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Date |
: Dec 20th, 2001 |
| Category |
: Hardware |
| Manufacturer |
: Various |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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This should sound familiar to anyone who owns a PC - 2 years (maybe even a few months depending on your needs) after purchasing a brand spanking new unit, it just can't seem to keep up with the latest applications and games anymore. Worse still, do you have to throw away that older system and just buy a new one? Not necessarily - depending on what one's current PC is, it may well be fully eligible for an upgrade. The more popular options include a new processor, a new video card, and either increasing the amount of memory or storage space. Does each option entail a hefty price tag? Not at all. In fact, you'd be surprised what you can get for < $100.
CPU Upgrade - Thunderbird 1.33GHz, Celeron 1.1GHz
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Upgrade that old CPU! $100 still buys a lot of processing firepower. $97 gets you a 1.33GHz AMD Thunderbird, certainly not a processor to be triffled with. Economically sound decision, and smokes other processors (other than the AthlonXP) in clock-for-clock performance. Highly overclockable too - we managed to take one to 1485MHz.
Purchase Thunderbird 1.33GHz
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However, if techie dearest is stuck with a Slot-1 or Socket-370 motherboard, don't despair. $89 will net you a 1.1GHz Celeron, which will boost system performance by a fair bit. We know, we've fooled around with an Evergreen Performa 1GHz in a Dell GX1.
Purchase Celeron 1.1GHz |
Video Upgrade - GeForce2 Ti200, Radeon 7500
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Gamers salivate at the sight of the latest graphics card like the Radeon 8500 or the GeForce3 Ti500. While not really necessary for someone who mainly uses productivity applications, a new graphics card can significantly increase gaming performance. Higher-end models are never cost effective, so staying slightly behind the curve is an excellent idea.
$99 will buy you either a 64MB GeForce2 Ti200-based board or a 64MB ATI Radeon 7500, both of which offer excellent performance (though certainly not the highest), and are more than capable of handling today's and tomorrow's games at high resolutions and color depths. Users of less recent graphics cards (eg. the TNT2, TNT2 Ultra, GeForce 256) will see the largest benefits, although users of more recent products such as the GeForce2 MX and Radeon DDR will see definite performance increases as well, especially at higher resolutions and color depths.
Purchase GeForce2 Ti200
Purchase Radeon 7500
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Storage Upgrade - Seagate Barracuda IV, Western Digital Caviar WD400BB
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With the proliferation of space gobbling operating systems, applications, games and data, it is hardly surprising that a new hard drive remains one of the most popular upgrades. Windows 2000 / XP together with a typical office suite already bite a 1.5GB chunk of space. Coupled with the average 500MB needed for each game, as well as a few stored movie trailers and MP3 files, and before you know it, you're out of disk space.
Today's top performing 7200RPM IDE drives can be had for just under $100. $88 will buy you a 40GB Seagate Barracuda IV, by far the quietest 7200RPM that we've evaluated, coupled with excellent performance. On the other hand, $84 will buy you a 40GB Western Digital WD400BB. It's noise level is on par with most other drives (ie. the average standard). If noise is not a primary concern, the WD400BB offers an average of 4-5% higher overall performance.
An interesting note is that upgrading a system's hard drive will improve overall system performance as well, even in common productivity applications.
Purchase Barracuda IV (ST340021A)
Purchase Caviar WD400BB
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Memory Upgrade
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Memory - the thing which gives us humans continuity in our lives (according to psychologists). It functions somewhat similarly in computers, being the temporary workspace for the processor. With today's RAM hungry operating systems, games and applications, having at least 256MB (especially on Win2K and WinXP systems) is essential to ensuring the best possible performance. While the more is not necessarily the merrier (there's a saturation point, typically above 256MB for most desktop usage), it can't hurt to "stock up" a bit. If techie dearest's system is currently RAM-challenged, adding some will most definitely boost overall system performance. Get the best; the KingMax 512MB PC-150 SDRAM DIMM ($70) or the KingMax 256MB PC2700 DDR DIMM ($75). Both types are powering our personal and testbed systems. Just need to find out which type you need.
Kingmax 512MB PC-150 SDRAM
Kingmax 256MB PC2700 DDR
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