My friend and I were discussing recently all the improvements and modifications that we can do to our computers…
My friend is a gamer and recently shelled out for the Nvidia GeForce 3 graphics card. He also has an amazingly large amount of RAM on his machine and an equally high processor speed.
Myself, on the other hand am still using a Pentium 3 550Mhz with 128megs of ram. The thing is though, I rarely play games and spend all my time in Windows. Whilst his computer goes much faster than mine, the performance gain in Windows isn’t in direct correlation to the speed of his processor or amount of RAM.
When I finally upgrade or get another machine I want to build something that will give me more bang for the buck in windows.
What’s the best way to do this? The most appealing to me, so far has been having a SCSI hard disk. Would adding one of these (even though expensive) give better performance in Windows or am I wasting my time?
If you want to make your friend cry, get the Tyan Thunder K7 motherboard, two 1.2 GHz Athlon MP CPUs, 256 MBs of DDR RAM, and a SCSI hard drive.
You won’t notice a huge improvement in the performance of anything, unless you’ve got software that works much better with dual processors (like 3D rendering and such), but as geek cred goes, your toys will be the best.
At your present level of hardware which is similar to mine (ie PIII 500 / 512 megs of RAM /7200 40 gid RPM hard disk/ 32 meg Nvidia Geoforce) there is not a lot you can do that is going to give you an “Oh Wow!” increase in performance under 98 or ME. An expection to this rule might be some of the latest FPS games but Quake Arena runs perfectly fine on my machine. The only slowdowns are occasionally when there are lots of people in an arena on screen at once.
If you move to 1.4 gigahertz and above processors you will notice some increased “snappiness” to operations but nothing to get that excited about for ruuning the usual windows stuff. Again, high end gaming may be an exception and Win XP hardware requirements might be more formidable in gaming.
Your most cost effective upgrade areas are:
Hard disk: 7200 RPM IDE (not SCSI) harddisk. SCSI is better for multi-threaded data base server operations but you will get the same (or better) real world, single station performance from one of the latest fast IDEs for considerably less cost (not to mention the cost of the SCSI controller).
Memory: Stock up to your machines max - It’s super cheap (even DDR prices have fallen). Try to get matched sizes of the same brand if possible.
Hansel’s suggestion of the AMD 1.2 gig athlon based system is a good one as this performance range is no longer bleeding edge and neither is the price. As an example the other day on uBid I bought a refurbished (refurbed by HP and essentially new) HP Pavilion unit with 1.2 gig Athlon CPU, 128 megs RAM, 60 gig hard disk, 32 meg Nvidia2 onboard, sound, 12X DVD, 8X CDRW, firewire, modem, ethernet etc etc etc for $ 670. delivered. The amount of horsepower you can for the dollar these days is amazing.
Not really. Most windows operations won’t really use more than 128. I actually did this test as part of science project I did with my son. In most cases increases past 64 megs for most apps (even fairly demanding ones) have rapid falloff past 64 megs with 128 allowing somewhat easier multitasking if several apps are open at once and 256 having relatively little real world impact other than making the geek feel better which is why I have 512 megs in mine. ;). Memory is so cheap these days what can it hurt?
Preview is our friend
In most cases the performance increase past 64 megs for most apps (even fairly demanding ones) has a rapid falloff past 64 megs with 128 megs allowing somewhat easier multitasking if several apps are open at once…
I’ve been humbled. The recommended system reqs for Max Payne are higher than my system specs (they want a 700 MHz CPU, IIRC, while I have a measly 600).
if gaming is not your thing go for win 2000 - much better for work envirnment. I would go for another 256 meg ram chip - cheap enough and you can most likely add it to yours.
If you up your ram use ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 in your win.ini file under the [386Enh] section.
I would forget scsi HD - they are not that much faster to justify the extra cost and usually take longer to boot up as well as the bios has to reconize the scsi card then find the boot drive.
You might consider getting a new ATA100 EIDE HD and the corosponding controller card if you MB doesn’t support the 100.
New HD or old you can improve things by setting the swap file on it’s own partition which would mean reformatting or using a partition program like partition magic.
Don’t load shareware programs(and other stuff you really don’t need) and keep your system lean and mean. If your system has lots of ‘junk’ loaded it can really take a toll on performance.
run msconfig - unload programs that you don’t need.
if you use a software firewall consider using a hardware firewall (cable/dsl connection) - this way you can unload that.
If you are at low risk - consider deactivating some of the virus scanner security - or if you are feeling particularly bold turn it off (not recommended - but ok for a short time).
for an extra boost consider overclocking - more useful for gamming computers and less suited for workhorse computers but still an option.
You might go for the fastest processor your board can handle – stick w/ P3’s though - don’t fall for those aftermarket upgrade to 800 mhz kits - I have never had one that made a significant diffrence.
I agree with those who suggested a new hard drive. The new drive needs to be set up as your primary drive (i.e. make it the C: drive and install Windows on it) to get the most benefit. While you’re at it, you might want to to start over with a clean install of Windows on the new drive, instead of restoring a backup. That gets rid of utilities and drivers you no longer need.
In my opinion, SCSI is not worth the extra cost, unless you need external drives (and even then, IEEE1394 and USB are more convenient) or need more than 4 internal drives.
"When I finally upgrade or get another machine I want to build something that will give me more bang for the buck in
windows. "
When that time comes, all the products mentioned here are gonna have changed so it’s rather pointless to suggest any product.
But perhaps you could make your HD a firewire drive right now & be going really fast? You can just change your Computer properties to a Network Server, for a little speed boost.
