Upgrading my system

I am looking to ugrade my system to try and extend it's life by a year or two. Currently I have

2800+ AMD Sempron @ 2GHZ
768MB DDR RAM PC2700 184 pin (was originally 256MB, bought a 512MB stick)
Random normal HD
ATI Radeon 9550

I was thinking about buying a 1GB stick of DDR ram and replacing my 256MB stick with it. So that would double my RAM amount to 1.5 GB. This was the kind of thing I had in mind. When combined with delivery it should be around £40 and the 19 reviews are all 5 stars so it seems like it would be a good purchase.

I was also thinking about getting a new graphics card. I was thinking of this as it seems a very good card and should improve my performance quite a lot.

I am worried thought that the effects of buying the two mentioned items would be limited because of my lacklustre CPU. Am I correct? If so how do I tell exactly what type of CPU I need and whether an upgrade would be effective. Or would it be better to build a new system from scratch?

Thanks for any help.

 

Looking at your specs, are you absolutely sure you don't already have a 1gb DIMM installed?

Your 768MB would have to be 3 x 256mb DIMMs.

Is your ATI Radeon 9550 video card a add-on vs on-board (built into motherboard)? If it is, AND you have only one DIMM, the Radeon is using part of your memory for video.

If you have the 3 x 256mb DIMM configuration, try getting exactly what you need to upgrade.

I suggest you try getting specs via 4AllMemory, using their [Check My System] applet.

It will return a list of the exact specs for your memory upgrade. Note I am not saying you need to buy from them, it's just that their applet is really neat for finding what you need.

 

A 256Mb Stick and a 512Mb stick do indeed add up to 768Mb. Running one 256Mb stick and one 512Mb Stick works. What I would do is replace the 256Mb stick with another 512Mb stick of compatible ram unless you can get the 1gig stick at a good price.

 

for the ram, it is best to have 2 matching sticks of ram so they can run dual channel to double the ram speed (if different sized sticks or speeds, or put into the wrong slots, you can lose that option... there is a chance that your computer does not support it) If you are trying to play a game or a program that uses a lot of ram, maybe 2 GB would be better (2 x 1GB).

For the video card, yes that is a very good card, one of the best or the best AGP video cards out there. But that card is going to be much more power hungry. I did not find any specs on how much power is recommenced from the power supply.

For the CPU, it may become a bottle neck for your performance, but not an extreme amount. 2 GHz is still pretty good.