Is it worth upgrading?

Malt_Vinegar

Malt_Vinegar

Malt_Vinegar

Don
Joined
20 Oct 2002
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Currently my main rig is an Abit IS7-E with a 2.6 P4 running at 2.7 with 1gig of twinmos ram, gfx is a 9800 pro.
I really dont want to spend more than 200 quid for a new mobo/cpu/ram, and dont think i want to replace my GFX, as its still reasonably current, and im no longer a game fiend. I do however run virtual machines for work testing purposes. My current rig is struggling a bit, mainly because of the lack of ram. Might i just better off loading up my IS7-E with ram instead?

The limitations being, that i still want to use my IDE hard drives, my CM210 case, and other hardware, oh, and of course the restricive 200quid max budget. I have had a look at the bundles available on OCUK, but really have no idea how they stack up against my current system performance, and if it would be a worthwhile upgrade?
 
You would want skt 775 core2 IMO, I did myself a nice budget upgrade last month, new mobo RAM and CPU, I was lucky enough to already have PCI-E graphics though. The only 775 AGP board I can find is this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-011-AK and its out of stock, and doesnt look very good anyway. It'll be worth it if you can find a decent mobo, but if not, I'd say save up for a proper upgrade to PCI-E
 
You could go with the motherboard that BENdage links to, with 2gb PC6400 OcUK Ram and an E6550 it should still come in below the £200 mark. Or for a bit over the budget and with a bit of overclocking you could get the below system which also offers a better graphics card. :)

Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £41.99
(£49.34) £41.99
(£49.34)
OcUK GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £49.99
(£58.74) £49.99
(£58.74)
Abit IP35-E (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £54.99
(£64.61) £54.99
(£64.61)
OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £26.99
(£31.71) £26.99
(£31.71)
Sub Total : £173.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £32.01
Total : £214.92
 
That certainly looks interesting, but how does that processor compare against what i already have. I can see its a core 2 Due, but how much better is it in real terms? Will it handle VMs better?
 
The cheapest option is more RAM for what you have now, however the best option is going to be the kind of system already spec'd. DDR2 is very cheap vs DDR and a C2D is akin to running dual CPU's so with multiple VM's running you'll find it a fair bit smoother than what you have now. That said depending on what you're doing (eg is it heavily HD I/O based ?) then you may want to look at other parts of the system as well ?
 
Basically im running VMs of 2003/2000 servers and sometimes XP machines running Wyse server products (i work for Wyse Technology) to test and troubleshoot user issues within their thin client environment. Its not really I/O intensive. Generally more CPU/RAM intensive.

I have a laptop to do testing on, but its not really fun running multiple VMs on it :(
 
Then a C2D and 2GB will do it nicely for you, you are in effect getting a budget SMP set-up so running one or more VM's will be a lot smoother. The OS will dynamically load balance each new VM instance off to the core that's least utilized and unlike the Hyper Threading days it's actually two physical cores running at x.xGHz.
 
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