# Upgrade Old? Or Buy New?



## FreerideFox (Jul 12, 2007)

Hello, I've been really wondering what to do recently. I do quite a bit of video editing, lots of photo's and am starting to use more 3D type programs. I also store a lot of music on my machine as well.

About a year back, I got a really bad virus on my old system. I needed a cheap replacement and was tired of Windows 2000pro. So I bought this current system. Its a "Great Quality" PC from fys' electronics. 

Specs are: 
40GB Hard Drive (Not SATA) 
256MB DDR (not 2)
AMD Sempron processor. 
XP Home SP2

I installed an after market dual layer 16X DVD drive. but thats it. also has the worst video card thats on board and I'm not so sure it has the PCI expansion slot or whatever.

I would love to kind of have a "work" and a "play" computer. I dont have tons of cash.

My options are either

Build off my current computer. 
Or buy something new and much better. (Vista home premium or higher, 320GB, 2GB ram, Athalon 64 dual core, better graphics card. (would have Movie Maker HD  ) but that system will probably run $400.00 + my absolute max is about $600.00 not including a monitor or keyboard or anything. 

( the newer one would be vista, my current one would be a dual boot linux sabayon / XP Home play computer )

What are your thoughts? 
Any advice greatly appreciated, thanks.

P.S. on the "work" computer, I want to play some computer games too (morrowind oblivion)


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## Zero_Point (Jul 12, 2007)

It'll be difficult for you to find parts to upgrade with, so I'd say build new, but build it up enough so you shouldn't have to upgrade again for a while. I built mine so hopefully it will last me 2 years.


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## net-cat (Jul 12, 2007)

DDR RAM and hard drives are dirt cheap, so that wouldn't be an issue. However, since you expressed an interest in playing games, it'll be more cost effective to just buy a new system. 

PCI and AGP cards are available, but they cost quite a bit compared to their PCI-E counterparts.

Also, for gaming, you'll want a new processor. Based on the specs, I'd imagine you have a Socket 754 processor. Those are getting hard to find at reasonable prices. (Actually, that's getting to be true for Socket 939, too.)

Also, a $400 system probably won't be a terribly effective gaming machine. For $600, you can do it but it won't be the greatest thing ever. (Basically, a $400 system + a video card...)


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## FreerideFox (Jul 12, 2007)

net-cat said:
			
		

> DDR RAM and hard drives are dirt cheap, so that wouldn't be an issue. However, since you expressed an interest in playing games, it'll be more cost effective to just buy a new system.
> 
> PCI and AGP cards are available, but they cost quite a bit compared to their PCI-E counterparts.
> 
> ...




Yea, thats what I was thinking. is just updating the graphics card on a more powerful machine. good graphics card is like what? ....$ 300.00 ?


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## Ron Overdrive (Jul 12, 2007)

I chose other, just build a new one. You can get a good setup for under a grand.


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## FreerideFox (Jul 13, 2007)

Maybe I'll have that money in the winter, only thing that really holds me back is just..I'll be going to school as well. I guess now's the time to start saving  I think I will upgrade the RAM on this current machine to last me the summer though.


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## Shapeshifter (Jul 13, 2007)

New, definitely. Buy the RAM first and use it in the old machine to tide you over. That is, if you don't buy DDR2.

Suggestion:

RAIDMAX Scorpio Case with 420watt PSU = $50
AMD64 X2 3800+ AM2 = $67
Floppy drive (you need it for installing SATA) = $7
Seagate 320GB SATAII HDD = $80
Liteon 20x DVD-RW = $32
Corsair 2GB DDR2 PC2 6400 dual-channel = $140
Gigabyte AM2 motherboard = $60
nVidia GeForce 7900GS 256MB GDDR3 = $125 

Total before shipping: $561
Total after shipping: about $600+

This is more or less what we're putting in a friend's system (though he will have 3 hard drives striped together, an Audigy, and some other things). This configuration ought to laugh at anything you throw at it. It's fairly cheap, but it'll work like a Dell/HP/etc. that costs twice as much.


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## FreerideFox (Jul 13, 2007)

Shapeshifter said:
			
		

> New, definitely. Buy the RAM first and use it in the old machine to tide you over. That is, if you don't buy DDR2.
> 
> Suggestion:
> 
> ...



Hey! thanks for the info! This really kind of puts a price on everything and its pretty much what I want. Glad to see that I wont have to spend too much ($1200.00+) Only thing to figure in now, is cost of the OS  I've got OSX Tiger laying around :lol: as well as lovely windows ME. 

guess my next thread will be XP X64 or Vista home premium/ultimate.

also if I may ask, what site did you get the parts from?


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## LLiz (Jul 13, 2007)

You're definetly going to need to get a new PC, it's unlikely that you can upgrade your older one.

Shapeshifter's suggestion is a good PC when you're on a budget. 

At the moment I always recommend the Intel Core 2 CPU's over AMD's Athlon X2 range. The Core 2 chips are currently the best chips on the market, and they're also really quiet. Of course a good Core 2 chip is also in the order of $100 to $200 more expensive than an Athlon X2 3800+.

Concerning your operating system, keep away from Windows XP x64, there is a sad lack of drivers available for it. It will be more trouble than it's worth, if you want XP then get the 32-bit Windows XP Professional or Media Centre Edition.

Windows Vista Home Premium is great for a serious PC user, I'd only consider running Ultimate if you meeth the following criteria:
a) you will be using it for business, and want all of the business tools combined with all of the Home Media tools. 
b) you're like me and you want to run the best version of Vista possible

Windows Vista Ultimate has everything from all the versions of Vista rolled into the one package. That includes Media Centre, all of the calendaring, remote desktop, remote meetings, etc.

Now, concerning running a 64-bit version of Windows. 
Windows Vista x64 (unlike XP x64) does have pretty good driver support for the newer generations of hardware. Also, Vista x64 should run just about every 32-bit application that you throw at it without any trouble (including games). 

Regarding the advantages of running 64-bit Windows.
There aren't as many advantages as you'd think. You will get very little (if any) performance increase in running 64-bit over 32-bit. You'll also realise find that just about every application and game that you run will be 32-bit (x64 Windows tells you which applications are 32-bit via the Task Manager). 

At current times the only real advantage to running the 64-bit version of Windows is if you want to use more than 4 gigs of ram, as 32-bit applications can only address 4GB of ram (that includes 32-bit applications running on top of a 64-bit OS).

Only pure 64-bit applications that you run will go any faster than their 32-bit counterparts.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing at all wrong with running 64-bit Windows, in fact I encourage it, but currently if you put the two side by side you'd see that they'd be almost identical.

In the future as applications begin to be released in 64-bit flavours and then written to take advantage of 64-bit processors, that's when it will be a major advantage in running 64-bit. Till then the advantage is only marginal.


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## net-cat (Jul 13, 2007)

I'd say stay away from x64 for the time being unless you have a specific need for it. (I/E: You have 4GB RAM, or something.)

Since XP x64 is basically a stripped down Windows Server 2003, drivers for 2003 x64 will work in XP x64. There are also quite a few (read: not all) Vista x64 drivers that work in XP x64 if you force them to install.


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## Ron Overdrive (Jul 13, 2007)

Stick to XP for a while, at least until SP1 or 2 is released for Vista. If you're feeling lucky and experiment you can build yourself a Hackintosh using your OS X CD and the hack patches for the install.


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## FreerideFox (Jul 13, 2007)

LLiz said:
			
		

> You're definetly going to need to get a new PC, it's unlikely that you can upgrade your older one.
> 
> Shapeshifter's suggestion is a good PC when you're on a budget.
> 
> ...



I think I'll run premium 64then, Ultimate has the enhanced security that premium doesnt.

If I were to run 32, would programs designed for 64 not work then?

I'll run the AMD processors. Intel are really bad people.


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## Shapeshifter (Jul 13, 2007)

Well, not really. Intel makes a better chip right now. It's just that AMD is more of a cost-effective solution.

Windows XP x64 is the evil. Vista is okay, but it still does not support some software and hardware. I actually own Vista Business... but I have yet to install it. I'm not really gonna use it til it's been out for a few more months, in all likelihood. Windows XP Pro is what I recommend at the moment. Most stability and compatibility.


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## FreerideFox (Jul 13, 2007)

yea, well I actually found a complete that I think I'm going to go for, because the graphics card isnt much different and I was going to upgrade anyway. This one also has an OS

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?productCategoryId=pcmcat103700050043&id=pcmprd73700050014&skuId=999973800050014&type=product&count=1

The monitor is a plus for an added $50 more than the tower alone.


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## Janglur (Jul 13, 2007)

Get a new PC.  Just uninstall Vista and install XP until they get Vista's driver support on-par and patch out all the bugs.


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## Shapeshifter (Jul 13, 2007)

FreeRideFox: That is a very good choice. Acer is about the only prefab PC company I trust any more. They're the only laptop maker I can recommend, aside from Apple. The only thing you might want to do is, as others mentioned, use XP Pro instead of Vista for a while. That said, the system you linked to has one of the better versions of Vista, so you could just let it be if you'd rather not fork over for XP Pro.

But yeah, great choice. That system ought to fulfill all your needs, with one exception: that GeForce 6100 is built into the mobo. You'll want to add on a decent 7000 or 8000 series PCIE graphics card. The 7900GS KO with 256MB GDDR3 is on sale right now at Newegg.com for about a paltry $125.


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## LLiz (Jul 14, 2007)

FreerideFox said:
			
		

> I think I'll run premium 64then, Ultimate has the enhanced security that premium doesnt.
> 
> If I were to run 32, would programs designed for 64 not work then?
> 
> I'll run the AMD processors. Intel are really bad people.


64 bit doesn't work on 32 bit, even if you are running it on a 64-bit processor.

64-bit software has extra commands and ways of doing things that 32-bit can't understand. It's kinda like 64 understands 2 languages but 32-bit can understand one.


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## FreerideFox (Jul 14, 2007)

thanks for the replies everyone  I've decided to get that complete package. It will be a pretty good monitor upgrade too! I'll be happy to have a new computer.

as for this one...say hello to dual booting linux sabayon


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## Janglur (Jul 14, 2007)

yak said:
			
		

> Janglur,
> can i please download that picture of yours and give it a go at the compression, while trying to maintain it's original quality?
> I'm having a purely academical interest.





			
				LLiz said:
			
		

> FreerideFox said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Not true.  You're thinking of using instruction sets and pathology native to the OS.  You can still code low-level instructions with 64-bit instruction sets, as those are part of the CPU architecture itself, not the OS.

Just that programmers are really stupidly lazy, and programming on a low level like that is really stupidly hard.

An example:
Folding@Home can make use of 3dNow, even if the OS cannot.  Also, many many apps can use SSE2 instruction sets even without an OS, much less an OS that supports it.

(What most people mean is whether the OS's code is optimized for using the 64-bit extensions.
[And presently, there's not a very big boost between 32 and 64 bit execution.  Though it IS slowly starting to come to the limelight now.  Namely, WinRAR can utilize x86-64 for even better compression without any speed loss.  {In fact it typically becomes faster.  <I'm just seeing how many brackets I can use, now.  I realized during this post i'ma bracket-whore>}])


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## net-cat (Jul 14, 2007)

If you encode videos and can _find_ builds of XviD and LAME for x64, it's well worth it.

Also, if you try to force a processor into long mode (x64 mode) while running x86 Windows (or any multitasking OS, really,) it'll either not work or crash. However, there are no features (other than 64-bit integer instructions and addressing) of most x64 processors that can't be accessed in x86 mode.

It should also be noted that x64 (XP, 2003 or Vista) can't run 16-bit apps while x86 can. Not that anyone uses 16-bit apps anymore.


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## Janglur (Jul 14, 2007)

I do, net-cat.  All the freakin' time.

But yeah.  If you try to use x64 code in a non-x64 OS, it fails.  If you try x64-code specifically independant of the OS on a non-x64 CPU, it crashes.  But you CAN run specifically x64 code on a non-x64 OS, if it's written low-level and not compiled like 99.9% of everything ever made since 1995.  IE, if you got down to the ASM level.
But, like I said, i'm unsure of any programs that do this.  However I do have many examples of ones that will use IIS even if the OS doesn't support it.  But those programs are typically higher-than-normal-quality because of such.  It's MUCH easier to just force your users/players to upgrade their OS, than to find a programmer who will work for normal pay and put in the work required for such.


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## net-cat (Jul 15, 2007)

*remembers crunching 10GB of DV into about 350MB of XviD in about 40 minutes*



			
				Janglur said:
			
		

> IE, if you got down to the ASM level.


Actually, you could probably get away with writing it in C or C++. You'd just have to play some assembler tricks to boot-strap it and the minute you #include something from the system's libraries, you're screwed.

One of these days, I've got to learn me some long mode assembler.


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## Janglur (Jul 15, 2007)

That's true, net-cat.  But i've never heard of anyone doing it.

So that may be one of those 'theoretical' things.


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## net-cat (Jul 15, 2007)

There would be little point, I think.

From what research I've done, long mode is just another mode akin to real mode and protected mode, and it's possible to switch back and forth between long and protected mode on the fly. Someone seems to have actually made a proof of concept program that can enter long mode from protected mode, run some arbitrary code, and return to protected mode with the OS being none the wiser. (Link!)

If you try to enter long mode on a CPU that doesn't support it, it will do what it normally does when it encounters an invalid instruction: crash.


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## Janglur (Jul 15, 2007)

Well duh.  We've established that.

But I mean i'm talking about performing instructions not natively supported by the OS, but that the CPU does support.

Also, someone is telling me Photoshop can utilize x64 features in a 32-bit OS (IE, winXP non-64) but can't seem to link anything to back it up.


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## net-cat (Jul 15, 2007)

I'd be shocked if that were the case, as it would require quite the hack. Plus, that's the sort of thing SSE et al were designed for.


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## Kougar (Jul 16, 2007)

FreerideFox said:
			
		

> thanks for the replies everyone  I've decided to get that complete package. It will be a pretty good monitor upgrade too! I'll be happy to have a new computer.
> 
> as for this one...say hello to dual booting linux sabayon



Be aware you will still need to buy a video card, 6100 sounds like more onboard graphics. 

This specific deal looks to be the best price/performance card you can get, and there are no features that it lacks. It should still be a great performer several years from now. It will outperform roughly 3x anything that costs around $200, so if possible I would strongly suggest saving up the $260 for this card. Link It should work well with that 19" widescreen LCD in your link.


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## net-cat (Jul 16, 2007)

*didn't notice the 6100*

Yes, the 6100 is on-board. However, as on-board graphics go, it's far from the worst thing available. Still, even if you don't go for it right away, I highly recommend saving up for a different card.


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## Ron Overdrive (Jul 16, 2007)

Yeah, if you're not planning on high end gaming any time soon a 6600GT or 6800GT should do you fine. Though just for the sake of having the power to play a new game that may catch your eye look into getting a 7600GT or 7800GS.


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## FreerideFox (Jul 16, 2007)

yea, I had planned on getting something really primo as graphics cards go. I already knew the 6100 wasnt going to be terribly great. 

I have to get the $600.00 to buy the computer still first :x I've got $156.00 now, $150.00 after lunch  I'm selling my guitar amp and one of my basses, I'm hoping that will get me to $450.00 then I'm selling a buttload of videogames, hoping for another $75.00

Craigslist time


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