Upgrade Parent's Desktop?

[winston9t4]

My parents are running a stock HP Pavillion a6402f, CPU is an Athlon 64 x2 5600+. Here's the entire config:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/ca/en...-81968811.html

Any ideas on the most bang for buck upgrade I can do for them - I'm guessing a new CPU (which one?) or ram, or is it a lost cause, and better off starting from scratch?

Thanks!

 

[Kristijonas]

What do they use their computer for? Have you considered a new computer with Llano CPU with integrated video? It wouldn't cost much and would be a decent upgrade. Even if they are playing games.

 

[nonameo]

hrm, looks fine to me. The best "upgrade" you can give em is a clean install

 

[winston9t4]

No games - just surfing and skype. PC seems pretty sluggish to me though. Was wondering if I could do a relatively simple upgrade before going with a new system.

Probably I need to get Vista SP2 (they only have SP1 and I can't figure out why it won't upgrade) - maybe x64 so I can put some more RAM in.

 

[Bryf50]

A nice clean install of Windows 7 would do better then any hardware upgrade.

Also, if your a student with a .edu email address you can grab a copy of Windows 7 pro upgrade for just $29.99.

 

[winston9t4]

A nice clean install of Windows 7 would do better then any hardware upgrade.

Also, if your a student with a .edu email address you can grab a copy of Windows 7 pro upgrade for just $29.99.

Yeah, that's probably true - takes a long time to do the install though.

I may just wait for Win8 then.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Are they happy with the performance?? It might seem slow to you but be fine for them. I have an off the shelf system with Vista, E4500, and 3GB ram. Overall the performance seems decent to me. Their system should be fine for internet surfing. I dont know how resource intensive skype is though.

As someone else said, maybe a clean install, perhaps win 7 64bit and upgrade the ram?? I have been happy with Vista actually, but am getting the itch to upgrade to Win 7 since we got a new comp at work with that OS.

If they dont game, I am not sure Llano would be the best choice for them. Either a quad AMD or (my choice) i3 2100 system.

 

[drizek]

Thats plenty fast already.

I wouldn't mind using that as a day to day system if I wasnt doing gaming/multimedia stuff.

 

[Gavinni]

As has been previously stated, system looks great. It's amazing how sluggish some people's computers can get over time. Reformatting/reinstalling drivers and software would prob take around 3-4 hours depending on how much stuff they have. Best upgrade would be an external hard drive to backup to before formatting :thumbsup:

HP's aren't exactly "lite" to begin with.

 

[paperwastage]

<just chiming in> SSDs might help too...

Yeah, that's probably true - takes a long time to do the install though.

I may just wait for Win8 then.

you can find legitimate SP1-preloaded Windows7.iso from digitalriver (microsoft partner site)

still requires like 30 updates after, but better than 100 updates

 

[Cerb]

Yeah, that's probably true - takes a long time to do the install though.

I may just wait for Win8 then.

Putting their old software back on will be the worst part.

A reinstall or Win7 upgrade (or both), paying careful attention to what to backup and restore, could very well do wonders to such a PC (do they use any HP-included software? If so, pay attention as to how it needs to be installed--you may need to do a full restore, remove unwanted software, upgrade in place, the restore app settings and data).

For a regular web/mail/etc. desktop, that PC should be good for a few more years, yet. I'm not sure if Flash supports that old of a GPU, but that would be the worst weakness I can think of, and it would be fairly easy and cheap to fix, if [and only if] (a) Flash won't offload video decoding to the 6150, and (b) streaming video performance is a problem (maxed out cores, yet still dropping frames all over).

 

[john3850]

Vista likes memory as soon vista gets old it slows down.
Vista Sp 2 is huge so I would skip that.

Get more memory and clean minium install on ssd

 

[toolbag]

What you could do is buy a new hard drive. Stick it in this thing and format windows 7 on it. Download the driver for the mb and all that jazz.

Then after it's all loaded up plug in their old drive and let them access the files through the new drive and operating system and move over what they want. A little drag and drop operation. Just make sure that old drive is scanned with a virus scanner well.

Also, open it up and really give it a good cleaning. Blow out all that old dust. Maybe even take off the heatsink and clean and reseat it.

 

[BladeVenom]

Have you made sure it has no viruses or malware? How about lots of other unnecessary programs running?

 

[Abwx]

Configuration is fine and enough for the purposes, but the Nforce
chipset IGP is just horrible and would deserve to be shunted with an
ultra low cost discrete card...

 

[Zap]

No games - just surfing and skype. PC seems pretty sluggish to me though. Was wondering if I could do a relatively simple upgrade before going with a new system.

CPU and RAM is fine. Get them an SSD and install Windows 7 on it. System will feel so snappy that they won't know what hit 'em.

/thread

 

[VirtualLarry]

Configuration is fine and enough for the purposes, but the Nforce
chipset IGP is just horrible and would deserve to be shunted with an
ultra low cost discrete card...

Only if you are gaming. For 2D stuff, that IGP is fine. I used to use a rig with a 6150/6150SE chipset as my daily driver, it wasn't really bad. Frame rate in WoW was abysmal though (12-18FPS).

 

[totalnoob]

Do some software tweaks, turn off unnecessary visual effects, disable the paging file if they have 2gb of ram or more, minimize the number of programs running at startup using Ccleaner, defrag, reboot, defrag again, done.

 

[Binky]

Hell, if they're old enough they won't know the difference between a new computer and the old one. Just clean the outside of the case, clean the monitor, mouse and keyboard, and tell them you "fixed it to make it better." oh, maybe throw in a new mousepad too. Go crazy.

They will be convinced that the shiny "new" computer is better!

 

[Cerb]

Configuration is fine and enough for the purposes, but the Nforce chipset IGP is just horrible and would deserve to be shunted with an
ultra low cost discrete card...

Unless something like video decode offloading is not supported well enough, it will be fine. Those were some rather nice IGPs for the time, with solid drivers.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Unless something like video decode offloading is not supported well enough, it will be fine. Those were some rather nice IGPs for the time, with solid drivers.

Pretty sure that the 6150 doesn't do Flash acceleration, don't think any of the 6-series do. (No h.264 support.)

 

[Avalon]

CPU and RAM is fine. Get them an SSD and install Windows 7 on it. System will feel so snappy that they won't know what hit 'em.

/thread

That's kind of what I was thinking. Even just doing one of the two would be a massive improvement, and I'd suggest starting with the Win7 option. It really doesn't take more than a couple clicks and 30 mins to install.

 

[Abwx]

Pretty sure that the 6150 doesn't do Flash acceleration, don't think any of the 6-series do. (No h.264 support.)

That s what i had in mind...
With no hardware acceleration, browsing the web will appear
as sluggish since the Cpu will be quite loaded , moreover with
many info sites that have scores of flasheries.

 

[Cerb]

That s what i had in mind...
With no hardware acceleration, browsing the web will appear
as sluggish since the Cpu will be quite loaded , moreover with
many info sites that have scores of flasheries.

Only streaming video of sufficiently high compression and bitrates will be affected. Other uses of flash will not be noticeably faster w/ a card, so it depends on whether his parents try to use flash to watch reasonable quality video or not.

 

[toolbag]

After reading though this is astonishing the amount of all of us want to save this pile of dirty dusty junk.

Upgrade the whole system. I am sure you want to hear that anyways. Everyone likes a new computer. Tell them to save the pictures and stuff on a disk them throw that thing out the window.

make a nice new quad core amd or whatever and let them pic the case out. Have fun with it. Why polish a turd?