Rate my current PC

[cured]

Well i want to upgrade, but i need to get more money together.. so ill show you what my current computer is like.. Comp was made in JUNE 2003

CPU: Pentium IV 2.67 G
MOBO: GIGA GA-8PE800PRO
1st, 2nd memory: KINGSTON 256MB 266Mhz DDR x2
VGA Card: ASUS GF2 MX400 64MB
1st HDD: SEAGATE 80GB BARRACUDA 7200.7
CASE: ENLIT P4 MIDI TOWER CASE

Tell me what you think and any cheap upgrades you could suggest

[Quakken]

Go for broke and get new everything.

[D1337]

Are we allowed to go into the negatives?

[cured]

haha go for it

[Darth Dad]

You do need alot. The best bang for the buck in my opinion would be a gig of memory...
Made a noticible difference in my old Anthlon 2500+.

[Quakken]

I would say that you really just need to upgrade to a more recent computer. Any totally stock new computer from hpshopping.com or dell.com or alienware.com or voodoopc.com would be very better than the one you have. Usually, you should probably upgrade every 3-5 years, more if your computer was amazing when it was first made, less if you got a somewhat bad computer in the first place. you should probably go for it, your's time has come.

[Spawn-Inc]

if you must avoid a full update work on the video card (if you want to play some better games) and work on ram.

otherwise get a new pc!

[khalie]

i think you should go with new pc or upgrade your video card and buy some more ram

[demon_hunter2k4]

Well, seeing as you live in Melbourne, have a look at the MSY Catalogue, http://msy.com.au/Parts/PARTS.pdf , the parts are exceptionally cheap there.
personally, i would just built an entirely new computer, save the case and HDD. though, that will probably only save you around ~300$, if you're not looking for a monitor/case/hdd, a very decent computer can be built for around 1.2k i'm thinking.

~Edit
Scrap that lol, for $796 at MSY you can get:
ASUS P5kPL G31 - $101
Inter Conroe Quad Core Q6600 - $327
2G Kit-667 Kingston - $66
320MB 8800GTS Gigabyte - $302

which is pretty damn good, if you're looking for more space, 320gb hdds are cheapest relative to the space you get.

[crenn]

Don't get a graphics card yet. Wait for the 8800GT, MSY has said it should be available next week.

btw, I tried to rate your computer, but I had an integer overflow.

[a.Bird]

I think it depends on what you use your computer for. If you want to play the latest pc games, you absolutely would have to get a new system to play with sufficient performance. Newer games just need a faster video interface than AGP 4x, which would mean a new motherboard, which would also mean a new videocard, new memory and a new processor. If you just surf the web, check email, watch videos, etc., I would max out your ram (~$100) and upgrade your videocard (~$70) because what you have is fine for these things. There's no shame in pushing your system as far as it will go and for as long as you can.

[cured]

bahaa

-thanks a.bird

[a.Bird]

Hehe, no problem. Seriously though- I'm running 2.18 Ghz Athlon XP, 380 Mhz bus, 1.5 GB ddr400, GeForce4 Ti4200 64mb- and I can edit images in photoshop, burn a CD in iTunes, and download unreasonably large pr0n torrents all at the same time without a hiccup. I just can't play any games on full res with all eye candy that were released past 1998. :P

[cured]

lol wow so what games do u play? im playing starcraft which dosnt need exceptional graphics

[a.Bird]

Heh, I exaggerated a bit. Half-Life runs great at 1600x1200 with medium quality settings, and also 1280x960 with high quality settings and anti-aliasing + anisotropic filtering. Need For Speed Underground runs great at 1280x960 with medium settings, and 1024x768 with all eye candy maxed out. I don't really play computer games any more though so if I want to play a new game, like Bioshock for example, I'm f***ed because I have half the amount of video memory I need to play it on all low quality settings.

You can do a lot of things to increase your system performance and extend the lifespan of your computer without buying tons of new hardware. For instance, switch your windows theme to Windows Classic and turn off all the window fx. This could dramatically cut down on the stress your videocard and cpu are enduring. Defragment your system hard drive to cut down on seek time. Optimize the size of your pagefile and if you have more than one hdd, spread the pagefile evenly across all of them. Open your computer case and clean it out really good. Blow the dust bunnies out of your heatsinks and fan grills.

See if your motherboard can overclock any of your components. My processor runs at 1.9 Ghz stock speed, but with a bump in .1 volts and some Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound, I've got it running very stable at 2.2 Ghz. I've also tightened the latency on my DDR memory. Even with a modest overclock like this I've noticed much faster boot times, less hiccups when I'm clicking all over the place, etc.

[cured]

hmm okay. does defragmenting lose any files? and what is pagefile

:) Thanks

[a.Bird]

As far as I know, defragmentation will not lose any files. As a matter of fact, the whole purpose of a defrag is to reorganize the pieces of your files on the hard drive so that they are contiguous and not scattered about. A pagefile is essentially virtual memory that is written to your hard drive. When your physical memory (RAM) becomes full, windows will swap the information into the page file on your hard drive to free up your RAM, and when a program needs to allocate a page that was moved to the pagefile, windows will swap it back. At least, this is my understanding of the pagefile- someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Anyway, here (http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm) is a pretty good guide for optimizing your pagefile in windows 2000/XP/2003. It has a nice overview of exactly how the pagefile works, why it is necessary, and how to tweak it to suit your specific circumstances. Look for "Do you have any specific tweaking tips?" about a quarter of the way down the page.

[TheGreatSatan]

Keep your HD, buy everying else new

[cured]

i think i might get a new graphics card and then more ram for the time being. and build a new rig in the next year.

Thanks for the link

EDIT: my PF usage is only 282 out of 512. so tthat shouldnt be a problem.
I uninstalled vista theme and cut all the FX out and its REALLY FAST now. i defragged with the XP stock defragger,and ill download diskeeper because it seems like a better one.

All i need to do is blean the heatsinks and case fans. Thanks

[cured]

oh and btw, how do i over-clock my PC

[.Maleficus.]

oh and btw, how do i over-clock my PC
Did you build it yourself, or did you buy it prebuilt? If you bought it prebuilt, you won't be able to. They usually lock the BIOS which is what you need to access in order to OC your PC.

Otherwise...

When the computer first starts up you see the POST screen (Power On Self Test). At the bottom it will tell you what key you need to press to access the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). It's usually the Del key. Press that and enter the BIOS (it's a good idea to flash a newer version of the BIOS first if possible).

You'll see probably a blue screen, with red, yellow, and white lettering. Depending on the BIOS, you'll need to manipulate different settings, but what you're looking for is an entry about FSB (Front Side Bus). This is what the CPU and RAM communicate through. You need to raise the number of the FSB (SLIGHTLY!!!), save it, and hope the computer turns on when you restart. The number of the FSB is multiplied by the CPU Multiplier, to give you the total CPU speed (in MHz).

Anyways, that is OC'ing in a nutshell. I don't recommend you try it though. The general rule is 'you burn out your first CPU doing an OC', and I agree with it. Google "overclocking", read about it, learn EVERYTHING that ANY page has to say about it, and only then try. Once you know what you're doing, it'll be a peace of cake. I have my E6600 clocked at 3.3GHz from 2.4Ghz.

Patience is key though. It took me about 3 weeks to get there, doing 24 hr. burn in tests after each clock to make sure it's 100% stable. If it's not stable, it'll crash, and maybe even fry some components.

[cured]

it was pre-built :(

[Spawn-Inc]

since it's a gigabyte you can unlock it by pressing Ctrl+F1 i believe and some extra options should show up. it may not unlock over clocking adjustments though, it might be something else if any.

[.Maleficus.]

it was pre-built :(
That's too bad.

since it's a gigabyte you can unlock it by pressing Ctrl+F1 i believe and some extra options should show up. it may not unlock over clocking adjustments though, it might be something else if any.
It would be very unlikely they would have any OC'ing options at all. Some prebuilt machines have accessible BIOS for things like boot order and passwords. That's probably all you'll find.