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Upgrade?

B

Bear 100

Junior Member
First Post! My system was built one year ago today. Reading advice in this forum allowed me to build the system even though I had zero experience. It runs great, but the itch is there to do something more.

Vista Ultimate 64 bit, Intel Core2 Duo 6300 @ 3.0 GHz w/ Scythe Ninja, Asus PB5 Deluxe Wi-Fi 1226 Bios, Silverstone ST50EF-Plus 500Watt, Antec P180B with 6 Yate Loon 120mm fans at 600 rpm + AcoustiPack foam, nVidia 7900 GS w/Thermalright HR03, Corsair 2GB XMS2-5400, WD RE2 500GB w/ 16MB, WD Raptor ADFD 74GB w/16MB, Samsung S182D DVD, Mitsumi FA404M

I run general applications, using this for my business running mostly Excel models. I also do a bunch of video encoding, but no gaming. I generally have 5 to 8 applciations running at any time. My primarily desires are to increase the speed of applications loading also the snap of moving between applications, cutting and pasting data etc. Video encoding is in the background, and it takes what ever it takes, but it does occassionaly bog everything down. I have done what I can to optimize the software with virus, defrag, indexing done during off hours and turning off some Vista 'features'.

Question While my 6300 is capable of a 3.6 overclock, I reduced it to 3.0 to keep core temp to 40c. I am looking at upgrading to either E8400 and overclocking, or Q8200 or Q6600 which are roughly the same price. Will either give me a noticeable real world speed jump, which one more so? Sorry if this seems to be a repeat thread, but most of the questions are around choices with gamers - not my situation.

Thanks, Bear 100
 
Get another 2 gb of ram. I don't know if your mobo supports the latest Penryn quads-duals, but that Q6600 should work with no problems. I would just wait and see what are all these new Core i7 cpus doing at the prices of the "old" quads.
 
Indeed my motherboard supports the latest Penryn quads and duals. So all options are open.

I like the RAM idea, especially with current pricing and my Vista 64.... but my ram utilization seems to hardly stray from 75% utilization. I guess (no idea really) that my applications are simply not capable of using more?

If I did get more RAM can I mix (same speed and same manufacturer) my existing 2 x 1 GB with an additional 2 x 2GB filling my slots and giving me total of 6GB?
 
Review of Dual & Quad-core processors

Take a few minutes to read that article. I think you'd benefit most from:
1) 2GB more RAM (or 4GB more--even better)
2) Q8200 overclocked to 3GHz

Vista loves extra RAM. Life gets better with more.

Quadcore will be great if you do a lot of video encoding 'in the background' while performing other tasks. I recommend the Q8200 versus the Q6600 because it's cooler & uses less power (basically an equal match at stock speeds, once you push to 3GHz the heat generation will be noticeably lower with the 45nm chip).
 
Originally posted by: Bear 100.

I like the RAM idea, especially with current pricing and my Vista 64.... but my ram utilization seems to hardly stray from 75% utilization. I guess (no idea really) that my applications are simply not capable of using more?

If I did get more RAM can I mix (same speed and same manufacturer) my existing 2 x 1 GB with an additional 2 x 2GB filling my slots and giving me total of 6GB?
Click to expand...

Yeah, you could do that. Vista is a memory hog, so the more it has the better will run, since superfetch will use all that extra free ram, to fill it with programs you use often. So that speeds up everything quite nicely. Actually, this is the major improvement Vista has over XP, in my opinion. Just think about how many programs you'll have in your ram, on 6 gb, ready to load, at a click of a mouse. 😉
 
While not cost effective in any measure, if you want to improve application loading times and general overall usage then pick up an Intel SSD. The next best thing would be the upgrade to more RAM, and finally a quad core will help since Vista handles multi-processing pretty well.
 
With a 64-Bit operating system, you definitely need more Ram! And if you do upgrade your processor, do not get the E8400, that's a side upgrade from what you have. Go with a Quad-core processor only. 🙂
 
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