Should I upgrade? Core 2 Duo vs 2Ghz P4

converse

I have a Dell Dimension Pentium 4 Ghz XP Pro system, stuffed with all sorts of drives and cards, 1Gb RAM etc, speed wise it's reasonable, mainly used for office and adobe apps, but I'm running out of internal HD space for apps in the paltry 80Gb internal (have plenty of external HD space). It's at least 4 years old but utterly reliable.

I have a couple of options: I can either put a large new internal HD in, and then reinstall from scratch (cheap), it'll have to be a replacement as it doesn't have any spare internal bays, it's crammed with all sorts. Or I can replace the entire tower with a brand new machine, which would probably be a similar Dell system, but a high end Core 2 Duo. I know that latter isn't so cost effective, but I tend to buy top end machines and keep for 4-5 years which some interim upgrades to keep them going, and if it's a good time to make a move to a newer processor then I will.

Oh and it must be a quiet system, this Dell tower is virtually silent, I don't want to replace it with a jet engine. Hardly any reviews I read mention the noise rating of PCs.

I would experiment with upgrading the motherboard, but Dell boards aren't standard sizes normally, so it'd be more hassle than it's worth. (I'm a competant techie!)

Would I notice a massive speed increase over this machine, with say a decent Core 2 Duo with around 2Gb of RAM. It'd have to be XP Pro again, I'm not messing with Vista, have too many apps I rely on that are stable in XP.

sidthesexist

A p4 rig should be ok for general office applications but a C2D would be better at photoshop and other Adobe type stuff, also if you are capable of building your own rigs it may be worth looking at a quad core Intel processor especially if you are thinking of keeping the rig for some time, the other thing that may be worth considering is memory until recently i only had 2 gig in this rig (X6800 extreme edition cpu based) and while it was perfectly usable there were times when it slowed right down but since i upgraded to 4 gig it really does fly.

CHR15

Seems a waste of money buying a new PC to me.

If it does everything you need at a decent speed, then unless you have money to spare you only need to upgrade the HDD.


Buy a thumping great big replacement 3.5" drive, connect it up with the cables hanging out the side of the PC and ghost the old to the new drive.

Take out the old drive and fit the new in its place.

But a cheap 3.5" USB external enclosure and put the old drive in that for some additional external space.

Alternatively buy a large external drive and take it out of the enclosure. Use that as the new internal and put the old internal drive in the enclosure.

There would only be a few quid in it either way.

converse

Cheers guys, I guess you are right, from a money point of view! But if I make the choice to upgrade the drive now, I'll keep it for a least another 3 years, so I've got to make sure it's fast enough for the long term!

It's been fully upgraded with lots already, USB2, firewire, twin CD and DVD writers. But for only a few hundred pounds I could get a decent Core 2 Duo, without all the drives (easily swap), and it may (or may not, hence my question) be much much faster...

If I clone it to a new HD using ghost or true image, will I have any problems with XP or existing software, or do I really need a day to reinstall everything (which was my initial plan) ?

CHR15

Ghost (or True Image) will make it behave in exactly the same way as your existing drive.

Once cloned just swap them over and reboot. It will be exactly as it is now, but with more space.

There is no need to reinstall the OS or any apps.

ABH_3

CHR15 wrote: »

Ghost (or True Image) will make it behave in exactly the same way as your existing drive.

Once cloned just swap them over and reboot. It will be exactly as it is now, but with more space.

There is no need to reinstall the OS or any apps.

Err, that's not technically true. If the OP is going from a IDE (harddrive) based system to an upto date system (SATA) and he uses Ghost\Tru Image he's going to come accross the problem in that he won't have any SATA drivers in his old image and as a consequence will by deploying the old image from his previous computer onto his new computer and then delete those that are already installed.

I faced this situation with a computer and after trying various fixes, found it easier to just deploy the operating system afresh and use the 'file\settings transfer wizzard' to migrate the user data from the old system:

Vista:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/easytransfer.mspx
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/9e2347fc-43af-4ff9-8e33-0002b9d449561033.mspx

XP:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/crawford_november12.mspx

HTH

spakkker

I upgraded from pent. 3.2 ghz to an e2180 -two 2.0 ghz cores- the difference is very noticable when ,say, converting an avi to dvd, 1hour plus now takes 45 mins. The rest of the time there is no noticable difference. An e2180 is faster than some core 2 duos - http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html
and costs £53 - but with m/b and mem and psu maybe £140 all in.

converse

Thanks again, I'd only clone the system if I kept it as is and just replaced the HD with a larger PATA one (it's not SATA sadly), although as it hasn't had a reinstall for several years, no doubt if I can find the time I'd see a massive system improvement if I installed from scratch. Will probably go for a 500Gb Seagate Barracude 7200 (around £89 from scan). If I can find remove, or remove another drive so I can put the old HD in as a secondary, maybe for the primary paging file, I assume that'd add to performance if it's on a separate drive?

I'll think I'll keep it going a bit longer after all your comments. Will XP Pro moan if components like HDs change.

Had anyone ever succesfully upgraded the mobo in a Dell dimension tower, I'm sure they are custom size and not ATX?

wakandem

The pc will certainly run better with a fresh install & having a paging file on a seperate drive improves speed as well as stability. I would stay with the pc you have now. It will certainly be useable for the next 2-3 yrs & by then MS may have sorted out Vista or we will have all learnt ubuntu
I wouldn't bother upgrading the mobo as you will then need ram and processor, xp won't moan with different hard drives, graphics cards, ram etc, but is likely to kick up a fuss if the mobo is changed

converse

Had a look and the mobo and not going to bother, as wakadem suggests. Just a new HD I think. Will investigate slipstreaming further. Just a pity every month MS doesn't publish a patch file with all the previous patches combined, Apple does this for the OS X updates, "combo updaters" and they work very well, especially when you are setting up a new machine with an unpatched os.