Upgrades that help DC performance (Part II)

[ProviaFan]

New updates: This morning before school I installed the Zalman chipset cooler thing that I ordered along with the RAM (I ordered that to replace the dead chipset fan on my Abit NF7-S v2.0, the RAM was added on as an afterthought). Oh yeah, that's benefit #1 of being home schooled - you "have" to fix the computer first, because you need it to do your work.

Now, my graphics card fan starts making these horrible noises! Actually, it's made them for some time, but usually the duration of the noise was short enough that it got blamed on something else. This time, with the side off the case as I booted up after the heatsink installation, I was able to stick my ear in there and figure out the source of the sound. What really bites is that I'm desperately trying to save money for another project (or three), and being "forced" to upgrade my video card right now is not something I really want to do (though on the other hand I wouldn't mind, as this Radeon SDR PCI is just a bit slow by today's standards).

At the rate that fans are going bad around the house, should I order a ton and keep an inventory? With my luck, perhaps I should...

Pre-edit:

Yesterday saw the arrival of a partner for the Corsair XMS 512MB PC3200 DDR module that was already firmly seated in my Abit NF7-S v2. The two are behaving themselves as well as can be expected, though they don't really speed things up when mated... er, run with dual channel.

Yes, the 1024 MB of RAM really helps to keep my system from swapping to hell and back when I fire up Photoshop and Indesign or Dreamweaver and VMWare, but it doesn't do anything noticeable for my F@H performance.

It appears that I must atone for my sins by upgrading the processor of one of my slower systems after Christmas.

 

[Wolfsraider]

J
F@h only uses 256 max per cpu/wu so that isn't suprising.

But does your system feel snappier in ps and dw etc?
I am thinking of doing the same

I am also drooling over suse 9.2 though dang choices are killing me

mike

 

[BlackMountainCow]

If you had overclocked that 3200 to like 3500, that would make a difference I guess! :beer:

 

[Unforgiven]

with all the new programs hitting the market now and in the future, a gig of ram is gonna be essential in the upcoming years. i just upgraded from 512 megs of dual channel to 1.5 gigs and its night and day difference. ram is highly underrated!

 

[Ken g6]

You could have made a worse choice. An upgraded video card tends to substantially decrease DC performance by encouraging the use of CPU-intensive entertainment programs (video games).

 

[Malak]

Yeah I think I'll move photoshop to my new computer, PS loads awfully slow on this one.

 

[networkman]

If you're gonna do more upgrades to improve DC performance, I'd say you can probably skip the sound card - it won't make much difference.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: networkman
If you're gonna do more upgrades to improve DC performance, I'd say you can probably skip the sound card - it won't make much difference.

Darn. What about a better pair of headphones?

Or maybe a DVD+/-RW?

 

[Fingers]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan

Originally posted by: networkman
If you're gonna do more upgrades to improve DC performance, I'd say you can probably skip the sound card - it won't make much difference.

Darn. What about a better pair of headphones?

Or maybe a DVD+/-RW?

I've noticed dual moniters really seem to help performance.

 

[MDE]

I'm considering a sort of DC related upgrade by parting out my Athlon XP system, giving my Dad the XP 2500+ and better heatsink and selling his XP 2200+ and my NF7-S to help fund a new Athlon 64 system. I dunno, but the A64 3000+ system I built for a friend of a friend felt twice as snappy as my HT Pentium 4 @ 3.6. Plus an Athlon 64 would pack a bit more punch than a lowly XP .

 

[Wiz]

I got a nice new set of Sennheiser's but I don't really think they help in seti...
Now I have a wireless set of Sennheiser's and a wired Sennheiser headphones on the one system, nice for watching a dvd with my son. We watched Hero last night.

 

[Insidious]

I put a new chrome/rubber Brake pedal and matching shifter pegs on the Harley last week...

My computers sped up just to get me to quit ignoring them!

-Sid

 

[JonB]

My recent upgrade to matching DVD +/- RW burners didn't help my DC much, but being able to produce 2 DVD copies every 15 minutes (I'm using cheap 4x disks) beats the single copy every 45 minutes I was getting from my POS MSI-DR8a burner.