i am running win XP pro on a computer with only 6GB hard disk space, 350mhz processor, and 192mb total RAM. the available space is less than a gig. i have broadband internet. i don't want to buy a whole new system cuz my wife's brother gave it to us. what would you upgrade first? i am looking for the cheapest barebone upgrade just to make it run faster and smoother. thanks in advance!
2006-12-22 13:33:00 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
To be honest, you don't really have a whole lot to work with here.
If you REALLY want to keep this computer, the first thing to do in order to improve overall performance is to upgrade your memory. As old as this computer sounds, it may be a little difficult to locate the correct type of memory and you may be severely limited as to how much memory the motherboard will recognize. Odds are that you should be able to upgrade to at least one full gigbyte of RAM. The more you can keep in RAM, the less often it will have to look to the cache (on the hard drive) which is much slower.
Next thing to upgrade would be the hard drive. Look for a good IDE drive with a 7200-rpm spindle speed. It doesn't sound like you need a very large drive, so you should be able to find a 40GB-80GB drive very cheap. Maxtor and Western Digital are good reliable brands to consider, and they usually have fairly large buffers which help increase the apparent speed of the drive.
Another potential upgrade would be your video card. Video processing takes a lot of computing power, particularly at higher resolutions. Check for sure which format card your system can use (AGP is probably the highest, with a brown slot) and find a good basic card with 64MB-128MB of RAM. Anything higher than 128MB will not be worth your investment for this system.
If you really want to push things further, you might see if your motherboard will support a faster processor, but that's more involved than it seems you'd be comfortable with.
2006-12-22 13:42:54 · answer #1 · answered by twylafox 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I would start with upgrading the memory and the processor. Check with Fry's Electronics or another Computer parts store. Fry's normally have someone on staff that can help talk you through what you need to do or what they would upgrade first.
Best of Luck
2006-12-22 13:39:32 · answer #2 · answered by Cheryl D 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You will need more ram. Get at least 512mb ram. Then you will need a bigger hd. Get at least 40gb hd.
2006-12-22 13:40:17 · answer #3 · answered by ? 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋