To upgrade or not?

[Chris56]

Hi all,

I currently run the following PC (have owned for 3 years) and is becomming increasingly slow, particularly on startup:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600 (2.9GHz dual core)
4GB Ram (showing 3.25 however)
Nvidia 512 MB graphics card
250 GB Hard Drive (145 GB used)
Windows XP home (SP3)

To maintain performance, I regularly do the following:
Defrags
Cleanups
Virus Scans
Reduce number of programs on startup to a minimum.

My real question is, what should I do?????

I am considering any of the following:

Buy a new PC (well, xmas is comming!!!!)
Add more RAM (motherboard will take up to 8GB)
New Hard Drive
Upgrade to Win 7

My uses are mostly word processing, internet, streamed videos and some games (though I am not really into the most recent games or building a super performance PC)

Are there any experts out there who can offer any advice.
If changing the PC, I have been considering going for an Intel I5. I understand that they have an integrated graphics controller. Is this any good or would you recommend disabling this and fitting my existing Nvidia card.

Your advice is much appreciated

[Bosscat]

If that is all you are doing then your hardware is ok unless you have money burning a hole.
XP is well known for getting slower and slower particularly on boot up. I would back up what you need to keep in terms of files, piccies ect and then do a fresh install of XP. You'll be suprised I think it will give a new lease of life most welcome in the current tough economic times. Failing that consider an u/g to Win7

[DCM]

Agree, backup and wipe the drive and fresh install of Windows (7 is better than XP), and maybe a bigger hard drive with faster access times (try Aria, yoyotech, novatech for an OEM version of Windows 7 not RETAIL version).

[MILKY]

Also you will see less ram when running a 32 bit copy of any windows flavour as 3.25 gb is the max 32 bit can address. To increase performance and make full use of your ram at that capacity and above you will need 64 bit copy of windows. This in itself will increase capacity but you will need to ensure your graphics card etc is 64 bit driver compatable,which to be honest 99.99% of gear from 2002 onwards is.

Just by a fresh install alone you will notice a jump in performance and I advise windows 7 home 64bit as the way to go.

I run a similar spec pc that I built a long time ago with intel components and will play any game even crysis(however I run two monster graphics cards) but you will not need these if you run the games you stated.

The only downside to 64bit used to be the software from certain company's was never written in 64bit but nowadays that is a thing of the past and anyone who tells you not to go 64bit is scared of change and not likely to ever think of updating there os anyway. Trust me it's a good move.

Milky

[Cardnim]

+1 to this advice.

However, I would question whether you are doing those maintainence checks correctly.
XP will start to slow down, yes - but remember that everything to it can be undone - i.e. it shouldnt get slower if you are carrying out regular proper maintainence.

I run XP on my development machine and also on this laptop that Im typing on atm; periodically, I go in and alter the startup programs and services if I notice any slow down - removing the ones I dont want and/or need.
Also, cleaning the registry is important too; and with all these things done correctly Im not seeing any slow down in XP after years and years.

Good point about 32bit though - you arent getting the full use out of your RAM (though I dont think its as low as the 3.2Gb that Milky says - Im nearly sure its 3.65Gb max for Win XP 32bit.)

Anyways, I think the hardware sounds good, but
I would check whats using up your additional memory as I think 3.65 is possible.
And the video card could be better - you can pick up a nice nVidia 9800GT 1Gb on eBay (new) for a good price nowadays.

[colmo]

If games are of little interest, abandon Windows altogether - the modern iterations of Linux are excellent, and they don't slow down. Any 64bit version you fancy will do. They also cost nothing. You can even dual-boot with XP.

[jorgea]

I would seriously consider the upgrade option. Why spend that extra money? I hope your PC works better. Maybe someone else here at http://www.oople.com can provide you with better advice.