I have an older system I built about 5 years ago. It hasn't been in use for awhile, but I've been losing the battle of who gets time on our main PC. So I dusted it off and got it working. It works okay for what I need it for, but it seems a little sluggish. I don't want to sink any money into it, but am considering putting some more ram in it. It's only got 1GB right now. For under $100, I could get it up to 4GB. I just don't know if that will really make a difference and if it would be worth the money. Specs: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 2.2GHz Socket 939 89W Dual-Core Processor Leadtek WinFast A7600GT TDH 256MB GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 AGP 8X Video Card 2 x Kingston ValueRAM 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
Yep more ram is always a good bet however if you want to save money look at removing programs & replace with low footprint software instead,use msconfig to disable unnecessary startup services & programs also if you have a spare hdd install it & move your pagefile to it & see if performance picks up some comps can be fickle in that area,if you have Vista on it you would be beter off with 2gb ram or more,there is another option & that's linux you'd have to find the distro that best suits your comp some are hogs others are not for a test run the latest ubuntu is very nice just keep the graphics setting to none (same option windows has where you disable menu animation etc)oh yeah doing that to windows may help somewhat too in xp i use custom to remove the bollocky animations n stuff
This isn't a pinned thread where any ram question will be answered,as ddp said start another thread with your question those that can answer it will
No worries. I have pretty much decided I don't want to sink any more money into this old system, even if it would speed it up. I'd rather put the $100 aside and use it for RAM for a new build...
It's a perfect candidate as a media centre pc,strip all the crap out of it things like adobe etc all you want left is security,web browser perhaps a few games then add XBMC,there's two versions installed or portable (once done you can set either so it's windowed) however this requires windows to be running,the other way is XBMC as it's own OS in a dual boot mode,you need to download sabayon linux then run the cd from boot,use graphical install select XBMC & your away, if you have an HD TV or HD Monitor it looks freak'n awasome,if you have a stack of AVI's on any hdd just "add source" & it will list all movies,if you want bitmaps to show it's best to download the front movie cover from amazon preferably bluray or hdvd rename them to "folder" (don't bother adding .jpg as xbmc will do that automatically however they have to be jpg's to begin with or you'll have to change the extension from say PNG to jpg etc),drop them in their respective movie folders & you'll get them showing up in the list,toggle list to what view you want including wide or dvd wide etc >insert *thumbs up smiley* here< Edit: Thats folder without the quotes
