EmptinesOf Youth Posted June 3, 2005 Share Posted June 3, 2005 ive notice you can get a pretty good AMD or pentium 4 for around 200 bucks. Right now im runnin 1.7 p4 for an upgrade within the next couple months would be cool. This is just on a computer i listen to music and play games on. NO recordin. As asked in the topic, would it be hard to put in a new processor? Is it even possible, compatability wise? Also, ive read that the maxium amount of ram i can put in is a gig, if i got a new processor would this change? And what about the motherboard? Anything i can do there? sorry if these are a little wierd/stupid but just was wonderin thanks ryan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alndln Posted June 3, 2005 Share Posted June 3, 2005 It all depends on your mother board in regards to the limit it can take.You must check the manual on your particular board in regard to it's limits.If it does support a faster chip it's basically a matter of popping it in carefully(matching the pins)and changing the FSB speed in bios.Your motherboard manual will have clear instructions on how to proceed,if you don't have the manual it's important to get the exact model and make of your board so you can download a .pdf version from the makers website.In some cases a bios upgrade(flashing the bios) is necessary. "A Robot Playing Trumpet Blows" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmptinesOf Youth Posted June 3, 2005 Author Share Posted June 3, 2005 do you think itd be smarter to buy a stripped down computer (cept a good processor and what not) and add my drives, graphics and sound to that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alndln Posted June 3, 2005 Share Posted June 3, 2005 Probably,but then again I don't know what you have now as far as your current motherboard. "A Robot Playing Trumpet Blows" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmptinesOf Youth Posted June 3, 2005 Author Share Posted June 3, 2005 dell demension 4400, a couple years old...is there a way i can look in device manager and find out what kind it is? and thanks i appreciate the help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dak Lander Posted June 3, 2005 Share Posted June 3, 2005 Originally posted by EmptinessOFYouth: dell demension 4400, a couple years old...is there a way i can look in device manager and find out what kind it is? and thanks i appreciate the help Device manager will give you some good information about what is on the motherboard but it's pretty generic and won't give you the model or mfg of the board. Our Joint "When you come slam bang up against trouble, it never looks half as bad if you face up to it." The Duke... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny M Posted June 3, 2005 Share Posted June 3, 2005 Originally posted by EmptinessOFYouth: ive notice you can get a pretty good AMD or pentium 4 for around 200 bucks. Right now im runnin 1.7 p4 for an upgrade within the next couple months would be cool. This is just on a computer i listen to music and play games on. NO recordin. As asked in the topic, would it be hard to put in a new processor? Is it even possible, compatability wise? Also, ive read that the maxium amount of ram i can put in is a gig, if i got a new processor would this change? And what about the motherboard? Anything i can do there? sorry if these are a little wierd/stupid but just was wonderin thanks ryan Putting new processors into motherboards that can actually accept them is fairly easy. However, AMD's will not fit Intel CPU sockets, or vice versa. This is not even to get into the issues of buss speeds... The maximum amount of RAM a system can have can certainly be influenced by the processor, but unless you're moving from 32-bit to 64-bit architecture, it has more to do with how many RAM slots the board has available, and whether its bussing will allow for "x" amount of RAM in this, that, or the other configuration. Swapping motherboards for something better is actually a good place to start, if you're looking for a fairly drastic CPU upgrade. In general, the farther away you're getting from your current setup, the more fundamentally changed the whole system has to be. Grace, Peace, V, and Hz, Danny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmptinesOf Youth Posted June 3, 2005 Author Share Posted June 3, 2005 ive been lookin into building my own computer and trying to salvage as much as i can from what i have now. Which is my cdrw drive, graphics card, ethernet PCI and sound card. I have a 512 ram chip which is pc2100 or something, not sure if ill be able to transfer that over though. I was also thinking about buying a computer that was pretty skimpy except for processor, hard drive and ram, but then i think i run into trouble of enough pci slots and so on....man this is a mess....any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rim Posted June 3, 2005 Share Posted June 3, 2005 You need to ask yourself why you need an upgrade. A 1.7GHz P4 with 512 MB RAM is more than adequate for listening to music and most games out there. If some of the games aren't running as smooth and/or you can't increase the details of the game too much, most likely your upgrade path should be the video card and not the processor. What video card do you have? If you upgrade your processor but you're not even hitting it much, I doubt you'll even see a difference - except your bank account will be lighter. If you are running Windows, look at Help for running Performance Monitor. Or do Start->Run->perfmon.exe and click OK. I think by default it shows you the % usage of your processor. Keep it running and start the application you hope to improve and use it for a minute or two then close it. Look at the graph for the cpu usage. Did it peg it to 100% or close? If it didn't, a cpu upgrade probably wouldn't help you much. You can also use TaskManager and look at the Performance tab to see CPU usage. aka riffing Double Post music: Strip Down http://rimspeed.com http://loadedtheband.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny M Posted June 3, 2005 Share Posted June 3, 2005 You will probably be able to transfer the RAM stick over, but you'll take a (possibly) noticeable performance hit from it being relatively slow. If the graphics card is AGP, then you shouldn't run into a PCI slot problem. Even the smallest ATX-family motherboards that I've seen have two PCI slots. (Now, buying one of those proprietary, supertiny, "regular-cards-don't-fit" systems will cause you some pain.) Grace, Peace, V, and Hz, Danny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alndln Posted June 4, 2005 Share Posted June 4, 2005 Originally posted by EmptinessOFYouth: ive been lookin into building my own computer and trying to salvage as much as i can from what i have now. Which is my cdrw drive, graphics card, ethernet PCI and sound card. I have a 512 ram chip which is pc2100 or something, You can get a slightly older AMD XP 266/FSB system fairly cheap that would match your Ram,but tops would be about a 2600 mhz(2.083Ghz).You can get something faster for around the same price except you'll have to spring for faster DDR Ram.My advice would be this,keep your machine as is and eventually use it as a internet all purpouse machine,then plan on building a dedicated DAW buy buying parts over a period of time this way you'll see a definite improvement rather than trying to squeeze out a small gain by a cheap upgrade,you'll be happier in the long run and you don't have to spring for everything at once,and you can use the parts you mentioned(nothing else though)temporarily,then eventually I'd replace them. "A Robot Playing Trumpet Blows" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.