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Upgrading lots of stuff on my PC. I need some reccomendations

L

Link19

Senior member
I want to upgrade some stuff on my PC. I am mainly looking at getting a new motherboard and a new CPU. I also want to get new hard drives because I want ones with 8 MB cache instead of 2 MB cache. I also want to upgrade my memory so it will be more and operate at dual channel. I am though going to probably keep my case, power supply and my CD/DVD-ROM and burner drives, sound card, and my graphics card. The main reason I want to upgrade is because system performance is very slow when I have Norton Anti-Virus 2003 installed. My brother says he hates Norton Anti-Virus 2003 because it really slows down his system performance. I wasn't sure if I agreed with him until I did a complete clean format of my hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP and my system performance within Windows was so much faster until I installed a lot of Norton System Works 2003 including the Norton Anti-Virus utility which really made my system performance a lot slower within Windows quite often. I am also doing a major upgrade becuase when I last built my PC about a year ago, I thought I really had everything to be the top of the line in terms of CPU, video card, and best RAM technolgy, although not the absolute maximum amount of RAM I could put in my PC. I did not know at the time about the cache sizes in the hard drives. I just recently learned now that having an 8 MB cache hard drive gives you a significant performance improvement by about 20%, and it is really not a lot more expensive based on prices I saw. I mainly want a great PC for gaming and smooth performance in lots of digital stuff. What processor, motherboard, and other stuff do you think would be best.

Here are my current system specs:
*ASUS A7V266-E motherboard
-Socket A Motherboard
-VIA KT266A Chipset
-it says DDR DRAM on the outside of the manual, but I have read that it takes DDR SDRAM and I currently have DDR SDRAM PC2100 in it
*AMD Athlon XP 2000+
*Vision Tek XTASY NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600
*PC2100 DDR SDRAM one 512 MB DIMM and one 256 MB DIMM for a total of 768 MB of RAM
*Western Digital Hard Drive 30 GB connected to primary master IDE port
*Western Digital Hard Drive 100 GB connected to promise IDE controller integrated in the motherboard
*LiteOn DVD-ROM drive 16X/48X LTD163D
*LiteOn CD-RW 32/12/40X 32123S
*Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-104
*Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer Sound Card
*Windows XP Professional w/Service Pack 1
*Netgear FA310TX Ethernet Adapter hooked to an ethernet LAN hub and router
*400 watt power supply
 
Wait.

Your system is really quite good right now. If you upgrade to a new motherboard and dual channel DDR, you will get between 0-15% improvement, depending on the application, with most showing no noticeable difference. The KT266A is still a competetive chipset. I wouldn't recommend it for a new purchase, but that doesn't mean you need to upgrade.

The bigger cache hard drive can give you a difference, but it is no where near 20% overall. Maybe 20% for certain tasks (like opening a new word document for example). Some people say they notice a big difference, others hardly notice it at all. Depends again what you do.

If you want Norton Auto-protect on, just disable it during games or when you want a boost. Simply right-click on the icon in the system tray. You'll save a lot of money.

Then upgrade when it really makes a difference. Or if you are absolutely dying for it, plop in a 2800+. You'll see more of an overall improvement than a Mobo/RAM swap, for less money, and without reformatting.
 
Does the fact that I have an extra IDE controller that can be used for that or RAID integrated in my motherboard reduce system performance at all in any area? Do the drives hooked to my extra promise IDE controller perform just as well as they would hooked up to the regular primary/secondary IDE port? You say the KT266A is a competitive chipset, but you wouldn't reccomend it for a new purchase. Would you have reccommended it for a new purchase a year ago in April 2002? As for the Norton Anti-Virus thing, if I disable auto-protect when I play online games, or am just connected to the Internet even with my browser closed, could I receive a virus? Or can I only receive a virus through e-mail, or by downloading files? Can a virus get on my PC and do immediate harm with out me even running the file, or do I always have to double click on the virus for it to take destructive or annoying affect on my system? Is it just me with Norton Anti-virus 2003 or is it slow down everybody's computer when they have it installed with auto-protect enabled?
 
You won't get a virus unless you open a file that is infected. You will never get a virus from playing a game online.
 
When it comes to network security, never is a dirty word.


I agree that you don't generally have to worry if you play legal games online without cheats or hacks. Running illegal and hacked software is the #1 security threat for home users, IMO. Email is number 2 still, but for the most part, if you follow common sense (disable preview pane in Outlook etc.) it's preventable.

Knowledge is always the best anti-virus software. Norton is good too. Use both for best results.
 
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