What to upgrade?

Casdawer

Casdawer

Casdawer

Soldato
Joined
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Hampshire
Afternoon all,

At the moment my PC spec is -

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 10666C9 1333MHz TwinX Dual Channel
MSI 790GX-G65 AMD 790GX (Socket AM3)
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit

Now this system runs fine, a bit slow times but that might just be the crap i have on there (Systems needs formatting really).

I feel like upgrading my PC and i want to do it one part at a time to save money.

What would be the best thing to upgrade first? Motherboard? Operating System?

Thanks.
 
Casdawer said:
Afternoon all,

At the moment my PC spec is -

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 10666C9 1333MHz TwinX Dual Channel
MSI 790GX-G65 AMD 790GX (Socket AM3)
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit

Now this system runs fine, a bit slow times but that might just be the crap i have on there (Systems needs formatting really).

I feel like upgrading my PC and i want to do it one part at a time to save money.

What would be the best thing to upgrade first? Motherboard? Operating System?

Thanks.
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I would give your case a good clean out of any dust and the same goes with any heatsinks and fans in the case too.

If you can re-install Windows or clear any crud which has build up in the registry this would help a lot.

Ccleaner is a good piece of software to use:

http://www.ccleaner.com/

An SSD would be a nice upgrade but they are very expensive for the amount of capacity they offer ATM and the cheap ones are not necessarily the best investment either!!

Apart from that I would not upgrade any other parts as you would be wasting money.

One more thing - what PSU are you using??
 
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Windows7. That's it.

Your motherboard is same as mine, wait for hex core chips to come out, these motherboard are compatible with just a bios flash apparently.
 
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I'm using a PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad-Crossfire PSU.

stulid - I think W7 is probably the best route to go. Give the machine a good wipe and start again.
 
Having used Windows 7 and Vista TBH I would not spend the extra on the former. Vista can run DX11 and if you get rid of all the unnecessary stuff running in Vista it is nice and speedy anyway especially if you are running a quad core with 4GB of RAM!

I think this sudden rush to Windows 7 is a waste of money as Vista runs perfectly fine on my machine. I have a Q6600 at around 3GHZ,with 4GB of DDR2 and a Samsung F3 500GB and a Samsung Spinpoint T 320GB and an HD4830 512MB running on an ancient 975X motherboard from 2006. Re-install Vista and disable any processes which are not needed.

Windows 7 is basically Vista with minor changes under the hood anyway. The £100 for the retail edition is better spent towards an SSD anyway.

I heard that Windows 8 is coming out in 2011 too!
 
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Having used vista and windows7, on a spookily similar system the difference is significant. And worth the change, vista received bad press do to it being slower than xp. Windows7 corrects this problem. Don't worry about directX11 your graphics card does not support it.
 
Sorry CAT but I'm postive its the best move, the only difference between mine and the OP machine is the graphics card, I use a gainward 260
 
stulid said:
Having used vista and windows7, on a spookily similar system the difference is significant. And worth the change, vista received bad press do to it being slower than xp. Windows7 corrects this problem. Don't worry about directX11 your graphics card does not support it.
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Really?? I don't think so. People should try going into the settings in Vista and try disabling some of the stuff that is not needed.

The performance improvement is significant. Many people should re-install their old installations of Vista and look at the guides at improving performance.

In the end Vista ends up running about the same speed as XP on my machine as I have a dual boot system.

I have used all three OSes on my machine so I actually tell you from experience.

A newer machine with faster RAM and a faster processor and graphics card should not be having slowdowns with Vista 64 bit!!

In fact an SSD is a better bet for around £150.
 
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stulid said:
Even a blind dog can see vista is a slow operating system.
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Only a blind dog would advise upgrading to Windows 7 before suggesting a re-install of an OS first and disabling any processes not needed. If the slowdowns still persist then perhaps get Windows 7 unless the slowdowns are actually down to something like the hard disk going kaput.

I have tweaked many Vista installations on much slower hardware and it is very easy to do.

I am not paying for Vista version two.

If you want to through your money away then be my guest.

Hopefully Windows 8 will actually be a bigger and more useful change.
 
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Shouldn't need to disable services just to get a rubbish operating system to run properly.

By that logic you could disable services in windows7 to maintain its performance advantage.
 
stulid said:
Shouldn't need to disable services just to get a rubbish operating system to run properly.

By that logic you could disable services in windows7 to maintain its performance advantage.
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Apart from the fact that this is what MS has done with Windows 7. They just made sure it was done automatically with Windows 7 instead of manually with Vista and added a slightly "glossier" UI.
You can even make Vista look exactly the same as Windows 7 for free.

Windows 7 is Vista with tweaks. I am not paying for tiny incremental changes in an OS. This is the rubbish model they follow with another well known consumer OS you have to pay for.

Windows 8 looks like the next really big change hopefully.
 
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Casdawer, if you look in the operating system forum, you will see a thread called "which os?" The feedback is very one sided.
 
So basically instead of asking the OP to re-install their old Vista installation and try a few tweaks FIRST which costs nothing they should spend £80+ on something which may not be needed.

Just because Lada sells more cars than Rolls Royce does not necessarily make the former better quality.
 
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Yes. Because driver support for windows7 is much better than vista. You don't need to upgrade because your pc is so old. I have used both on a modern pc, the difference is amazing.

Why not go into that forum and read peoples comments about vista? Thank you and goodnight..
 
And why the strange car comparison? Toyota are the biggest car manufacture, there cars are better than lada!! seriously LoL
 
stulid said:
Yes. Because driver support for windows7 is much better than vista. You don't need to upgrade because your pc is so old. I have used both on a modern pc, the difference is amazing.

Why not go into that forum and read peoples comments about vista? Thank you and goodnight..
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Also have you even bothered to ask what these slowdowns are??

Game related ones??

General use usage ones??

What if it is hardware related??

Even brand new hard disks can go kaput prematurely??

Instead you say go buy Windows 7 instead of trying to see what the issue actually is!!

If it is due to something that is bettered supported under Windows 7??

All the parts the OP have were released yonks before Windows 7 came out.

Also I have been running Vista since late 2006(got it from my workplace for free).
 
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Casdawer said:
Afternoon all,

At the moment my PC spec is -

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 10666C9 1333MHz TwinX Dual Channel
MSI 790GX-G65 AMD 790GX (Socket AM3)
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit

Now this system runs fine, a bit slow times but that might just be the crap i have on there (Systems needs formatting really).

I feel like upgrading my PC and i want to do it one part at a time to save money.

What would be the best thing to upgrade first? Motherboard? Operating System?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Can't see the need for an upgrade really. Your ram is fine (not gonna see much of a boost), motherboard, graphics and op system (unless you desire windows 7 a lot) are all pretty up to date.
All there is left is monitor and case really and neither are necessary or provide a performance increase (unless temps of a better case would allow overclocking). Maybe it's just me but I don't see any need to upgrade at all.
 
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