Will I notice a difference?

[DPoon]

Currently have:
1gb OCZ Plat Rev. 2
Athlon 3500+

Upgrading to:
2gb OCZ Plat Rev. 2
Athlon 54 X2 4200+

Will this be big or minor increase? Is it worth to spend $200 for this upgrade?

 

[MarcVenice]

I'd buy a x2 3800+ and OC it to 2.4-2.6ghz or higher if you can. 2.4-2.6 is easy peasy though. The extra gig of ram is worth it too. It's basicaly what I did, and it should keep me gaming for another year to come. For 200$ you could almost buy a p35 and a e4400 too though which might OC to 3ghz with easy and will beat the AMD cpu by a long stretch. You would need to buy additional 2gigs of ddr2 ram though.

Worth it right now? Hmz tough call, perhaps wait till you got 300$ to spend and can afford Intel or phenom when it comes out.

 

[DPoon]

Thanks for the advice, but Im not looking to OC. Just wanted to know if it would be a huge difference for @200

 

[MarcVenice]

No, not really, unless you've got apps that can utilize 2 or more cores, like video editing/encoding, photoshop etc. Then another 1gb of ram will help too. If you multitask an awfull lot, or want to play games when ripping mp3's, then a dualcore can help too. For everyday usage, it's not going to help to much, and in games, it depends on the games you play, but most games can't use more then 1 core.

 

[thorin]

Running Vista?

Depending what OS you run and what you use the system for, I would suggest that you'd notice more of a difference with the extra RAM vs. the different CPU. I know you're talking about changing both but I'm trying to save you $. Really a 3500+ with 1GB is still a new'ish system and should probably do fine for most people.

 

[DPoon]

3 year old system still considered newish? I'm running XP Pro with 2 raptors and a 7800gtx ko. Its basically for games, and plan on picking up some of the new FPS games. ie Orange Box, Hellgate, etc.

 

[thorin]

Seems like a 3500+ w/ 1GB and nV 7800 should be sufficient for HG: London

http://www.hellgatelondon.com/system_requirements

Again I'd still say the RAM will make a difference. I noticed this switching from 768MB to 1GB playing Quake3, 4, WoW, etc under Xp Pro. A lot of modern games are memory hungry and graphics dependent, as you can see the the HGL sys reqs a 1.8GHz with 1 or 2GB and a decent card. (1.8GHz was new how many years ago? and your 3500+ is how much newer? )

 

[bob4432]

are you even using all your current ram? before upgrading advice, we should know what you use the computer for...