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First of all thanks for reading this.
I know some about pc's but I'm not very up to date in all of the new technologies. I have a 3-4 year old Dell 8200 series PC, specs in the sig. I was wondering if I could improve the speed of it overall by upgrading a few things. How noticable would these upgrades be? Lately I'm getting tired of waiting around for things to load (even the start menu!) I do basic things such as web browsing and listening to music mainly on my computer, but I play counterstrike Source every day, which is mainly what I use the pc for.
I see mention of a 74gig raptor or something like that all the time, and it seems to be what everyone has. Can I even use one of these plug and play? I see that they are ATA150 but I'm not too sure exactly what that means. I just have whatever came in the PC, it's an 80gig western digital card... not sure on the speed. It is only half full so I have no issues with space. How much of a difference will this faster HD make?
Next, would I really notice much of a difference from upgrading my processor to, say, a P4 3.2 ghz?
And lastly, the video card. I used to have a geforce4 MX with 64mb of ram hah! When I upgraded to my new LCD I wanted to use DVI so I picked up my buddies 9700 pro from him. I want something a little better though. I definitely don't want to spend anywhere near what the new awesome cards cost though. I'm thinking 9800 pro, or should I go with a 6800... which is better? Or should I just go with a 6600? What else in this ~$100 price range should I check out? I'm sure anything much more would be limited by my processor and probably isn't worth it anyways.
I should note that soon I plan to get another 512 of rdram to bring her up to a gig. I do not have very much spare cash and I want to keep this simple so I don't plan on switching to AMD, or DDR ram, despite how much RD ram is. In the future I may build a new computer from the ground up, with a really nice vid card and 2 gigs of ram, but that is far off.
Thanks again!
-John
I know some about pc's but I'm not very up to date in all of the new technologies. I have a 3-4 year old Dell 8200 series PC, specs in the sig. I was wondering if I could improve the speed of it overall by upgrading a few things. How noticable would these upgrades be? Lately I'm getting tired of waiting around for things to load (even the start menu!) I do basic things such as web browsing and listening to music mainly on my computer, but I play counterstrike Source every day, which is mainly what I use the pc for.
I see mention of a 74gig raptor or something like that all the time, and it seems to be what everyone has. Can I even use one of these plug and play? I see that they are ATA150 but I'm not too sure exactly what that means. I just have whatever came in the PC, it's an 80gig western digital card... not sure on the speed. It is only half full so I have no issues with space. How much of a difference will this faster HD make?
Next, would I really notice much of a difference from upgrading my processor to, say, a P4 3.2 ghz?
And lastly, the video card. I used to have a geforce4 MX with 64mb of ram hah! When I upgraded to my new LCD I wanted to use DVI so I picked up my buddies 9700 pro from him. I want something a little better though. I definitely don't want to spend anywhere near what the new awesome cards cost though. I'm thinking 9800 pro, or should I go with a 6800... which is better? Or should I just go with a 6600? What else in this ~$100 price range should I check out? I'm sure anything much more would be limited by my processor and probably isn't worth it anyways.
I should note that soon I plan to get another 512 of rdram to bring her up to a gig. I do not have very much spare cash and I want to keep this simple so I don't plan on switching to AMD, or DDR ram, despite how much RD ram is. In the future I may build a new computer from the ground up, with a really nice vid card and 2 gigs of ram, but that is far off.
Thanks again!
-John