Worth upgrading?

jaw6

Distinguished
Sep 15, 2005
14
0
18,510
I have a ~4 year old Intel CPU (478 socket, 1.5 Ghz). I'm looking at a general PC upgrade (more RAM, new power supply), and I'm trying to decide whether it's worth getting a new CPU. I'm a Web guy, so mostly, I am looking at desktop work (with some heavy Photoshop) and occasional gaming (WoW).

Given those specs, would you upgrade? What to?
 
Thanks - here's what I have now:

P4 1.5
512 MB RAM - Kingston ValueRAM 512MB 184-pin DDR SDRAM 333 (PC 2700)
RADEON 9550 AGP 8x/4x 256meg
Asus P4PE 845PE
ASUS t-10 300W
WD 200GB WD20000JB
 
Yup, it's past upgrade time. Any money spent would give results. What kind of budget are you looking at.
If you have the $, a P4c or one of the 600 series chips would make a big difference. I wouldn't recommend any of the dual core Intel chips, at this point, though Amd's X2 chips look good.
 
I use this for work, so I have a pretty decent budget. No more than US$1000, but I could see spending US$500 easily.

Any chance I can re-use the motherboard?
 
The motherboard officially supports only up to DDR333. While you could get a P4C and some DDR400 and try it, you'd have to overclock the motherboard to get to the CPU/RAM's 'normal' speed of 200Mhz (400DDR), and you're not guaranteed to get there.

So a new motherboard is necessary.

So, if upgrading, you would want a new CPU, Motherboard, and RAM.

If you want to stick with Intel, you'll either have to find older socket 478 hardware, or replace your gfx card with a PCI-E one - thus adding to the price.

If you fancy giving AMD a go, you could either get an Nforce3 250 motherboard and stick with your present AGP card, or get an Nforce4 board and also get a new PCI-E gfx card.

There is a solution from ULi (for AMD only) that has proper implementations of BOTH AGP and PCI-E, but there aren't that many boards around that use it yet. Any other AGP + PCI-E boards you see use a crappy fudged solution utilizing the PCI bus and should be avoided.

I'd get an AMD Nforce3 system because:
Less heat and noise than the (new) intel (using stock Heatsink/Fans);
It's primarily a work PC, so justification for ditching a perfectly adequate Gfx card is hard to find, and besides, you'll be able to get high-end cards for AGP for a while yet;
For the same cash, generally speaking the A64s have better performance.

From your description of what you do, I don't think dual core is necessary, so a single-core venice should be fine - 3200+ or 3500+ perhaps.

Can't suggest much for motherboards, as I don't know what you would like, feature-wise (on-board SATA ports, sound, no. of PCI slots, etc). A cut-down board would of course cost less, but almost any Nforce3 board from Asus, Abit or Epox would probably suit your needs nicely. I'm assuming no overclocking here.

RAM isn't really something I keep up on, but again assuming no overclocking, any half-decent PC3200 will do (e.g. Crucial Ballistix). You could survive with 512Mb, but I'd have to suggest 1Gb (too much is better than too little!)

The other stuff could all be robbed from the old system, but of course a reformat/Re-install of windows is recommended with a mobo swap.

Well, that turned into a bit of an essay, but I guess that's just what happens when I've got nothing to do in the last half hour of work :wink:

---
<pre> (\_/)
|~~~~~|======
|_____| This was bunny. He was tasty.
/\/\/\/\</pre><p>
 
ya, a bit of an essay there chipp.

but on the hole you're accurate, i'd go with the same recommendations for this upgrade. ther's no point in getting anothe socket 478 intel since intel doesnt really build anymore of them. and going to the LGA775 socket requires PCI-E i believe
 
Hmmm. Essay is good, so no worries.

I definitely don't want to change the AGP card yet.

I don't know enough about AMD chips. Intel looked a little better for my budget/needs four years ago, and I haven't really questioned that before now.

Before coming here, I had spec'd out an Intel system; there are still 478 socket CPUs out there (http://tinyurl.com/aejoj) but I don't know what sort of AMD would be comparable here? If I understand you, you are suggesting that AMD's future life-span is better at this point than socket 478 Intel, is that it?

Er, in other words, what AMD CPU?


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jaw6 on 09/20/05 05:57 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
S478 has already been replaced by s775, and it's on a second set of chipsets, so ya, s478 is dead. Not that that makes much difference, as all current platforms will be superceded in the next year.
I would recommend an Abit AV8 3rd eye,(the only via chipset board I would, and do own) and an A64 3200, along with a gig of ram. That should be doable for $500.
 

TRENDING THREADS