need more power captain!

mattp_3

i need to speed up the performance of my pc to handle more applications, I have installed 2GB of DDR Ram but it hasnt made much difference.

i have a Pentium 4 2.8GHz processor and am thinking about upgrading it to help improve performance on my pc, so I have two questions:

1. How hard is it to change processors?
2. Which processors should I look at as an upgrade?

Any help appreciated

Regards
Matt

mcwarre

Invariably you will probably have to upgrade the motherboard as well. I would suggest both as the Front Side Bus on your motherboard would then be the (probable) limiting factor in your system.

Little_John

If all you want to replace is the CPU and you dont have a fancy cooler then the process if very easy.

Some coolers require constructing and are held in place by screws from the underside of the motherboard whihc means you need to remove the board to remove the cooler and gain access to the CPU.

Firstly you need to know which type of socket your processor uses it will either by 478 or 775 I dont think asus used the 423 socket and anyway the speeds were limited so we can ignore that.

To find that either have a look at the socket the 478 cpu has pins that stick in to holes and the CPU sits on top of the socket the wiki link will show you

the 775 uses pads and the socket has the pins. another wiki link the CPU is clamped in place by the metal plate.

If you get the motherboard model number and post it we will find which cpu it uses and find out how far you can go.

Replaceing a CPU is a simple process, remove the cooler, lift the leaver to release the PCU lift the cpu out put the new one in apply some thermal paste/grease evenly on the surface, lock it in place witht he leaver and replace the cpu cooler.

albertross_2

Are these application going to be running concurrently, what type of apps are you using, that's a powerful PC with plenty of ram already.

rygon

I assume you have checked for spyware, adware virus etc as these will slow your pc down. Also check whats in your startup menu and remove anything you dont use on a regular basis.

I own a amd64 3000+ (754pin) with a gig of ram and have no problems even when using it to record music when djing (soundforge) as well as surfing the internet and downloading files.

amcluesent

If a 2.8Ghz Pentium has run out of puff, I'd be looking at upgrading to the new line of Intel Core Duo's (a.k.a Conroe), maybe an E6400. Of course, you'll need a new m/b too!

Blacksheep1979

also don't have a lot of icons on your desktop as windows caches them and this can slow yr comp down

mattp_3

Cheers folks...

well I am often running say Fireworks, several browsers with one downloading (have been told IE7 tabbed browsing may help speed things up slightly?) Windows Media Player running and maybe Word/Excel?

Its a Dell Dimension 3000 which I've upgraded to 2GB of DDR Ram. So I have Mcafee Security installed by default which probably drains a lot of power. I have Tune-Up Utilities which keeps my PC free from most of the pointless files and processes and I regularly Defrag and use CCleaner.

If I have to go to Dual-Core I'm looking at a big expense really - Tune-Up Utilities shows me that I am only using slightly more than 512MB of Ram but as soon as I open an application the Processor usage goes straight up into the red at 100%?

Any other ideas what might be slowing it down?

espresso

mattp wrote:

Any other ideas what might be slowing it down?

Have you ran Spybot, AdAware etc?

nickmack

mattp wrote:

well I am often running say Fireworks, several browsers with one downloading (have been told IE7 tabbed browsing may help speed things up slightly?) Windows Media Player running and maybe Word/Excel?

Its a Dell Dimension 3000 which I've upgraded to 2GB of DDR Ram. So I have Mcafee Security installed by default which probably drains a lot of power. I have Tune-Up Utilities which keeps my PC free from most of the pointless files and processes and I regularly Defrag and use CCleaner.

If I have to go to Dual-Core I'm looking at a big expense really - Tune-Up Utilities shows me that I am only using slightly more than 512MB of Ram but as soon as I open an application the Processor usage goes straight up into the red at 100%?

Any other ideas what might be slowing it down?

If it's just the apps you have listed, it sounds like there's something wrong with your PC. My main work PC is a much lower spec than this (AMD XP2400 and 1Gb RAM) and has no problems with having a dozen apps including several IE instances, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver running concurrently.

Open Task Manager and reorder by Mem Usage to find out what's consuming the most memory and if there's a leak. McAfee can be resource intensive, so you may want to consider changing to something like AVG/Avast for AV and Kerio/Sygate for a Firewall.

You will find that when applications load they nearly always take up as much CPU time that is available. However, they should go down to a few percent when idle. If you're finding that one app hogs the processor, then there's likely a problem with it.

Try running HijackThis and post the results for analysis here, to see if there's anything you've missed.

Robothell

I've never heard of a P4 with 2GB of RAM running out of puff like that. It sounds like a really stupid question but are you sure the RAM is properly installed through BIOS? Might be worthwhile going in and making sure that everything is optimised, Dell have been known in the past to either not put in the memory listed in the specs or not installed properly. A few years back my mate got a Dell with 512MB RAM only to find a single stick of 256 inside the box. When he phoned them they posted out another stick of RAM in a normal, non-padded envelope without the antistatic bag. Now that's quality customer service!