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SulSeeker

Gawd
Joined
Dec 16, 2002
Messages
574
My Girlfriend has 150 dollars to spend on her current machine and we're having touble trying to figure out what would be more effective for her at the moment. She's trying to save for the future, but shes way behind the curve right now when it comes to her current machine.

This is what she has...

AMD Tbird 1ghz @ 1.275ghz
MSI K7T Turbo2 (can support 2600+)
512 Megs PC-133 @150
2x40 Gig HDD's (both full)
Radeon 9000 (stock 250core, 200mem)
Gateway EV700 Monitor (she's happy with this at least.)

We just don't know what to do or where to go with it. She only has $150 to blow and I was thinking about Giving her my 2400+ and getting an XP-M, but she's in desperate need of hard drive space. No to mention the video card is getting pretty long in the tooth. What should I do? And please don't say S939 or S754, I know they're getting cheaper, but they're still way too expensive for our budget. We'd have to change MB, Chip, and Memmory all the same time.

Heres a few things I'm looking at...

1.8 Duron
160 Gig HDD

And that's pretty much it. The radeon will have to stay for the time being... If you could help find a better deal on CPU/HDD/Vid card I'd really appreciate it.
 
In giving your 2400+ to her do you mean selling it to her or giving it to her?

If you just give it to her then she should go with a much larger hard drive much like you said. When the system drive is more than half full you will definetely notice a more sluggish overall experience. Ghosting the WinXP install onto a larger drive would be a good idea, or take all the unnecessary files off the system drive and onto the larger one then defrag the old. Or just get all the files you want off and onto the larger hard drive and format and clean install on the other forty which would be my choice. What kind of 40GB does she have? If it is an old 5400rpm drive I would upgrade that to a 7200rpm 8mb cache drive from WD or Seagate. You can usually pick these up for $50-$60.

If she is fine with the other stuff than I would leave them at what you have. If you do in fact give here your CPU then she could even get another stick of 512MB PC-133.

So the best bet in order of importance:

Give her your CPU.
Get a larger hard drive (160GB+)
A 40GB 7200rpm 8mb cache system drive (if not already)
Another stick of 512 PC-133.

Hope this helps.
 
ok, look for a sale on hd's where you get a decent size for $40-60 after rebates.
look at upgrading the vid card a 9600 should be under $100
 
Let me refine my thoughts...

I was going to get the 1.6 Duron and the 160Gig

Or

Give her my 2400+, buy an XP-M (I need a cpu too! :) ) and get her a smaller HDD, (and we're doing the rebate thing to get it cheeper.) Would love the 9600 for her, but it's too much money at this point.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SulSeeker
2x40 Gig HDD's (both full)
Hehe. Got her to store your extra pr0n, 'eh? What a girlfriend.
Click to expand...



Funny you should say that... she watches it more than I do.
 
ohnnyj said:
Don't you guys have anything better to do with your time?
Click to expand...
Don't you have anything better to do with your time?


Anyway, I would go with the first option, a faster Duron and a new hard drive. A faster hard drive and a clean system disk will do wonders :)
 
Ok, that leaves me with one question. Do the new Durons overclock any?

I had a 1Ghz that wouldn't do anything over 105fsb without locking tighter than alcatraz. So if anyone has experience with them that'd be great.
 
you probably talked her into upgrading, right? lols jk

i would say upgrade the CPU but do not go for a duron
get a new harddrive
if theres money left over, get a new motherboard

this is what i would do if i had the 150 dollars to get all 3 mentioned above
go to bestbuy/circuitcity/compusa... they always have deals on harddrives and ive seen like $30 can get u like an 80 gig harddrive... i got a 120gig for $40 or $50 at circuitcity... btw this is all after mail in rebates so you kinda have to wait and if it doesnt come it, u gotta call them up and yell at them too or something

then sell current motherboard and processor on ebay for like $30 bucks or something

then when you get your money back from the rebates, go back to newegg
look for maybe a barton or something, like 2400+ or 2500+ for like 80 bucks or so

then also at newegg, look for a suitable motherboard and you should have the budget of around 50-60$ which should get you at least something decent

heheh, just my two cents, good luck
 
except you neglected to take into account that the current machine is running PC-133 ram. A more modern machine will probably need DDR ram. Changing the mobo pretty much requires changing the ram.
 
160gb hard drive, $54
Duron 1.8ghz, 2200+ socket A, $51
512mb sdram 133mhz, 168pin, $42 (look it up on resellerratings, if you are unsure about it... 19 reviews, average 9.23 lifetime)
----------------------
$147

Free shipping on the RAM, $5 shipping for the HD, free shipping for the processor... Grrrand total comes to:
$152 (+$50 upfront, but with rebate, which you seem ok with judging by the line "and we're doing the rebate thing to get it cheeper.")
 
Does she game on it at all??, or is it just a nekkid lady machine (nekkid man machine in her case)

If he doesn't game at all i say upgrade the ram, and get a large HD, and look into a CPU upgrade, you can most likley get all 3 for around $150.
 
What's the machine do?

Unless we're talking gaming or video editting the upgrade she'd notice most would be a 200 or 250GB hard drive. For a little futureproofing, I'd go with SATA on a PCI controller, or an external USB2.0. $150'll get you that on a good rebate day at Fry's or the like.
 
Sunborder said:
except you neglected to take into account that the current machine is running PC-133 ram. A more modern machine will probably need DDR ram. Changing the mobo pretty much requires changing the ram.
Click to expand...
so ebay the ram too... PC-133 ram are currently more expensive than ddr because of its halt in production... if you flip open any circulars from cc or bb or compusa, notice that their ram choices on sale have pc133 ram at a higher price than fast and speedy DDR

i forgot when they stopped producing pc133 and 100s but its getting "rarer" and when demand rises, price rises... so ill hold on to my few sticks of pc100 and pc133ram for another 2 years or so =)

sell that ram and u got money to buy ddr ram at possibly more memory and higher speeds

ebay is a good choice to buy cheap stuff but make sure u know what ur doing before you pay for it
 
Yeah.. I was goina say she's... we're WoW/Q3 addicts... and it's not all that much to drive the games we play.

We're more than likely going with a 1.8 Duron and the bigger hard drive. She has a half gig right now and it's running at PC-150 Specs... so that'll be a decent boost in speed over the stock 1.8. Goina be fun to see of the Kt-133a chipset will support the new duron too. (no reason why it shouldn't)
 
I would say get one 250 GB Drive and she wont have to worry about that for a while and then get RAM, then Video Card.
 
ok.. i don't have the time to read all of the comment.. but pc133?? that is the first thing i would upgrade.. you probably need a new mobo.. the cpu is actually fine i think..

i would upgrade to 512mb of pc3200.. get a $30 refurb shuttle an35n ultra or something like that.. and then spend the rest on a HDD.


also.. i would personally get the 1.6duron.. because you can more realistically get it up to 200fsb if you do get DDR.. it would be around 2.4ghz if you pulled it off.. but the 1.8 would be 2.7ghz.. which i dont' see happening on air..
 
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