Computer upgrade advice

Currently I'm thinking of upgrading a few parts on my computer and considered buying a Motherboard. Sadly hardware happens to be my weakest area; if anyone has any good ideas as to what motherboard (or if I should purchase one at all) or what part I should upgrade first. Thanks.

 

What is your current setup? What is your budget?

 

Well I'm not home right now but from the top of my head:

Chieftec dragon midtower case
AMD XP 2600
512 DDR (not sure exact features)
Can't remember my exact motherboard but its pretty standard (Which is why I would like to buy another one)
Seagate 120 GB drive
I'm not sure but I know its a 256MB video card...I think GeForce but again I"m not home.
Windows XP pro.

Thanks for the help!

 

There is not any one component that you can upgrade and make a substantial improvement. If you really want to see a significant performance boost, you'll need just about everything new.

 

Depending on his Video card, he/she could probably upgrade to somthing like a geforce 6800GT and notice a definate improvement. Ram is also an easy upgrade that does help speed things up and isnt too pricey.

 

Thats the conclusion I was coming too. Purchasing another memory stick and upgrading the VC. As of late the speed of my computer has dropped somewhat in comparision. The hardware seems fine and I do have a upgradded version of Mcafee virus protection and a few anti-spyware softwares that all come up blank. But every so often the decrease in speed is too noticable but doesn't make sense since I'm not running any appilcation that is out of the ordinary. Any suggestions?

 

That's not entirely true, of course. Many applications use hardware acceleration, not just games. Obviously, it's not going decrease load times or assist in multitasking, but there are certainly areas other than gaming that will noticeably benefit from a video card upgrade.

 

I don't see the RAM as a performance enhancing upgrade for 99% of the applications that exist. Other than really huge graphics manipulation or large CAD models, 512mb is more than sufficient. The graphics card you already have is quite decent, though not the state of the art.

In truth, I think to see any significant performance boost, you'll be replacing most of the components you have.

 

Funny you should say that, I just had to upgrade to 2.5gig from 1gig for large Acad model, just to open the model used up 90% phys mem, with nothing else open, just at destop was 18%, wish you could turn some of that stuff that win2000 loads, got 4 slots maybe I'll talk them into 2 more dimms of 1gig for 4 total, that would be sweet. I dont think anything is as much of a memory pig as Autocad, games....hah, there nothing

 

This sounds more like a software problem ie malware, virus, trojan, spyware, maybe you just need a reformat to clean things up, Im a firm believer in formatting at least once/yr to keep windows running quick. If your not a heavy gamer that pc should be plenty quick enough...unless of course you got money to burn, let us know what apps you run.

 

I'm all for that

 

A complete rebuild with a shiny new P4 (or depends each CPU is good at different things) would be good for a big performance boost, if you have the money.

 

I'll attempt to answer everyones questions. Right now I believe my video card is a nvidia 5200 256mb. Currently I have...adware se, spy-bot, bazooka and Mcafee as virus protection. Running windows xp office pro. Though I would love to reformate XP I do not have the start up disk. The version I have was installed when I put the PC together and I'm too cheap to buy an actual version. Is there any other way to get around that?