I'm looking to upgrade the performance of my computer. I've done some research and to be honest with all the info out there it gets kind of confusing. I've asked for help on other forums and well sometimes the help is just the same...lol. Anyways would going to windows 7 64bit help my performance any as I have 2, 2 gig sticks of RAM and that way I would get the full 4gigs? I'll post my specs if anybody here is interested in helping. Thanks.

Yes, a 32bit O/S (I assume that's what you have now) limits you to 3GB.

are you after a new system? are you looking at upgrading? are you looking to maximise your current performance?

a 32bit OS only allows your computer to utilise 3gb memory (combined with GPU VRAM). a 64bit OS will allow you to utilise as much memory as you like.

post your specs mate

Well I've got stock cooling so I'm looking to upgrade. My budget is 1,000 Canadian dollars.



Intel Core2 DuoE6550 @2.33Ghz Win XP 32

I've got 2, 2 gig sticks of ram but I can't remember what freq.

GeForceGTS 250 1Gig. DDR3 PCIE 16pin.

610Watt 12V PC power and cooling Silencer PSU.

Asus P5Q PRO Turbo MoBo.

1000ca will get you a full blown quad/hex core system with a brand new DX11 generation GPU. upgrading older systems isnt generally the best idea for a number of reasons:

a) youll be spending money on old technology which will date even quicker
b) newer tech is quicker, more reliable, cheaper to run etc
c) newer technology tends to be cheaper due to it being mainstream

and so forth.

1000ca is a solid budget for a new system. the question is, is that what youre prepared to do? the c2d and gts250 are a good 3/4 years old now so id suggest getting a new system if you have that much dollar to spend

Would you suggest going with an AMD or Intel system?

Intel offer better performance but for a price. overall, AMD offer a better price:performance ratio.

with your budget id stick with an AMD phenom ii x6. ive just put together 2 systems for 2 different guys on here as its the best CPU you can get for your money. 2.8ghz hex core for £120 or less.

MikaRaymond wrote:ive just put together 2 systems for 2 different guys on here as its the best CPU you can get for your money.

When they work

M Carey wrote:

MikaRaymond wrote:ive just put together 2 systems for 2 different guys on here as its the best CPU you can get for your money.

When they work

not my fault you have sausage fingers

Not my fault I was sold an overheating cpu Anyway it all turned out ok & I'm happy with my system now =)

Cool. Thanks for the info fellas!

Would you recomment a SS hard drive or something like 500G with 10000rpm?

For pure speed, an SSD will blow away a 10K spindle. Best price/performance is to use an SSD as a boot drive (min 60G for Win7) and larger HD's for storage of data and programs. The downside is you have to be quite careful managing where stuff installs to.

+1

on another note, SSDs are currently priced at more than £1 per GB. however the upside is the longer time goes on the vcheaper theyll become - theyve started becoming more mainstream in the past 12 months. id imagine you could pick up a tidy 120GB corsair or OCZ drive for less than £100 after xmas.

in todays world, i wouldnt recommend one just yet. picking up a conventional 1tb 7200rpm drive offers more than enough performance for most people. you dont really "need" an SSD unless youre stupid, have too much money to blow (or both )

with HDDs, you can do something called short-stroking, whereby you partition the drive to an extent where the C:/ (boot) parition is on the outside of the disk, meaning the spindle will read the data quicker than the D:/ drive, which will be located more to the middle of the disk.