Question Upgrading 1 out of 3 components, need advice (Read 1078 times)

  • I disdain mrons.
  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Aug 16, 2004
  • Posts: 640
I'm not made of money and my system proves it. What I'm trying to do is determine which part I can upgrade and get the best increase in performance (including, but not limited to, file operations, 3dsmax rendering, light gaming, etc). The hard part for me is determining where my tightest system bottleneck is. I only have enough money to upgrade one out of three components listed below.

CPU-Z Report: http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/42106/cpuz.htm

Current componentPossible replacement
Intel Pentium E2140Intel Pentium E5200
Western Digital WD2500JBSeagate Barracuda ST3250410AS
2GB SUPER TALENT DDR2 667G.SKILL 2GB DDR2 1066

Last Edit: October 12, 2008, 04:56:46 pm by 2Beers
  • Avatar of Barack Obama
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 16, 2008
  • Posts: 5244
you'd see the biggest performance increase from the CPU upgrade.

  • Avatar of Happy HELLoween
  • Dad Squad
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Nov 4, 2002
  • Posts: 881
cpu
http://itch.io - sell your indie games
  • Avatar of reko
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Member
  • Joined: Jun 11, 2002
  • Posts: 883
like i said on irc too, cpu

big thanx to dragonslayer for sig!
  • Avatar of Marcus
  • THE FAT ONE
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Sep 28, 2002
  • Posts: 2690
Quote
(including, but not limited to, file operations, 3dsmax rendering, light gaming, etc)

Wait you're not going to see any of this with a new processor.  You can overclock your processor to safe speed way above factory settings but if you're looking for GAEMING you better buy a graphics card which I don't see listed in your little thing.
  • BAA2U
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Aug 7, 2007
  • Posts: 1403
Faster HDD will only speed up file access a bit. More/faster ram will only speed up rendering and gaming a bit. A better processor, however, will  increase rendering and gaming dramatically.
  • Avatar of reko
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Member
  • Joined: Jun 11, 2002
  • Posts: 883
Wait you're not going to see any of this with a new processor.  You can overclock your processor to safe speed way above factory settings but if you're looking for GAEMING you better buy a graphics card which I don't see listed in your little thing.
Processor will affect 3DSMax rendering more than any other component and is also very important in gaming and normal every day use.

big thanx to dragonslayer for sig!
  • I disdain mrons.
  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Aug 16, 2004
  • Posts: 640
CPU it is. Now I gotta save up my doubloons.

Thanks, folks.
  • Avatar of Mama Luigi
  • Wind of Peace
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 16, 2004
  • Posts: 1282
Don't bother with that processor unless you're really strapped for cash. That would be such a marginal upgrade, imo.

The e7200 is your best bet (price-to-performance-wise).

Also note that upgrading your RAM would have made no difference at all - you're already facing a bottleneck at the CPU end. Your RAM is plenty fast.
Last Edit: October 12, 2008, 08:02:30 pm by Mama Luigi
  • aye ess dee eff el cay jay ache
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 24, 2005
  • Posts: 5149
since you're still on xp for general use the only thing that'd make a difference is your harddrive tbh! everything else should be faster than you need already, load times will be related mostly to your harddrives seek time and not your cpu struggling to run it
I USE Q'S INSTEQD OF Q'S
  • Avatar of Jeff
  • Warning: Harsh
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 5, 2003
  • Posts: 1461
Don't upgrade your processor. Set your RAM to it's lowest timings and overclock it. You should easily be able to get the performance of the Pentium you want to upgrade to simply by overclocking as the only difference in the two is only cache.

You may not be able to upgrade your RAM to the PC28500 unless your board supports it and it won't make much of a difference anyway.

Hard drive is your best bet and upgrading to a SATA hard drive from an IDE will show a noticeable decrease in time required to do things that involve reading the hard drive.
  • Avatar of Mama Luigi
  • Wind of Peace
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 16, 2004
  • Posts: 1282
That's why I said he shouldn't upgrade to the e5200 as it's a terribly marginal upgrade and not worth it at all!

But the difference between the e2180 and the e7200 is quite stark, tbh.

The SATA drive would be nice, no doubt, but it won't affect his render speeds nor his gaming as much as a CPU upgrade. It's not even a 10,000 RPM hard drive so I doubt it would make that drastic of a difference.
  • Avatar of reko
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Member
  • Joined: Jun 11, 2002
  • Posts: 883
I didn't notice much difference in performance at all when I upgraded from IDE to SATA HDD.
Last Edit: October 13, 2008, 04:32:13 am by ramirez

big thanx to dragonslayer for sig!
  • I disdain mrons.
  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Aug 16, 2004
  • Posts: 640
Original settings:


Overclocked:


I know super pi doesn't mix with dual cores, but I noticed a 9s decrease so that's gotta mean something. I'm not used to this MB Intelligent Tweaker thing gigabyte has, but it seems rather straight forward though. I set the CPU Host Frequency to 266 (up 66 from 200) and left everything to default/auto.

amidoin it rite?
  • Avatar of reko
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Member
  • Joined: Jun 11, 2002
  • Posts: 883
I'm not an expert in overclocking, but from what I've read is that if you're gonna up the FSB, you shouldn't use auto voltages (default is fine, but not auto). The reason is that the motherboard might use unnecessarily high voltages when you OC, even if it'd run stable with smaller voltages, thus overheating your components unnecessarily, which can affect performance as well as shorten the lifespan of your computer. You should set the voltages to default, safe range (and as low as possible for those), and then increase them as necessary to get the lowest possible, but stable voltages.

I'm not really sure how the MB Intelligent Tweaker thing that Gigabyte has works. Is it something similar to AI NOS (like it doesn't really overclock 24/7, but just boosts the FSB when your processor is under load). From what you said it doesn't sound like this though, since you manually increased the FSB.

Does your RAM run with lower timings when overclocked? I would probably try with lower timings, even if you have to reduce the DRAM frequency. At least I don't think your timings and bandwidth are in good balance, as those timings seem awfully high (also afaik you don't really get much more performance increase from 3:5 FS​RAM ratio, in comparison to 4:5 or 1:1, so you don't really need that high DRAM freq).
Last Edit: October 13, 2008, 06:08:11 am by ramirez

big thanx to dragonslayer for sig!
  • Avatar of Mama Luigi
  • Wind of Peace
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 16, 2004
  • Posts: 1282
Yes get those CAS + RAS timings lowered... try 4 4 4 15 in the bios. You shouldn't even have to up the voltage to the RAM.

And yes, get that shit off auto. 1.39v? I think that's way overkill.

  • BAA2U
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Aug 7, 2007
  • Posts: 1403
HDD with have NO impact with rendering in 3DSMax, and will only help with loading times in gaming. It will give you 0 fps boost otherwise. I'm also with Mama Luigi where you should just get a way better processor, and enjoy a nice speed boost without having to lower system stability and lifetime by overclocking for what is an unnoticably small gain in performance.