CPU Upgrade - is it worth it?

[Lil'Lucy]

Hello all.

My PC is struggling a little, and I cannot afford to buy a new one just yet. I have maxed out the RAM modules I can put in (running 3GB at moment) and have a Radeon X1950 as well (this is the biggest I can put in my AGP board).

The final thing left to upgrade is the CPU. Currently running an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ on an ASUS Motherboard. I have an opportunity to buy an AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4200+ (dual core) for about £65. Is this going to make any major difference to my rig or is it worth holding out till I can afford a new PC?

Thanks for any help.

xx Lucy

[TTG]

See what can be done at software level.
Uninstall as many programs as you can that are not needed.
Move large files (avi and mpg for example) to external hard drive.
Start, Run, msconfig and select startup tab. Search on the net for each process that is ticked and see if you can do without it (untick). Repeat for Services tab.
My Computer, right click, properties, tools, select 'Check for errors'. This will run next time your computer starts up so select yes when prompted.
Defragment hard drive.

[TTG]

In addition, download, install and update malwarebytes. Run a full scan...will take a while. This program is free and has helped me out a few times!
Make sure Windows is fully up to date.
Run full virus scan.

[Lil'Lucy]

Thanks for your reply TTG. I have done that already and it has definitely helped. I do a lot of music production and I think the CPU struggles as it constantly maxing at 99%.

I am thinking about the difference between a single and dual core processor? Trying to see if spending £65 would get a bit extra oomph, until I can afford a whole new rig!?

[ChuckFickens]

It will depend on if the applications you are using are optimised to use multiple cores. if they are (most decent, modern stuff is) then you should see a fair difference in anything that is highly processor intensive, if you are using any older applications that don't recognise more than a single core then you'll see very little difference.

[Hymie]

My PC has a 2.4GHz processor, 384MB RAM with a Radion 7000 graphics card.
The PC is perfectly adequate for word processor/internet applications working under XP.

It would probably struggle with games, but the most limiting performance factor as far as my use of the PC is almost certainly the internet connection speed.

Since the spec of your PC far outstrips mine – either you are running high end games or have some other problem.

First, find out what the PC is doing with its processor time via the Task Manager. If ‘System Idle Process’ comes up as the greatest processor usage, then I would suspect you have a virus or some other issue with the PC.

Recently my PC started to take ages to boot and some of the files were reported as corrupted. I backed up everything I wanted to keep, did a low level format of the hard drive and re-installed Windows and all the peripheral drivers & applications I wanted.

It was a pain the arse doing it over a weekend – but now my PC is back working fine.

[ChuckFickens]

"did a low level format of the hard drive"

that's a high spec computer for one from the 1980's (which was roughly when low level formatting a drive was possible). Or did you, in fact, reinitialise the drive?

[MarkRae]

> when low level formatting a drive was possible

Didn't you have to run debug.exe and then type in something like g=c500,2 or somesuch...?

[ChuckFickens]

Something like that (a bit before my time to be honest, low level formatting was being phased out when I first started in IT back in the early 90's)

[rojash]

I dunno, kids today, you just don't know how easy you've got it :-)

[ChuckFickens]

I can still write an autoexec.bat and config.sys, but that's about as early as I go.

Hymie, Are you serious that your computer has 384MB RAM?? It's a pretty decent spec machine other than that, you really need to upgrade that if it wasn't a typo.

(apologies for the side track on your question Lucy)

[Hymie]

In answer to your questions – yes, my PC has 384MB of RAM – this is made up of the original 128MB, plus the 256MB I added.
Many applications recommend more than this – but it is sufficient for my needs.

And yes, it was a low level format of the hard drive, the format utility is supplied by the drive manufacturer, Maxtor. I calculated that it took over 10 hours to format the 160GB drive (ending sometime early on a Sunday morning, while I slept in bed).

On Sunday morning, I set the bios to boot from my DVDRW drive, inserted my original Windows disk and spent the remainder of the day installing the applications & drivers required.

[Lil'Lucy]

Thanks to all you who've replied! I don't think the issues is startup/malware etc as I am pretty good at getting on top of these. It is more that I use a lot of programs at once and also use some high end music production software that I see constantly pushing the CPU up to 100%.

My husband also uses it for gaming (to my annoyance) and he tells me that we need to get a new PC as it is struggling.

I just cannot justify a new rig right now - so am hoping that this new CPU will buy me some time.

Thanks again all who've chipped in,

xx Lucy

PS - I have to agree with other posts - 384mB of RAM?? WIth RAM so cheap these days, surely you will notice a massive difference upgrading for little cost??!?!?!!!