boost my P4 rig speed?

[MxPhenom 216]

My back up computer is a Dell comptuer with a Pentium 4, 1gb of ram, 40gb hard drive, PCI HD5450 and Windows 7 Home Premium. Would being another gig of ram for total of 2GB boost the speed of this system a lot, or enough to make it worth it. its really sucks when i try to keep internet running still while i play Mad Skills Motocross.

[Melvis]

2GB is always a good idea for a XP rig, it should run better. Is the 1GB ram 2x512's? or 1x1GB? im asking because maybe you can make it run in dual channel to improve performance a little?

Also the 40GB HDD would be the slowest part of that system, just getting a newer 7200 drive will improve it the most.

What speed is the P4? GHz?

EDIT: Yes Windows 7 will slow it down alot also, go back to XP and it will run alot faster.

[NdMk2o1o]

Originally Posted by nvidiaintelftw

My back up computer is a Dell comptuer with a Pentium 4, 1gb of ram, 40gb hard drive, PCI HD5450 and Windows 7 Home Premium. Would being another gig of ram for total of 2GB boost the speed of this system a lot, or enough to make it worth it. its really sucks when i try to keep internet running still while i play Mad Skills Motocross.

There is no need to run Windows 7 on such a machine, XP would run a lot smoother, you could upgrade the RAM, I would still recommend running XP on it, if you really wanted to get the best out of it add another stick of ram and maybe a 30Gb SSD drive as that would show the most benefit.

[Red_Machine]

7 runs quite acceptably on these systems, provided you have enough RAM. 2GB minimum; get 2x 1GB sticks so you can run in dual-channel mode.

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by Red_Machine

7 runs quite acceptably on these systems, provided you have enough RAM. 2GB minimum; get 2x 1GB sticks so you can run in dual-channel mode.

okay, and about hard drive its a IDE system so no sata/ SSD drives. I was thinking about a Western Digital 7200RPM 160gb IDE drive at some point

[Red_Machine]

7200RPM with at least 8MB of cache will help you out a lot.

[arnoo1]

windows 7 runs great on p4 i have a p4 2.8ghz ht with a fx5200 and 2x512mb dual channel corsair ram and a mactor 40gb hdd and it's really fast

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by arnoo1

windows 7 runs great on p4 i have a p4 2.8ghz ht with a fx5200 and 2x512mb dual channel corsair ram and a mactor 40gb hdd and it's really fast

yeah, its faster then when i had vista on it, but still a bit sluggish. I have the same system i think except i have a HD5450. Its a Dell Dimension 3000

[theoneandonlymrk]

true that, with an ssd in their too, it would operate as good if not better then most oem pcs

above opinions based on my sh"$ter pc obv

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by theoneandonlymrk

true that, with an ssd in their too, it would operate as good if not better then most oem pcs

above opinions based on my sh"$ter pc obv

but its IDE lol

i was thinking this hard drive (not buying brand new though, at some point ill make a Wanted thread for memory and the hard drive)

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD1600AAJB 160GB 7200 ...

[qubit]

Originally Posted by Red_Machine

7 runs quite acceptably on these systems, provided you have enough RAM. 2GB minimum; get 2x 1GB sticks so you can run in dual-channel mode.

What he said.

Running Win7 with just a gig of RAM bogs it down terribly, even my E8500 4GHz system (see specs). Stuff it into 512MB and it can barely get itself out of bed at startup. Win7, like Vista before it, loves lots of RAM to run properly.

Also, adding a faster hard disc will certainly help and is recommended. A 1TB SATA HD is cheap, too.

What's the clock speed of that P4?

I've run it on my P4 2.8GHz Northwood with HT and it's fine. Not as snappy as a modern machine, but still very useable.

[theoneandonlymrk]

yeh but its still possible to get an ssd or DOM for it especially easier if it has a pciex slot free, just saying is all but as someone said and you know a faster hdd will make it more user friendly too

western digi blues are good quite reliable drives ive 4 230g blues to my name only 1 died and that was after 3 years in a raid 0 os array, its original buddy plus 2 others are still goin strong

you can buy a DOM disk on module that will work on ide as a hard disk i know because i use a 1 gig one on said sh"$er pc

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by qubit

What he said.

Running Win7 with just a gig of RAM bogs it down terribly, even my E8500 4GHz system (see specs). Stuff it into 512MB and it can barely get itself out of bed at startup. Win7, like Vista before it, loves lots of RAM to run properly.

Also, adding a faster hard disc will certainly help and is recommended. A 1TB SATA HD is cheap, too.

What's the clock speed of that P4?

I've run it on my P4 2.8GHz Northwood with HT and it's fine. Not as snappy as a modern machine, but still very useable.

its a Prescott P4 at 2.8GHZ 1 core 1 thread

again. NO SATA. ONLY IDE, and no PCI-e

[qubit]

Originally Posted by nvidiaintelftw

its a Prescott P4 at 2.8GHZ 1 core 1 thread

again. NO SATA. ONLY IDE, and no PCI-e

Sorry, I missed those two points.

Well, the graphics is sort of ok-ish for this, but having to get an IDE HD really isn't very good. Even though not especially expensive, they are very poor value for money, because the capacity is very small and the performance a fair bit lower, too.

It's kinda touch and go whether this PC is worth upgrading or not. See what prices you have to pay for the RAM and HD and make a judgement call. If you can stretch to a new PC, then I say do that instead - even a really low end one will give you much better performance and support the latest interfaces.

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by qubit

Sorry, I missed those two points.

Well, the graphics is sort of ok-ish for this, but having to get an IDE HD really isn't very good. Even though not especially expensive, they are very poor value for money, because the capacity is very small and the performance a fair bit lower, too.

It's kinda touch and go whether this PC is worth upgrading or not. See what prices you have to pay for the RAM and HD and make a judgement call. If you can stretch to a new PC, then I say do that instead.

yeah, its jsut my back up, my main rig is stripped apart right now waiting for my mobo and ram to sell so i can go to sandy bridge

Rosewill RC-A-SATA-IDE SATA to IDE Adapter

could get that, and boom running sata haha

Ill probably just do the memory, then get the 111gb drive from my other dell dimension 2400 and put it in, for the space and maybe itll be a little bit quicker