New PC Help!!!!

chrism_scotland

chrism_scotland

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Currently I have a Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo P that I bought in 2005, its a Pentium 4 3Ghz with 1GB of RAM and sadly its now very slow....

I'm looking into getting a new PC and to be honest I could do with some advice regarding specs, processors and OS.

When I bought my PC I looked at laptops but at the time felt it would be out of date too quick so bought a desktop but now laptops are much more powerful, something that would have cost £2000+ then is now £600.

I'm really looking for a system that will last for 3+ years, I'm looking for something fast that will run Football Manager quickly!! but the main thing is a system that will allow me to run Photoshop and Lightroom as quickly as possible to process photos from my DSLR and deal with video.

I've even taken a look at Macs but there seems to be a huge premium placed on the Mac brand and I'm not 100% convinced its worth it.

I just need a point in the right direction, am I better with Intel or AMD, and are there affordable laptops out there that can effectively work with imaging and video?
 
To be honest you might find that slapping another 2Gb of Ram in your machine and a new high capacity 7200rpm drive like the Samsung 1Tb F1 drive and re-installing your OS from scratch might make your current computer quick enough to do what you want. this would cost about £80!
 
cowasaki said:
To be honest you might find that slapping another 2Gb of Ram in your machine and a new high capacity 7200rpm drive like the Samsung 1Tb F1 drive and re-installing your OS from scratch might make your current computer quick enough to do what you want. this would cost about £80!
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I did wonder about just upgrading to be honest, but most folk seem to be saying that even a 3Ghz Pentium 4 is fairly slow these days.

In terms of budget I would probably be willing to stretch to close to £1000 to get something good but ideally less would be preferred.
 
simple. get a Mac. :)
 
d_pipa said:
simple. get a Mac. :)
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I would love to but I think I'd be paying an awful large premium just because its a Mac, its the same reason I refuse to buy a Sony Laptop they seem very expensive!!

If I had as much money as I wanted though I would buy a Mac in a heartbeat!
 
chrism_scotland said:
I would love to but I think I'd be paying an awful large premium just because its a Mac, its the same reason I refuse to buy a Sony Laptop they seem very expensive!!

If I had as much money as I wanted though I would buy a Mac in a heartbeat!
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get second hand? less £800 i think :naughty:
 
nothing wrong with your pc, slap a bit more ram in it and itll run fine. got one myself and cant complain after i put 4gb ram in it. running xp.

oh also get a new graphics card, the old one isnt much cop and saps your ram as well;)
 
fletch5 said:
nothing wrong with your pc, slap a bit more ram in it and itll run fine. got one myself and cant complain after i put 4gb ram in it. running xp.

oh also get a new graphics card, the old one isnt much cop and saps your ram as well;)
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Do you know what type of RAM it takes? and whats the maximum I can put in?

Can anyone reccomend a decent replacement graphics card?

if I can just upgrade it to do the job I will hold off getting a new desktop and just get a Netbook or Laptop in the mean time.
 
cowasaki said:
To be honest you might find that slapping another 2Gb of Ram in your machine and a new high capacity 7200rpm drive like the Samsung 1Tb F1 drive and re-installing your OS from scratch might make your current computer quick enough to do what you want. this would cost about £80!
Click to expand...

Yes that might help speed things up but it will be a lot more than £80.

I would think it will be DDR ram which will be £50 to £60 for 2Gb and the drive is over £80 with VAT.
 
Corsair (VS2GBKIT400C3) 1GB (2x1GB) DDR 400MHz/PC3200 Memory non-ECC Unbuffered CL3. I lied, only got 3gb RAM in mine i think.

if you go to www.crucial.com they have a mem checker you can download and it will tell you what you can use.(mine works with the above though)

Inno3D GeForce 7600GS 512MB DDR2 PCIE Graphics Card
works well and was direct replacement for the existing card.

perhaps a fresh reinstall might help speed up the machine as well
 
Having a quick look on Crucial and assumming its this memory thats £41.39 for the memory then whatever HD you decide.
 
why would the OP need a new hard drive?? surely the speed benefits would be minimal??

mine did go slow before i started on this photography malarky, i had filled the hard drive with useless junk and downloaded a load of useless stuff. reinstalled and it sped the machine up and worked great for a couple of months, then started photography and found it running slow when running photo editing( to the point of regularily crashing) asked a few people and found out the graphics card had no onboard memory so was using the ram, and the ram wasnt really adequate for what i wanted it to do. upgraded both and runs quickly and effortlessly(and installed by a complete noob without any problems) only thing i had to do was nick a screw from the outer casing for the extra usb ports i put in as well.
 
Have you never thought about converting your S. F. up. You have the case, CD, power supply. MAPLINS do a few bundles of main board, memory, up to 6500 processor for about 150 notes. I have a dealer local sells case and power supply 450 watts for about 30 notes.
 
yesterday i went to comet and bought a Acer 5735 laptop with 4gb DDr and 500gb harddrive for 470 and i got it over a 6month payment plan 0%. so i have 6months to get the money together... should take a look.... the laptops great.

Here it is.....
 
chrism_scotland said:
So a 3Ghz P4 isn't as slow and outdated as I thought then?
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I have a second desktop and it has an even older version than that!

I use it for Office, e-mail, some graphics work etc and it is fine. I have 2GB memory in it and a decent (well, it was a few years ago) graphics card.

You'll find that more memory really should help.

Consider what applications you are using and where the speed bottleneck might be.

Unless you are doing higher end video/gaming/digital editing etc then a new machine may not be required.
 
Brains said:
I have a second desktop and it has an even older version than that!

I use it for Office, e-mail, some graphics work etc and it is fine. I have 2GB memory in it and a decent (well, it was a few years ago) graphics card.

You'll find that more memory really should help.

Consider what applications you are using and where the speed bottleneck might be.

Unless you are doing higher end video/gaming/digital editing etc then a new machine may not be required.
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I find it lags a little when doing things but I suspect it is due to the shortage of RAM, I find it fine for what I'm doing I just wish it was a little faster with Lightroom and Elements!
 
Strange, the crucial memory finder shows only 512Mb of RAM yet Control Panel shows 1GB,
Currently there is a Radeon X600 Graphics Card in the PC, are there any restrictions I should be aware of with replacing this or is it a case that I can just buy the biggest most powerful graphics card I can find?
 
My advise is custom build your own. Get the best you can afford and it will last you a few years.

www.powerc.com is a good place to start.
 
its telling you you have 2x512mb chips most likely Ram is generally paired ;)

my lappy runs bridge and cs4 fine (must learn lightroom) and it isn't powerful at all. The ram will sort out the performance issues, the crap on it is probably the reason for slowing down your pc format reinstall and start again. A newer and faster drive would mostly be useful to put the files on while you reinstall unless your having problems with storage
 
david1701 said:
its telling you you have 2x512mb chips most likely Ram is generally paired ;)

my lappy runs bridge and cs4 fine (must learn lightroom) and it isn't powerful at all. The ram will sort out the performance issues, the crap on it is probably the reason for slowing down your pc format reinstall and start again. A newer and faster drive would mostly be useful to put the files on while you reinstall unless your having problems with storage
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Yeah I was thinking about a new hard drive as this one does seem fairly slow, would an up rated graphics card make much difference to my pc?
 
i thinkmine had 512mb ram, if the graphics card has no onboard memory and is using the main ram, it will cut down what you have available. especially when running PS. it will also be using your hard drive as virtual memory, you could just upgrade the ram and there will be a noticable difference.
 
I agree entirely with those that recommend more RAM, but also think that reinstalling the OS might help too.

HDs are always faster if they have lots of space left. So a bigger HD means generally shorter seek times and a faster performance.
 
cowasaki said:
Aria have 2Gb sticks at £18.34 inc for vat SAMSUNG here:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...l+DDR2+800++(PC2-6400)+SDRAM+?productId=34677

So £37 for 4Gb !

they also have 1Gb sticks at £10.29 inc vat for OCZ here:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...l+DDR2+800++(PC2-6400)+SDRAM+?productId=34677

So £21 for 2Gb !
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I was thinking the age of the OP's computer meant it would have DDR ram NOT the DDR2 ram you are quoting. If it is, then it's £50 to £60 for 2Gb !

The Samsung is still damned near £80 for most folk !
 
Add RAM - see what it is like and change other things if needed.
I have a 2.4GHZ desktop with 2GB RAM and it is fine.
RAM is cheap, easy to fit and going from 1 to 2 GB will make a great difference.
Recently changed my laptop from 1 to 2GB and it seems like a different computer!
 
Been taking a look around, have decided to upgrade my current system and then build a new one early next year, wheres the cheapest place to get RAM?
Also looking to replace my ageing X600 Graphics card but I'm not sure what to get that won't require a new PSU, any suggestions?

Cheers
 
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