Buy new PC or add RAM and video card to old one ?

prowla

You can run up the performance monitor (Ctrl-Alt-Del->Task manager->Performance) and it will tell you how much memory is being used.

I've found that Firefox is starting to get a bit clunky these days; it's incrementing version numbers at a rate of knots and I think that 12 is an improvement (10 was a dog).

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Empty_pockets wrote: »

That system should be quick.

Have you tried a different browser? Chrome.

I would add RAM over a graphics card for multitasking.

I'm pretty much 85% migrated from Firefox to Chrome these days and anything new goes Chrome first. I find it ok but still a bit resource hungry.

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closed wrote: »

try it without advanced system care and with IE.

unless you are doing vast amounts of multitasking, ram is unlikely to be the issue, task manager will tell you how much ram is in use.

I do use a lot of stuff. Multiple advanced Excel workbooks, all with quite a few sheets in them, all performing masses of calculations in real time. Constant VBA running.

ASC got me out of BSOD territory when all else failed. I got it to clean up everything and performance came back. It is still fast at times but when asking it to handle 50+ webpages at once it tends to have problems.

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demystified wrote: »

You'll get a warning pop up if you start to run out of RAM so unlikely to be that.

On occasion and virtual memory until I pushed those limits back. I am fairly consigned to adding RAM but wonder whether a new system with i3/i5 and 8gb DDR3 is the way to go.

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thefishdude wrote: »

when was the last time you reinstalled everything on ya pc ??

if you havent done it since you built the pc then that is your problem the pc is full of 3 years worth of crap even when you delete things little bits get left behine when you update cdrivers little bits get left behind and eventually it makes everything run slow. if it was me and it was getting that bad i would remove everything from the pc and re install it all again i bet it wasnt slow when you first built it. The only thing i would say that could make oit better is a graphics card HOWEVER that is only if you are doinggames, graphic intensive things. if you are just browsing net doing office work emails etc then you wont need a graphics card.

Moved over to Win 7 Pro with total new install a couple of months ago.

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clangnuts wrote: »

I'd also recommend re-installing to factory fresh. Did this with my HP a couple of months ago.

Also, if it's a HP and you want to add a graphics card, you'll probably need to upgrade the power supply. HP put very weedy PSU in their machines. Mine has something like 180w, which isn't enough for most modern GPU's. Not expensive or difficult to do, but something that needs considering.

Yeah, I thought of that and it is another reason to consider a new box.

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prowla wrote: »

You can run up the performance monitor (Ctrl-Alt-Del->Task manager->Performance) and it will tell you how much memory is being used.

I've found that Firefox is starting to get a bit clunky these days; it's incrementing version numbers at a rate of knots and I think that 12 is an improvement (10 was a dog).

Firefox is a bit of a dog these days and to be honest, I think its time is done. Once this deal with Google runs out their revenue stream is done for and I think they'll just die off after that.

Chrome is the free substitute to battle Explorer which Firefox was. The trouble is that Google have unlimited money and Firefox don't.

closed

cheap answer, close some of the webpages.

modern processors and ram amounts should handle excel, vba, and web browsing easily, but if you take it to extremes, you can push anything to the limits, especially with a badly coded browser and over bloated security applications.

clangnuts

Why does anyone need 50 web pages open? Isn't that what bookmarks are for?

adamg02

Also consider that the on-board graphics is probably sharing system memory, so your 4gb is probably only 3.2ish. So again, a dedicated gfx card would free up resource there as well as being generally better (imagine something like suggested above be fine) - food for thought.