Upgrade Suggestion

[Kinghunter]

I am looking to upgrade my current system it just seems a little sluggish for my needs. I do some gaming, video encoding, photoshop, audio work, and a lot of multitasking. Wondering what would benefit me more a processor upgrade or an extra gig of ram. I have at max around $250 to spend. Not sure what would be the best option for a good performance boost processor wise and whether it would be worth it or to just go the ram route. Any suggestions would be appreciated...

System:
Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester
Gigabyte K8NF-9
Kingmax PC3200 1gb (2x512mb)
Samsung 120 GB SATA
Audigy LS
Ati X800xl 256mb

 

[Madwand1]

Look at your Task Manager, Process View, add the columns CPU Time, Peak Mem Usage, VM Size.

CPU Time will tell you the cumulative time use by various processes -- you want to sort by this column and look for any CPU hogs.

Peak Mem Usage and VM size will give you similar information about your different applications' memory needs. If any one application is exceeding or even closely approaching your physical RAM, then it's clear that the best thing to do is to increase your RAM (or alter the application's usage patterns somehow...)

Mem Usage in the status area or the Performance tab will show you similar information in aggregate for your computer -- you generally want to keep the usage less than your physical memory.

Your system could also appear sluggish if the HD is (a) faulty / on its way to failing (b) badly organized / fragmented / overcrowded (c) just slow. Bigger / faster and even just additional HD to split the data access patterns can help here. Can't say what your situation is though, without analyzing it in detail.

A dual processor does help in overall responsiveness at subtle and not-so-subtle levels sometimes, but not if memory or HD are significant impedements.

 

[msi or epox]

both. or just cpu.

 

[Kinghunter]

I dont think its the ram as the peak mem usage never got over half. So any reccomendations on a Socket 939 processor around $250 or less...

 

[pkme2]

A X2 939 is my choice.

 

[Kinghunter]

Whats the deal with the opterons I assume they can be used for desktop use. I have looked through benchmarks and they are never directly compared to the athlons. I need to make a decision on what to get fairly soon. So x2, opteron, or regular 64? sub $250 that will smoke my 3000+

 

[n7]

X2 3800+ is the cheapest dual core s939 CPU out there.

For games though, a video card upgrade would help more.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Get a 3800+ X2 for about $300. There's no point in upgrading to another single core, since the applications you mentioned would get a huge boost from dual core, and you can always overclock your 3000+ anyways.

 

[sniperruff]

it's all in your head.

 

[Larrymon2000]

Yeah, if you're interested in any encoding or media creation or even just photoshop, an X2 is the way to go.

 

[fireontheway]

Your machine has decent specs,a fresh OS install would probably give you the cheapest and biggest boost in performance.