What should I upgrade?

[arnemarco]

I have a P4 1.8 GHz rig with a Intel 850 Mobo and 768 Mb PC800 Rambus, 2 x 80 Gb Maxtor 133 HDs, Creative Labs GeForce 3 ti500, Creative Audigy, Memorex CD writer & DVD-player.

If I want to tune up speed, what would be the best thing to do? To buy a better graphics card? Or a new MoBo with a speedier CPU? Or both? But because the RAM was so expensive, I would like to keep using it. Are there any MoBos today that accept the PC800 RAM and speedier CPUs?

For any advice, many thanks!

 

[Lord Evermore]

You'll cripple the faster processor if you continue using PC800 with a 533MHz CPU bus. If you MUST upgrade something (considering you don't really have a "slow" machine, then I'd say upgrade the video card to a Radeon 9700 Pro (no sense upgrading just slightly to a Ti4600), and a 2.6GHz 400MHz bus P4.

You could simply build an entirely new machine of course, reusing the hard drives and optical drives, and maybe the video card. Buying new DDR memory to go on an 845PE board wouldn't be very expensive, and you could use an older hard drive and optical drives to make use of the old board and processor and memory.

Just because something cost a buttload when you first bought it doesn't mean it's still cutting edge today and worth keeping, if you're going for performance.

 

[arnemarco]

Thanks. Of course I could make a new PC, but I tought I will stay with this for some more time. And maybe the best thing is first to upgrade the graphics card. I could use that in a new rig with the 533 MHz bus or what it maybe become to be later ...

 

[TheCorm]

Is there a particular area or program where you are not 100% happy with the speed?

Corm

 

[arnemarco]

Can a PC ever be fast enough? Well, I am sometimes using Adobe InDesign 2.0, Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Photopaint at the same time, when I am preparing some publications. Then I feel I could need more speed. Furthermore I have installed SuSE Linux. It seems to like speed to.

Rarely I am using some games. They can always need more speed ...

 

If I were you i would upgrade the following:
Get a granite bay or sis 655 chipset mobo, get two 512mb(or two 256 sticks) pc3000 hyperx sticks, and a 9700 pro......

 

[Lord Evermore]

If you're looking for speed in graphics editing and Linux (not sure exactly what might seem "slow" in generic Linux), then a faster processor would help most.