Make my PC faster?

rach_jenn

rach_jenn

rach_jenn

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Joined
7 Nov 2012
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10
Hi guys,

I've got a windows XP home ed 2002 PC, AMD athlon (tm) 64 X2 Dual, core processor 4000+, 2.11GHz, 1.75GB of RAM
... but it's not quick enough. Turning on takes a few minutes then the first couple of programs I open take forever to load. I do all the usual defragging, virus checking, cleaning on a regular basis.

I create websites (but ironically have no knowledge on 'what makes a PC tick') so I need several browsers/tabs, Dreamweaver, Photoshop open at the same time, with quick and easy swapping between. That's it... no gaming.

I've been told a few different things by people so I'm confused as to what I need. Max spend £100.

Any ideas would help a lot!

Many thanks
Rach
 
to find out if you need more cpu or ram, open up the task manager (ctrl + alt + delete) and click on the performance tab. Keep this open while you do your day to day activities. If the CPU is being overly stressed you'll see a high CPU utilization in the graph. For memory, you will need to check the section that says available memory. If this number is less than 500-1000 MB you are probably low on RAM.

applications opening up slowly the first time is almost certainly a slow hard drive. especially considering your PC is about 10 years old and as hard drives age they degrade and get slower.

While you could upgrade your current system its probably not very cost efficient, and parts may be hard to find on such a dated platform. I'd personally look for a used LGA775 intel system if I were you.
 
racerboy59 said:
While you could upgrade your current system its probably not very cost efficient, and parts may be hard to find on such a dated platform. I'd personally look for a used LGA775 intel system if I were you.
Click to expand...

Quoted for truth.

I've seen decent Core2 based systems go for well under £100 on the bay. With your current rig being so old a full update is the way to go.
 
rach_jenn said:
Hi guys,

I've got a windows XP home ed 2002 PC, AMD athlon (tm) 64 X2 Dual, core processor 4000+, 2.11GHz, 1.75GB of RAM
... but it's not quick enough. Turning on takes a few minutes then the first couple of programs I open take forever to load. I do all the usual defragging, virus checking, cleaning on a regular basis.

I create websites (but ironically have no knowledge on 'what makes a PC tick') so I need several browsers/tabs, Dreamweaver, Photoshop open at the same time, with quick and easy swapping between. That's it... no gaming.

I've been told a few different things by people so I'm confused as to what I need. Max spend £100.

Any ideas would help a lot!

Many thanks
Rach
Click to expand...

from your lack of speed issues the description you have given shows it to mainly be a hard drive problem.
ignore the fools who have posted above saying to do a full on upgrade to get a big difference.
stick in a ssd and some more ram and that system will still be decent for what your usage patterns are.
knowledge will help your computer run faster, lack of knowledge can be substituted with cash to get similar end results.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
ignore the fools who have posted above saying to do a full on upgrade to get a big difference.
stick in a ssd and some more ram.
Click to expand...

Charming :p

Unless I'm missing something TRIM isn't supported on XP, so an SSD would give a good performance boost to start with, but would get slower fairly rapidly. Also with 1.75GB of RAM already I doubt a motherboard that old will support more than 2GB. DDR is pricey these days as well unless you can find what you need second hand.
 
Thanks for all of your replies. My dad (who originally sorted me the PC) says the OS is 2002 but certain parts (he's unsure which) are newer.

Here are the results from the performance...(I've put the pics on my web server, sorry couldn't attach straight in here)
nothing yet opened
everything clicked on & waiting to open
everything open

All of this took about 8-10 mins. Would getting a new processor change the OS? I thought that was on the HD :(
 
Being an 64 X2 it can't be before 2005.

Run cpuz and do a screenshot of the mobo and memory tabs.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

I agree with Cyber-Mav, if your mobo can take more ram and has Sata connections a SSD will make a good imporvement with little cost.

The ram should be purchased 2nd hand, cheap as chips.
Get a new SSD.

Any CPU upgrade would cost well over the £100 budget.
 
I recently upped the loading times and performance on a single Core 1.6Ghz Samsung Notebook.

On the start menu type "msconfig" without ", then go to startup section and untick everything there that you personally installed, as most programs briefly open to check for updates, causing huge slowdowns on startup.

Secondly, get yourself a 4GB USB FlashDrive, plug into any USB 2.0 Port, then follow this guide http://wizardcreations.wordpress.co...-on-xp-using-your-flash-drive-as-a-page-file/

Enjoy!
 
Ok while an SSD will give you a really responsive system, i wouldn't recommend it on a windows XP machine because you won't be able to take advantage of TRIM. This will wear out your drive faster and over time it will get slower. If you had Windows 7 or newer, I would totally recommend an SSD. Maybe you could save up and upgrade both at the same time?

More RAM will probably help too, since the operating system won't need to rely on the page file (hard drive) as much. It's hard to say what's compatible, unless we know the motherboard model, but it will be DDR2 and probably no faster than 800Mhz.

And as Oliver says, clear out your programs running at startup from msconfig. This is a huge reason why your system is slow to start up. Also make sure you are runnning a decent antivirus application such as avast. Some of them are pretty crap and can slow down your system a lot. Finally make sure you have the latest manufacturer drivers, and update your software to the latest versions as this can help bring some performance improvements.
 
Zero spend
You could probably get some improvement from a fresh windows installation.

Small spend
Add RAM. Install a free copy of Windows 8 (release preview).

Any more than that:
That system is too old to be worth upgrading. Start saving for a new one.
 
racerboy59 said:
Ok while an SSD will give you a really responsive system, i wouldn't recommend it on a windows XP machine because you won't be able to take advantage of TRIM. This will wear out your drive faster and over time it will get slower. If you had Windows 7 or newer, I would totally recommend an SSD. Maybe you could save up and upgrade both at the same time?
Click to expand...

SSD are fine on XP, yes TRIM does help with writing speeds after long term use, but the speed loss isn't that great and it's still gonna be many times faster than a 7 year old sata drive.

As for the extra wear, it won't be any different to using Win 7 if properly re-align your drive before installing XP. The extra wear only happens on incorrectly aligned drives as they use 2 blocks instead of one. Even if you failed to align it correctly you'd have to use a current SSD huge amount to wear it out.

Also the SSD can use used in any new system when you decide to upgrade in the future.
 
if you go to X you can get Ram(if in stock) for a decent amount, i brought 1gb of pc3200 for 12 quid for a biostar SFF my missus has, about the same as on the bay really which i thought wasnt bad..

i paid 20 quid brand new from M for a single stick of pc100(i think) 256mb for an old PPC Mac G4 AGP tower i used to have which gave me 768 total, was a good upgrade, but price was too much really and in the end sold it rather than upgrade it further, so used is your best bet really, but unless you running 64bit, doesnt matter if your board supports more than 2gb, you couldnt go beyond that with 32bit, well you can, but be a waste..

i probably wouldnt use X for HDD though as although an 80gb IDE i brought for the mac(OS was on original 20gb Drive)worked well, i paid like 10 quid which is not bad, but if you shop around you can find bigger for less or same price..

you have a desktop im assuming, so you have plenty of options to make it a better rig.
 
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