Upgrade Questions

[SLCentral]

Hey guys,

I have a Shuttle XPC SN41G2 with 256MB of PC2700 Crucial DDR and a Athlon XP 2400+, as well as a Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 40GB HD, and a 9500 Pro.

It's time for an upgrade though. I'm stuck between two things. I already got 256MB more of Crucial PC2700, so now I have 512MB, which should be enough. But my choices are:

Athlon XP 2800+ and a WD Raptor 36GB HD for about $220

or

Athlon XP 3000+ for about $170

Which one is a better buy and which one would be the best upgrade?

Thank you

 

[SLCentral]

bump

 

[Dufrane]

not sure it would be worth it

 

[xSauronx]

i doubt its worth it

if you feel the need though, maybe sell the 2400+, get a barton 2500+ to oc (not sure how much of an issue extra heat for you though) since a 2800/3000+ isnt _that_ muich of an upgrade (and not worth the cost for the performance, in my opinion)

and make it a gig of pc3200, or the raptor 36gig drive

 

[adams828]

Originally posted by: SLCentral

It's time for an upgrade though.

hm well i guess the question is, why is it time for an upgrade? is it that you want something "better"? or do you have certain uses (games, video editing, etc) which don't run as fast as you'd like?

off the bad, i'd say if you can hang on, your system should be fast enough to wait unil prescott comes out, which should make prices on the 64 come down enough for you to grab one of those

 

[SLCentral]

I was thinking it's time for an upgrade because whenever I play Call of Duty at 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200, it lags severely when I also have another program open, even something as simple as IE, AIM, or Kazaa Lite. Not sure if this can be fixed with some RAM, though. But I am interested in the Raptor because it takes forever to load anything games-wise with my situation now. Once again, I dont know if RAM can help this, but sometimes, with another program open, Call of Duty will take 4 or so minutes to load. At best, with nothing open, it takes anywhere between 45 seconds and a minute.

 

[adams828]

well more ram sounds like it would def. be helpful.. now is this all with the new 256mb (ie, while running 512mb)? or is this all with only 256 mb?

 

[SLCentral]

It's 512MB total.

 

[poppyq]

I know that going from 512 to 1GB for me sped up loading times for BF1942, this should apply to Call of Duty at least in some respect so the ram would definitely help

 

[adams828]

Originally posted by: SLCentral
It's 512MB total.

alright, well i'd say go for the extra 512mb of ram. in the case of running programs in the background, the extra memory will be useful. it'll probably give you the biggest performance boost, as well as the best performance/price ratio anyways.