Upgrade advice...sluggish performance

njs5017

njs5017

njs5017

Associate
Joined
22 Jul 2009
Posts
14
Hello

Need some help with an upgrade, it's been a while since I did anything like this, so just need to know where best to spend my money. The budget is £150-200, I'm willing to go a little higher if there will be a large difference in performance.

I bought the PC without doing much research, foolish I know, about nine months ago and use it for photo editing mainly and general pc use. The outright processing power isn't fantastic it is enough, gets through 500 RAW images easily so I'm after better responsiveness. Just find the pc changing between programs sluggish, just generally slow, till it settles on a task.

Basically where is it best to spend my money, to improve the system responsiveness, is it graphics card, more ram, new motherboard, "overclock"?

If there is any additional info you needed for the best advice let me know. I paste the some of the specs below. Should mention I've gone through the startup setup etc to make sure there aren't any "extra" programs in the background so think it's about as fast as its' going to get.

Thanks

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Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
Memory (RAM) 3.00 GB
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
Gaming graphics 1534 MB Total available graphics memory
Primary hard disk 44GB Free (456GB Total)
Windows Vista (TM) Home Premium

System
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Manufacturer Dell Inc.
Model Inspiron 530
Total amount of system memory 3.00 GB RAM
System type 32-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 4
64-bit capable Yes

Storage
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Total size of hard disk(s) 1397 GB
Disk partition (C:) 44 GB Free (456 GB Total)
Disk partition (D:) 5 GB Free (10 GB Total)
Media drive (E:) CD/DVD
Media drive (L:) CD/DVDCD/DVD
Disk partition (M:) 661 GB Free (932 GB Total)

Graphics
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Display adapter type ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
Total available graphics memory 1534 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 256 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 1278 MB
Display adapter driver version 8.402.0.0
Primary monitor resolution 1920x1200
DirectX version DirectX 10

Network
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Network Adapter Intel(R) 82562V-2 10/100 Network Connection
Network Adapter Microsoft Tun Miniport Adapter
Network Adapter Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network)
Network Adapter NETGEAR 108 Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter WG311T
 
Hi and welcome
Firstly have you run defrag? that can make a big difference if you havent, download and use something like auslogics tool, its much better and faster than the standard windows one.
Re your hardware, your gfx card is clearly behind the rest, but this should only really effect gaming, not anything else to any real extent. Your best bet for improved all round performance is to OC yes, however as its a dell PC, the mobo wont let you so you'll have to invest in a new one.
Cant see too much on the specifics of your system with what youve posted, could you download cpu-z and put up the screen shots of the following tabs: CPU, mainboard and memory
I suspect youre going to want new RAM too, its prob PC6400
Id buy
Mobo: gigabyte EP43 DS3 £68
RAM: Corsair 4 gig £37
CPU cooler: Akasa AK967 £27
that will allow you to OC your CPU, and you should be able to push it to 3.2 which would seee a nice all round performance boost
If you do want to get a new gfx card, this 4850 is great value at £80 and would be a massive step up from the one you have currently
Edit: The other thing that might improve general use is HDD, if its a 5400rpm drive, a new 7200rpm like Western Digitals Caviar Black would see good improvements
 
I'd probably say install a 64bit os (win 7 for now) and change the case. Dell are notorious for slow pc's

Then also buy some fans.

Does your cpu have a fan? the last time I looked in one it had an average heatsink and a plastic mold leading towards the case fan.
 
Thanks for the replies... here are the screenshots

njs5017


njs5017


njs5017
 
yep as above
new mobo and ram, and a cpu cooler as im sure its just stock one, this will allo OC and make biggest difference
its upto you about the rest you could replace pretty much everything tbh, youd benefit from better case for better cooling, better psu to power it all more reliably and efficiently, better gfx if you do do any gaming, new HDD for faster seek times....tada new PC
 
Ok, think I'll do this in stages, first new mobo and with RAM and cpu cooler as suggested and take it from there.

Once I have all the bits above, do I simply just open it up, rip out the old, replace with new and power back up or is it more complicated than that.
 
basically yeah, but the mobo is most complicated because everything else is connected to it, and its connected to the case, so you'll have to disconnect everything, all the wires, expansion cards etc, unscrew mobo from case and remove, put in new mobo and reconnect everything
 
the words "rip out the old" doesn't fill me with confidence lol :p

There's a program I run, I think it's the best program since the first few version of spybot.

IOBit system care. use this and post a pic of what's found. It's free at there's two types of scans it does.

You should defo see some improvements ;)
 
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Ok thanks all for the advice.

Last question, once it's all installed I'll be back here no doubt, but to OC I assume there is a process for this?
 
That machine will take a max of four gig [one gig per slot] according to a well known online memory upgrade configurator so I'd suggest £40 of RAM [2x 2x1gb DDR800 matched DIMMs] and a clean Win7 RC 64 bit install as a start - Win7 makes Vista look like the bloated rubbish it is. If I am wrong and the machine will take 8gb, get 2x 2x2gb DDR800 matched DIMMs instead - you can never have too much RAM, and it's proper dirt cheap these days.

If you want to play games, then look at the current offers on the 4890 [£150ish], or if you want to spend a little less, a 4850 is perfectly servicable too and can be had for under £100. Consider the 260 as a minimum if you prefer Nvidia, or the 275 if you find a good deal, but you would want to investigate a new PSU - and make sure the dell mobo has standard pinouts; Dell have been known to use non stanard pinouts and connectors - and worse, non standard pinouts on standard formfactor connectors - on their kit, so check that very carefully.

The other option if you aren't a massive gamer would be an SSD for the OS and use the other drives for data storage - SSDs are pricey for noticeably fast ones though, so you'd probably have to forgo the GPU.

RAM and Win7 will be good start though - I have a Q6600/8Gb RAM/4850/Win7 and I honestly can't think of any time it's felt slow or sluggish. Try that first and see how it goes, as I think that will make the difference you need - the rest if optional really.

A new mobo is a excessive at this stage IMHO - I'd put a fiver on 4gb of RAM and Win7 giving the machine a new lease of life, and making it last till you want to replace it
 
Okay so the common theme is RAM, at least as a place to start.

Any recommendations which, I notice the "standard" stuff is very inexpensive. Any point in going for Balistix or Corsair for the build I have at the moment? It's not that much more expansive £40 vs £60 odd.

Thanks
 
Do you need a complete upgrade? There's not really any reason why that system should be slow in general Windows tasks. A quad-core CPU and 3GB RAM should run Vista pretty nicely.

I was going to suggest that there was lots of crap running in the background, but you've checked that. So I wouldn't be surprised if you're just running out of RAM, especially if you've got lots of images open. That will make the fastest PC feel very sluggish. You said that it's slow changing between apps, which is a classic sign that you're low on RAM.

Next time it gets sluggish, check the performance tab in task manager to see how much physical memory you're using. If it's more than about 80% used then your performance is going to suffer.

(edit) Before you add any RAM, you need to change to a 64-bit OS. 32-bit Windows will only see about 3.25GB of RAM, so there's no point putting any more in until you've upgraded.

On the RAM front, I would avoid Ballistix. Its failure rate is pretty appalling... I know this first-hand as I've had to send back three sets of Ballistix DDR2 in the last 18 months!

Corsair is another matter though. I swear by it... very reliable RAM. My new Corsair is barely warm to the touch where my Ballistix was hot - that has to be a good sign for reliability.
 
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Mattus said:
Do you need a complete upgrade? There's not really any reason why that system should be slow in general Windows tasks. A quad-core CPU and 3GB RAM should run Vista pretty nicely.

I was going to suggest that there was lots of crap running in the background, but you've checked that. So I wouldn't be surprised if you're just running out of RAM, especially if you've got lots of images open. That will make the fastest PC feel very sluggish. You said that it's slow changing between apps, which is a classic sign that you're low on RAM.

Next time it gets sluggish, check the performance tab in task manager to see how much physical memory you're using. If it's more than about 80% used then your performance is going to suffer.

(edit) Before you add any RAM, you need to change to a 64-bit OS. 32-bit Windows will only see about 3.25GB of RAM, so there's no point putting any more in until you've upgraded.

On the RAM front, I would avoid Ballistix. Its failure rate is pretty appalling... I know this first-hand as I've had to send back three sets of Ballistix DDR2 in the last 18 months!

Corsair is another matter though. I swear by it... very reliable RAM. My new Corsair is barely warm to the touch where my Ballistix was hot - that has to be a good sign for reliability.
Click to expand...

+1 for corsair, touch wood never had a bad stick and have been using corsair for years, even the value stuff is good i put 2 sticks in a mates pc 3 years ago and is still running fine:cool:
 
a new set of RAM will be good whatever, atm youre not running dual channel, a new 4 gig kit, even tho 32bit windows cant use it all, will be faster as it will run dual channel versus current single channel. That being said I still think you should invest in a new mobo and clock the cpu, get it to 3.2 (not too hard) and you'll notice a BIG difference
 
95thrifles said:
That being said I still think you should invest in a new mobo and clock the cpu, get it to 3.2 (not too hard) and you'll notice a BIG difference
Click to expand...

Has to be said, I didn't notice a massive performance boost day to day when I had 4gb and 3.2ghz - I had difficulty getting 3.2ghz with 8gb of RAM so I popped it back to stock and....well, I haven't bothered putting it back. Just don't need it. I tend to do web/VM/Photochop stuff mostly and the performance of the Q6600 at stock is perfectly ample; the 8gb of RAM made more difference to me.

The only difference I noticed was with benchmarks and doing large sequential jobs, but I tend to have a cuppa when doing video transcoding anyway - I don't notice the few seconds or minutes it saves.

It's subjective though - but I'd still hang fire on a mobo swap and try the RAM and Win7 x64 first. JUst remember that it looks like it has to be 4x1gb, not 2x2gb for a RAM kit - ie a pair of 2x1gb matched DIMMs.
 
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