My work computer is an off-lease Dell Optiplex GX280 running XP SP3. Pentium IV 3.2GHz processor with 3GB of ram (actually 4 but XP only recognizes 3).
I never game on this computer, save for the occasional browser-based Flash game. I do run Visual Studio, Photoshop CS4, Firefox 3.5, Eudora, WMP 10 and Quickbooks. Sometimes, simultaneously.
I keep the machine pretty clean…I know it’s spyware and virus free, and I keep tabs on my startup items.
In genereal, the system is fast enough for me. But sometimes it seems laggy. The fans in the box are those variable-speed type that spin up when you’re doing processor-intense stuff. Seems to me that the fans spin up for the most part when there’s Flash on the screen. YouTube videos and Flash games. Sometimes Web pages and images therein load slowly, even though I’m running a wired connection.
Just now I was playing Bejeweled on FaceBook, with nothing but WMP and Eudora open, and WMP was skipping as I played. Processor fan was speeding up.
I’ve only got a 128MB on-board video card (Intel). I can easily upgrade to a 1GB DDR3 PCI-E. But, would that help me?
I’m pretty good with computers but I’ve never paid attention to video processors, as I’m not a gamer. Do beefier video cards help with mundane tasks such as rendering Web pages and running Flash games, or are those more tied to processor and system memory?
Sorry for the long post. Wanted to make sure I was detailed enough to get a good answer.
Are you sure your motherboard has a PCI-E slot? My previous computer was also a P4 3.2 gig. and it only had an AGP slot. You also need a power supply with a special six-prong plug (or two free four-prong plugs and an adapter).
From what I understand, the video card does handle the mundane graphics stuff, but the 2D direct-draw stuff isn’t too intensive and your onboard video card should be able to handle it just fine. You’re probably better off saving up for a new motherboard that you can run a multi-core processor and the faster RAM on.
My observation with my old single core 3.2 was that even though I never changed the operating system or most of the programs I ran, the mundane web surfing type stuff kept getting slower over the years, which I attribute to the increasing amount of junk that has to run in the background these days. Even after I did a reformat, it would be really fast at first, but as I reinstalled stuff it would get slower and slower. Very aggravating! I have a dual core 3.0 gig now and it’s great.
First of all, quit measuring cards by their ram. Trust me, if there is one thing that matters absolutely least on a video card (especially when not gaming), it is its ram.
Second of all, you are right. Flash and other modern software (like the aforementioned Photoshop CS4) use 3D rendering engines and will benefit a lot from a modern card. Even Visual Studio 2010 (since it runs on .NET WPF).
You do not need a high-end card (or one with a lot of ram), just a modern one. I’d recommend the cheapest DX10 card you can find. An Nvidia 8200, its ATI equivalent (dunno which), or an Nvidia/ATI card built into the motherboard. Even these low-end cards are far more powerful than the one you have now, or a built-in Intel one.
Go into Task Manager (Control-Shift-Escape), click on Processes tab. How many processes do you have running? That number is listed in the lower left corner. How much CPU are you using?
Click the CPU heading twice to have the list sorted by CPU. What applications are using the most CPU?
Click the Mem Usage heading twice. What applications are using the most memory?
I’ve noticed Eudora will use a lot of memory and CPU if you have a lot of messages in the InBox, OutBox, or Trash. This is becaue Eudora keeps those mailboxes in memory all the time.
I have a much stronger machine than both of you, with pretty top-notch graphics cards (two of them, in fact, in SLI). It does nothing to combat how shitty Flash is.
Watch what happens to your processor usage when playing a flash video in a tiny window vs playing it full-screened. I frequently watch Hulu via their desktop app. When it’s full-screened, it’ll easily eat 40%.
Edit: I should add for clarity that this isn’t a hulu-specific problem. It’s flash, and any flash app or video will do the same.
Yeah, I keep my system pretty clean. I keep tabs on the processes. Firefox and Visual Studio/VS Dev Server eat up the most.
I’ll see about paring down my Eudora boxes. I do have a lot of stuff in there but it still only uses half the memory as Firefox (with only two tabs open at the moment).
One vote (Alex_Dubinsky) for a new video card, tho. And since it’s the work machine, the company will pick it up (work = my own company, there’s no IT guy, just me)…so I think I’ll look into getting a new video card anyway.
I definitely have PCI-E. Other than that, all I need to look for is DirectX 10, specs-wise?