Any point to do minor upgrade or scrap it?

ShadowHearth

hey lads.

recently i noticed my pc a bit slugish. Steam did a check up on my pc and it showed me i got 2 gb ram... i was like WTF?! last time i checked it was 3...

System properties showed 2 gb too. so i poped fecker open took out ram and putted that back in. shows 3 gb again!

this just reminded me that my little 3.5 year warrior is getting old.

its a dell xps420 quadcore 2.4ghz 3gb ram 8800gt. It still plays everything prety solid, but some games i allreadt have to put down to medish settings.

would it help me out to drop in 6gb of ram? would i extend is lifespam a bit more?

i got 2 monitors, constantly alot of stuff+games on. presume some ram would help?

Problem is ddr2 ram is hard to get by now. they are very expencive.

so would it be worth miniupgrade it? or do i better start saving for new rig? as much as i remember xps420 are not very upgradable cases.

If anyone knows where could i get cheap ddr2 u to 800mhz 6gb rams? cheers!

Monotype

It's not really a terrible system, but you could do with an upgrade within the next year, say. If you want to boost your performance in games, a new graphics card would give a new lease of life. Something around the €100 mark, like a 5770/6770 (or a 5850 if you can find a cheap one, or GTX 460 (not SE version)) could give up to an extra ~50% power in GPU heavy games, especially with your two monitors.

I would start by cleaning up any rubbish that you don't need on your system (a windows reinstall, if you feel like going to that much effort) and defragment to squeeze your system a bit further.

ShadowHearth

I would need new psu too. As the one inside is 375.

Would ram help me with all multitasking and 2 monitors?

Mister Man

I think 3GB is ok, not great, but you should be fine in most games currently.

If you were upgrading, the main thing would be the graphic card (& PSU as you said)

After you get the card & PSU, Then focus on more ram. The card will help with 2 monitors, and the ram helps with muiltitasking.

Really, you PC is pretty decent in most areas, even by todays standards! The Core 2 Quad is still a good CPU even today! 3GB Of ram really isn't the worst part here, although, a few extra gigs doesn't hurt! but defo focus on a new PSU & GPU before ram. At least that's my opinion!

Krusader

If you are running a 32-bit OS, you won't be able to go past 4GB of RAM anyway

ShadowHearth

Mister Man wrote: »

I think 3GB is ok, not great, but you should be fine in most games currently.

If you were upgrading, the main thing would be the graphic card (& PSU as you said)

After you get the card & PSU, Then focus on more ram. The card will help with 2 monitors, and the ram helps with muiltitasking.

Really, you PC is pretty decent in most areas, even by todays standards! The Core 2 Quad is still a good CPU even today! 3GB Of ram really isn't the worst part here, although, a few extra gigs doesn't hurt! but defo focus on a new PSU & GPU before ram. At least that's my opinion!

Cheers m8. I will do that so. Following same theme: which card would be a decent upgrade and how big pus I would need for it? As much as I remember 8800gt is still giving a run for it's money to a lot of Gpus out there.

P.s. It's 64 already. Dd it ages ago for upgrade purposes.

ShadowHearth

Oh yeah. It was awile since I was looking in to new pc components and what's new. I think I got normal pci express slot. There are 1.0 2.0 and 2.1? I have no clue which one I got and if it does have any difference. The mobocracy is based on x38 chipset if I remember correctly.

Lom story short - I don't know if new Gpus got new slots and will my old pc take it.

big man andy

Check what speed your HDD is. Maybe a 7,200rpm one would help. Also, if you're confident, run MSCONFIG and see is there unnecessary programs starting up\running. Use external disks for storage and leave the system disk for the OS.

Mister Man

The Radeon HD 6850 Is a pretty decent card & at a great price
http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/9074812/art/pixmania/radeon-hd-6850-1-gb-gddr5.html

*Most of the lads on here use the German site, I just think the card on Pix is a good deal, plus shipping on HWVS is 30Euro*

That's the one I bought & right now I can't fault it, It's pretty good. Also, instead of actually getting the refrence card like that one, I ended up getting a Sapphire version (The one I linked should be just the anti-s. bag without a DVI-VGA, molex to 6 pin, case badget and all that)

As for PSU, I Bought a cheap PSU (I, along with everyone wouldn't recommend that, it's just I had a budget =P) Someone will probably recommend a good PSU For you, I would recommend going with Corsair, I've heard nothing bad about their PSU's. You would want maybe 450 Watt PSU (A Good one.) to run the card with everything else (Someone can correct that)

alphanumeric01

just looking through this thread and it seems like you do have a decent system.

If your computer is sluggish though download and run CCleaner from piriform. In the tabs on the left there is an option called drive wiper, the default setting is to wipe FREE SPACE ONLY so don't worry about wiping out your OS or files. This basically writes blank data to the areas of the disk where old files reside giving you more hard disk space. Also the cleaner option tab will clear your temporary files and browser cache which will give you a noticeably faster system!

just try that before adding more RAM which won't make any noticeable speed difference if windows is running slow!!

btw your new 6850 should let you push your games back up to high or ultra settings.

alphanumeric01

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Oh yeah. It was awile since I was looking in to new pc components and what's new. I think I got normal pci express slot. There are 1.0 2.0 and 2.1? I have no clue which one I got and if it does have any difference. The mobocracy is based on x38 chipset if I remember correctly.

Lom story short - I don't know if new Gpus got new slots and will my old pc take it.

I had a look at your mobo on google images. Looks like you have a PCIe X1, PCIe X4 and PCIe X16 slots on your board http://www.newgeardeals.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/t/p/tp406.jpg
(The 3 black ports on the board here from left to right) The X38 chipset supports version 2.0 of the PCI Express standard for interface ports, 2.1 is a precursor to PCI Express 3.0 which should be out at the moment. All of these are backward compatible so it dosen't really matter what one you have anyway.

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/chipsets/x38/x38-overview.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_1.1