Upgrade Gain

[Austain310]

I purchased a dell 9100 a year ago and im building a new computer now. Ive upgraded the dell systems ram, vid card, and sound card. I plan to take the video card out of this system and put it in new 1 for now(until i get more money) and same with sound card.

here is current 9100:
P4 3.0 GHZ with hyperthreading
1.5 gigs of ram (specific dell memory for 9100)
evga geforce 6800gs
x-fi xtreme sound

heres what i plan to build...
amd x2 4200+
on an asus a8n sli deluxe mobo
Corsair TWINX Dual Channel 2048MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB)
same vid card
same sound
and this HARD DRIVE
Im really not sure about what to look for in hard drives...

so heres a couple questions...
my p4 3 ghz is a single core and is the x2 4200 (dual core) gonna better preform even when im not multitasking?

the case im purchasing is an asphire x navigator...it comes with a 500 watt power source.
my 9100 came with a 375 watt ps and after installing the xfi sound card my computer has been quickly freezing after closing the application closest to the start menu...
is it the lack of power or is it something to do with drivers?
will i see a performance gain when it comes to my graphics card/ whole system getting more power?
is the corsair ram better than this
dell memory that is in my current system?

thanks alot if u can help...

 

[dexvx]

Why on earth would you upgrade to a S939 system?

As for the X-Fi, its most likely a driver issue.

About the PSU, that 500W no-name probably does lower "real" output than your 375W Dell.

 

[Austain310]

what do u mean?

 

[Austain310]

so i should buy a well known ps like ultra?

 

[Austain310]

socket 939= bad? or sarcastic?

 

[m21s]

939 is good, dont get me wrong.

Its just a dead socket now with the release of AM2 and Intel's Core2Duo.

At least look into those as an option.

 

[Fishbone Walker]

Originally posted by: Austain310
socket 939= bad? or sarcastic?

no, its not bad, its just that 939 is on its way out, like soon. Its not a bad platform, though, not by any means.

 

[Ayah]

Originally posted by: Austain310
so i should buy a well known ps like ultra?

There's a difference between well known and quality. Ultra may be well known but it doesn't come into my books as quality. I class it in generic level PSUs.

S939 is being phased out by AMD and replaced by AM2. AM2 offers support for DDR2 instead of DDR, (don't know why, DDR is still good stuff) and will be supported in the future.

I believe that dexvx recommends you not to purchase new equipment from a dying breed.

It is fairly common that Maxtors of your linked series don't play too well with nForce3/4s too.

That video card of yours might not work with your new board as the new board is PCI-E and I don't know what your old computer is.

 

[dexvx]

S939 is dead. There will be no future CPU's with S939. No upgradeability. With AM2 you can at least look forward to AM3 (whatever that is). With current S775 boards (all 965 and newer 975), you get Quad-Core support in the future.

As for the PSU. Dell PSU's are extremely high quality. They are rated at maximum peak output at room temperature. Most "crap" PSU's are rated at maximum burst or 1 line output at freezing (to bump up the marketting wattage).


...


From the looks of it, the 9100 uses DDR2-667 memory. Even less of a reason to "upgrade" to S939, as it takes regular DDR. From the sound of it, you have 2x 512 and 2x256 DDR2. If you buy AM2 or S775 (Core 2 Duo), you can just pop the 2x512 sticks into that and be ready to go.


It sounds like you aren't in a hurry, so I'd just go get a 965 board (depending if you want to overclock, probably the Giga-byte 965) and get a E6300 or better.

 

[Austain310]

thanks for helping, processors and mobos arent my specialty... this is my first built system. So the processor is good right? its just the motherboard. I went for that 1 cause pc gamer mag said it was reliable.

 

[Austain310]

any recommendations on an am2 for that x2 4200 or should i go with the core 2 duo 6400?