Got a P3 450mhz pc at present. It has 448mb of ram and a 120gb hard drive. The graphics card is a NVIDIA TNT 2. I am probably going to replace the whole system next year with a IMAC or Powermac but in the meantime what would be the most effective and cheapest upgrade for the system to keep it useable until it goes. Its used for everything so I need a good overall boost. Would I be better replacing the processor or would more ram and a new graphics card make a more noticable difference. Please help.

longarm

I think you would struggle to get a replacement processor for a motherboard that age, however that is what ebay is for.

I would jack up the memory to as much as your system can take and look at a better video card.

Don't know how you feel about wiping your HD then reinstalling your OS, I find this always seems to give a PC a new lease of life, and coupled with any hardware upgrades you feel like doing will make a huge difference to the rest of your PC's 'life'.

longarm,


Its used for everything so I need a good overall boost.

Please define "everything". What is it you like or want to do with your comp? Does Mac have the programs you are wanting to run?

Take Care,

Richard

Thanks for the replies, the model is a gateway G7-450. Its used for general office work (word processing, spreadsheets) email & internet, photo editing, and the occasional game.

Richard, yes the Mac has everything I need mostly included with the system but otherwise 3rd party software is available. I've already got a Ibook but hopefully will replace the above with a G5. Thank to all.

TCS,

I must disagree with you partly. While more RAM can help, depending on which OS longarm is using, more RAM might just be overkill. Here are good guidelines:

Win95 64Mb
Win98/ME 128Mb to 256Mb
Win2k/XP 512Mb (If you do Video or Audio Editing then 1Gb and above.)

A simple solution for speeding up your computer without spending any money is a fresh install of your OS. If it has been a long time since you last did a fresh install of your OS, it would be the first step before adding hardware.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. Without knowing which OS longarm is running and exactly what he does primarily with the computer, it is impossible to say what it the single best road to upgrade.

TCS,

You are right. I did miss:

word processing, spreadsheets, email & internet, photo editing, and the occasional game.

longarm,

Could you list a couple of the games you are playing or want to play if your comp would allow you to.

Take Care,

Richard