chisholm Posted December 30, 2011 Posted December 30, 2011 I was thinking of buying a new PC but after updating firefox it seems so much smoother maybe just adding a few faster compnents would be as well. I thought of adding more memory & upgrading the graphics card. I currently have windowsXP & 1gb of ram plus thegraphics is :XBL-19 (1280x1024@60Hz) ATI video (HP) I can add 1GB of ram for £29 from Crucial.Any ideas re the graphics card upgrade & if it would make a noticeable difference to the PC for general use eg watching BBCi & DVDs?What card would be good eg this one:http://www.ebuyer.com/255113-msi-hd-...450-md1gd3h-lp The CPU is AMD Sempron 3000+ Palermo 90nm Technology Plus the fan seems to be poor so would this be a good replacement : http://www.ebuyer.com/248533-xilence...o-xpcpu-amd-si The PC is a Presario SR1609UK Cheers for looking :-)
Love2print Posted December 30, 2011 Posted December 30, 2011 I would save your money when it comes to the graphics card as it won't make any difference for general use. Unless you are having a problem with the graphics? If not, I would just upgrade the RAM. But make sure that you get the right type for your PC. According to HP's website your PC takes PC3200 184 pin DDR SDRAM. In regards to the fan, again I wouldn't replace it unless you need to.
Ghozer Posted December 30, 2011 Posted December 30, 2011 I would be sure that you have a PCI-e slot for the GFX first, and not AGP, with it being a Sepron 3000+ (even though it's AM2?) it might not be PCI-e As for upgrading the Graphics, unless you're having problems playing DVD's and BBC iPlayer etc I wouldn't say it's needed... RAM and CPU are the main governing factors for general use.
Assassin007 Posted December 30, 2011 Posted December 30, 2011 I would be sure that you have a PCI-e slot for the GFX first, and not AGP, with it being a Sepron 3000+ (even though it's AM2?) it might not be PCI-e As for upgrading the Graphics, unless you're having problems playing DVD's and BBC iPlayer etc I wouldn't say it's needed... RAM and CPU are the main governing factors for general use. I agree. Also, if you want to upgrade to both extend the life of your computer and to have a good user experience, you need to identify what's causing the slowness. It could be that your internet connection is too slow for your needs. For example, maybe you subscribed to a very slow plan back when all you did was check email once in a while, but now you do a lot of web surfing and video and the connection can't keep up. Some people might think their computer is the problem, but even the fastest computer in the world won't make much difference if your bottleneck is your internet connection. The important thing to make your user experience smoother is to attack bottlenecks first. Regards, A
VidLocalShef Posted December 30, 2011 Posted December 30, 2011 What do you use your computer for mainly? And what problems are you facing with it that you feel you need to upgrade for?
chisholm Posted January 1, 2012 Author Posted January 1, 2012 What do you use your computer for mainly? And what problems are you facing with it that you feel you need to upgrade for? Just regular surfing ,MS Office,& BBC i. It just seemed to have got very clunky & a "script warning" kept popping up. Since upgrading FF to version 9 it's like anew machine though.
VidLocalShef Posted January 6, 2012 Posted January 6, 2012 Yeah, sometimes it only takes a simple solution like that. Computers are strange things!
Resident Posted January 6, 2012 Posted January 6, 2012 I was thinking of buying a new PC but after updating firefox it seems so much smoother maybe just adding a few faster compnents would be as well. I thought of adding more memory & upgrading the graphics card. I currently have windowsXP & 1gb of ram plus thegraphics is :XBL-19 (1280x1024@60Hz) ATI video (HP) I can add 1GB of ram for £29 from Crucial.Any ideas re the graphics card upgrade & if it would make a noticeable difference to the PC for general use eg watching BBCi & DVDs?What card would be good eg this one:http://www.ebuyer.com/255113-msi-hd-...450-md1gd3h-lp The CPU is AMD Sempron 3000+ Palermo 90nm Technology Plus the fan seems to be poor so would this be a good replacement : http://www.ebuyer.com/248533-xilence...o-xpcpu-amd-si The PC is a Presario SR1609UK Cheers for looking :-) You'll find cheaper prices at DCS in Doncaster. 1gb for 29 quid ? I just paid £19.50 for 4gb (2x 2gb) from DCS.
L00b Posted January 6, 2012 Posted January 6, 2012 Another good basic tip/practice is to periodically run msconfig and check what apps/services start up when you boot your PC, and to de-select unnecessary stuff. You'd be surprised how much rubbish accumulates over time as you install/uninstall programs (even with a fresh OS install), and runs permanently in the background, unnecessarily hogging resources for no useful purpose. Don't forget to clean up your caches (Internet/temp folders) every now and then as well (at least once weekly), makes a big difference. CCleaner is a free, small and easy-to-use application for this. I've lost count of how many friends/family PCs I have been asked to 'sort' because they got reeeaaalllyyy sloow, only to find GBs of cached web data!
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