improve pc speed i graphics card or memory?

mpazza

I have a dell 5150 dual core jobby 512MB, I am using the 20 inch widescreen with it but I am finding it slugish and has problems doing two tasks eg mp3s stutter when I open another program.
What will improve the performance more -

getting a graphics card (I am using the built in graphics as I dont play games etc)

or getting another 512MB of memory?

thanks

ollyshaw

Another 512mb will give you the best improvement for your money, should be around £20 pounds.

For games spend as much as you can on the graphics card (assuming you have the extra memory)

I have core duo on my laptop and find it exceptionally fast.

Olly

CAT-THE-FIFTH

I second increasing the memory by 512mb. For such a large screen I would recommend a cheap graphics card such as a ATI X300SE or Nvidia 6200.These should cost 20-30 quid.Do not buy any of the hypermemory or turbocache ones as they steal system memory!!

moob_2

Your system is probably using about 65-75% of your RAM as it is - with XP and the Graphics card eating up the majority.

As said above, more RAM. If you play games, get a decent graphics card further down the line. Onboard is mince.

mpazza

ollyshaw wrote:

Another 512mb will give you the best improvement for your money, should be around £20 pounds.



Olly

Thanks everyone for the advice.
Where is the best place to buy memory?

skim

got to be http://crucial.com/uk

syanide

https://www.aria.co.uk or https://www.ebuyer.co.uk

those are 2 i have used for the past 3 years
But first I would try defraging your hard-drives, sounds like you have fragmentation.. mp3's should not cause probs.. but your issues defo point to a defrag'd drive. also if your using win Xp make sure your drive is NOT FAT32 and is NTFS. if its still FAT32 goto your start->run and type ->
CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS

The machine will reboot and convert the drive. Note that all your data will be intact after the convert.

cdbrown

It does sound strange that the mp3 would stutter when opening another prog even with the low memory - always be sure something else (like a virus scanner) isn't hogging all the resources. Agree that doubling memory or even more will improve your machine - there are four slots for memory. Be sure to get single channel DDR2-533MHz SDRAM that suits the Dell machines.

Crucial are an excellent brand but can be expensive http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.aspx?model=Dimension%205150

edit - and don't forget to run Adaware and Spybot just to make sure there aren't any nasty's lurking in the background hogging resources