you're fine.

 

[KevinMU1]

What you really need to ask yourself is if it's worth paying all that money for a few minor speed boosts? How much is that worth to you? I've never been a fan of gratuitous upgrading, so... just think about if it's worth it fro what you'll get. BTW, RAM is almost always worth it.

 

[kugelmass]

re Mitzi:
160 MB RAM is plenty, why more??!!!

re Deanodarlo:
on my computer Win98 loads preceivably faster than on my father?s Celeron 800+Abit+192 MB RAM
any explanation?
this makes me sceptical about upgrades
HDD is not explanation, mine is ATA33 (in fact ATA66 but mobo is only ATA33) and my father?s is ATA66

re franguinho:
seems you?re right but
I have ISA modem, ISA sound blaster and PC100 memory
(ISA cards running without problems in Linux)
afraid that soon may be hard to find mobo with ISA and PC100
today my <mobo+CPU+AT case> can be sold for $70
last moment to redeem
tomorrow only garbage

 

[Mitzi]

re Mitzi:
160 MB RAM is plenty, why more??!!!

Thats why I asked how much RAM you had. If you have 160Mb I would not bother upgrading - the difference between 160 and 256 would be minimal. If you had 64Mb RAM it would of certainly been worth upgrading.

 

[Jiggz]

I'll say YES! If you can afford it at least go with the Duron 1 Ghz. There is a considerable performance difference coming from K6-2 500. I upgraded from Celeron 400 to Duron 750 and the difference is well noted. Even as simple as running Office programs.

 

[kugelmass]

<< No. It really won't be any better. I know because I had a K6-2 475 system and I had loads of issues with it, anyway when I decided to build a new rig, I got a Duron 800, and I really haven't noticed a difference in office apps performance. >>


what you say is very interesting
few days ago I saw some benchmark scores (Winbench, Winstone etc)
compared Durons/Athlons with my humble K6
results are devastating:
according to benchmarks K6 is a few times slower (in Windows) than Durons/Athlons
I had a hunch that all these benchmarks are fishy stuff
and you only confirmed it

thanks everybody especially Deanodarlo and Athlon4all
I wanted to know experience of someone who already made upgrade
many are talking about upgrade before upgrading
interesting to find out what they think after it
any other post-upgrade reports ?????