Need upgrade advice please!

How much money are you willing to spend on upgrades total?
 
Ocing the Prescott won't help that much. You'll probably shave a second or two but thats it. As for upgrading to Pentium Ds, that won't help either since those PDs are just two P4 CPUs strapped together using the same FSB making them less than efficient performance wise. In fact, IIRC, some of the PDs perform slower than P4s.

Also, despite common perception, Photoshop CS3 doesn't benefit from quad-core CPUs at leas according to this benchmarks:
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=8

Also, what's the problem with Photoshop taking up 100% of the CPU? Are you doing something else while you use Photoshop?
 
Thanks for the help guys! About my display, right now I'm just running a 17" Samsung 730B as I wait for the prices on the 24s to come down. They just dropped $50-100 this past week so hopefully by about Thanksgiving, they 24" LG and the 24" HP will be down to about $350-400 and I'll snag one than.

About my CPU, the Prescotts run really hot so when the load hits 100% my CPU fan is running at 100% (Auto controlled through Speedfan) and it sounds like a 747 jet taking off. Sometimes the load also hinders the performance and it'll take longer than acceptable to perform the adjustment I input. I'm not doing professional work so I don't need maximum performance but less lag would be great.
 
Well, a new HSF would solve your loud CPU fan problem. However, it won't solve your performance problem. A 1.8Ghz E6300 is on par with a 3.7Ghz Pentium Extreme Edition (Pentium D family). So, your best bet is to save for an upgrade. You could try to sell your old parts to help offset the cost, unless there's someone you can hand it down to.

An E4500 is only $120 (and can reach 3.0Ghz on stock cooling), an IP35-E is $86 - $20MIR, and 2GB of DDR2-800 is around $66. So, if you can save up around $300, you could upgrade to a VERY capable system.
 
Danny Bui said:
I don't even think he even needs to upgrade his RAM either since he has DDR2 533 and the FSB of the E4500 is only 200Mhz. And to OC the E4500, you only need 266Mhz.
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Ahh, he has DDR2-533, yet its OC'd to DDR2-667. Thats fine. The P35 chipset doesn't support DDR2-533, so it will auto OC the ram to DDR2-667. I thought he had DDR2-400 OC'd to DDR2-533, and figured that it wouldn't reach DDR2-667... but I read his post wrong. So you're right, he won't need new RAM.

Sell your old parts to help offset the cost of the new parts. ;)
 
Wow, I didn't even realize I could upgrade to C2D for that little money! Here's my predicament though, in about 10 months I'm going to be flying up the mainland for college (I live in Hawai'i right now) so the computer I'm using right now will be left at home and I'll probably be building a new one once I get up there, so do you think it would still be worth it to upgrade right now? Also, I've never really bought a budget mobo before because I've never upgraded except when I'm replacing the whole computer, so would it be a downgrade from my current P5WD2 or has technology improved enough since than that my mobo is well surpassed by the current budget ones?

The company I bought the computer from two years ago also installed a crappy Coolmax 500w psu so that will have to be replaced regardless (Thinking of a Seasonic S12-430 or the newer S12 Energy+ 550, maybe even the M12 for less cable mess) so here're my current options, btw I also recently read that it's better to run your RAM at a 1:1 ratio so I declocked the 2 dimms down to PC3200 or DDR2 450 (The FSB is currently running at 225), do you think this is a good choice or should I just bump the speed back up or replace the slow ram and go for the newer DDR2 800 sticks even though it won't be running 1:1?

OC 560J, wait till next year to fully upgrade:

Seasonic PSU: $55-140
Tuniq 120: $30-50
Scythe: Kaze-Jyuni $10

Upgrade to C2D

Seasonic PSU: $55-140
Intel C2D E4500: $120
Abit IP35-E/Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L: $66-115

Thanks again for helping me out with all my newbie questions, I didn't realize how complex computers could be, but it is really starting to interest me.
 
skyline889 said:
Also, I've never really bought a budget mobo before because I've never upgraded except when I'm replacing the whole computer, so would it be a downgrade from my current P5WD2 or has technology improved enough since than that my mobo is well surpassed by the current budget ones?
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The overpriced boards like the P5WD2 are just packed with more features. So, choose a board that has the features you need, like RAID or Firewire. Current lower cost boards can still OC high, but typically not as high without additional chipset cooling, since they typically don't have heatpipe chipset coolers.

If you can wait 10 months, then just ride it out. Prices are cheaper in the mainland anyhow, no?

In 10 months, I'm guessing you'll be able to buy a brand new quadcore for ~$200!
 
Hmm, yeah I think I might just wait on the upgrade to C2D. Once I leave for school my current computer will only be used for maybe a few months of the year so I guess it doesn't really make sense for me to upgrade to a new platform just yet. So I guess I'll probably be going with Plan A to silence my computer and just stick with the so so performance for now. Any thoughts on the ram though? Thanks for the help!
 
For your plan A, I'd go with these:

$55 - XClio Stablepower 460W
$46 - Thermalright Ultima 90 CPU HS + FBA09A12M - Z ($3)

2GB should be enough RAM for photoshop. Maybe you need a faster HDD or you just need to reformat? Whats your speed like on your Raptor with HDTune?
 
Hmm, not really sure about the HD speed, I'll have to download the app later tonight. About the ram, it's good to know that 2gb should be enough. I can't run just three dimms with my P4 system (I think it switches to single channel) so I'd have to run 2 or 4 dimms for a total of 4gb of ram even though my system would only be able to use 3 of the 4gb. Thanks again for all the help!
 
skyline889 said:
About the ram, it's good to know that 2gb should be enough.
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Well, Photoshop is a RAM hog, so the more ram the better. If you want to multitask and do other things while your photochopping, then more ram would be beneficial, since you can give 2GB to PS and use the rest for whatever else you're planning on doing at the same time. Since I use photoshop casually, I see no need for 4GB, personally. But RAM is cheap right now, so if you want to upgrade to 4GB, now is a good time to do it -- if you feel you need it.
 
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