Pentium 2.4 - worth upgrading?

[Bagnaj97]

I just wanted to give an alternative solution:

Motherboard: H61 chipset mATX £45.
CPU: Pentium G620 £53.
RAM: 2GB Corsair DDR3 £13.

Total is £111, which is obviously more than others, however i'd recommend a read of this article (or at least the summary):
XbitLabs review of Pentiums.

Granted, you are not after gaming, but I think it holds non-the-less.
Just FYI.

This is also a good option, faster CPU than the AMD offerings, but the graphics are slower. If you're not gaming at all though then this is could well be a better option.

[jim]

A silent atom machine might be a nice alternative.

[Ryanp]

The h61 supports dual channel ram. Would dual channel 2x1gb provide better performance at little extra cost?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What sort of budget are we looking at??

I assume you need a new PSU and of course what hard drive do you have?? Hard disk speed is another important consideration for image editing.

Photoshop at least in its later versions does support graphics acceleration too. I am not sure about CS3 though.

Another thing. Remember that an Athlon II X3 455 is cheaper than a Pentium G840. The Pentium looks quicker for image editing and iTunes but not necessarily for everything else.

What OS is the OP going to use?? Is the XP license tied to the motherboard??

[Kumagoro]

I was thinking the same as CAT with regard to other components.

I think its time to really splash out on a new computer and spend 250 quid.

Out of curiosity why not just use the laptop for that sort of thing anyway? if its about sitting down at a proper desk with mouse, keyboard and screen etc why not just hook the laptop up to them.

[mattyp]

What sort of budget are we looking at??

I assume you need a new PSU and of course what hard drive do you have?? Hard disk speed is another important consideration for image editing.

Photoshop at least in its later versions does support graphics acceleration too. I am not sure about CS3 though.

Another thing. Remember that an Athlon II X3 455 is cheaper than a Pentium G840. The Pentium looks quicker for image editing and iTunes but not necessarily for everything else.

What OS is the OP going to use?? Is the XP license tied to the motherboard??

I have a 300w PSU in a Lan-Li case, I have a 2tb (SATA), 1tb (IDE) and a smaller 30gb (IDE) that the OS runs from.

Running Windows XP and not tied to the motherboard.

[mattyp]

I was thinking the same as CAT with regard to other components.

I think its time to really splash out on a new computer and spend 250 quid.

Out of curiosity why not just use the laptop for that sort of thing anyway? if its about sitting down at a proper desk with mouse, keyboard and screen etc why not just hook the laptop up to them.

It's more a case of having access to all the hard drives and I like the usability of a computer, it also means the laptop can be used by other members of the house.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have a 300w PSU in a Lan-Li case, I have a 2tb (SATA), 1tb (IDE) and a smaller 30gb (IDE) that the OS runs from.

Running Windows XP and not tied to the motherboard.

I assume this is XP 32 bit??

What is the model of the case??

IDE support has been dropped from many newer motherboards although you are more likely to find IDE on an AMD motherboard. Even then it is likely to be a single port. Also,having run XP on a modern F3 500GB SATA disk, you will find the IDE 30GB much slower.

[mattyp]

I assume this is XP 32 bit??

What is the model of the case??

IDE support has been dropped from many newer motherboards although you are more likely to find IDE on an AMD motherboard. Even then it is likely to be a single port. Also,having run XP on a modern F3 500GB SATA disk, you will find the IDE 30GB much slower.

XP 32 bit and not entirely sure which Lian Li version it is (big and aluminium!)

Given the above and that if I was to upgrade I might as well have the OS on a SATA drive. Sounding more like a full upgrade or just get a cheap baseunit and attach my secondary drives.

Will see what's out there, now I have an idea of what a reasonable system consists of.

Thanks all

[mattyp]

Thought I would update this as it's always annoying when somebody asks for advice and then doesn't come back and tell everyone what they plumped for!!

Came across a great deal on :-

Athlon II X3 445 with MSI M880-E41 (both for less than £50 delivered on a lucky ebay find)
2X 2GB Kingston Ram £20 the pair
2TB Samsung Drive for about £50 delivered (just backup not the main boot drive)

Plus my existing system of a :

320gb SATA drive
160gb IDE drive
DVD burner

All in all a useful upgrade and just £120, brought it nicely out of the dark ages.

Thanks everyone.

[MSIC]

Nice one. Good bargains there.

[Pob255]

If the dvd is ide I'd say replace that for a sata one too, it's pretty cheap to do under £20
eg £15 delivered LG GH22NS70.AUAR 22x DVD-RW SATA Retail Kit


I'd also like to say that older p4 systems are starting to struggle a bit even with internet we still have a few at work along with some celerons (p4 type) The amount of flash and scripting now found on most websites gas massively increased the work load esp. when you've got a multiple tabs open.
An AthlonII x2 or pentium dual core (core2 based) do make a noticeable difference and combined with sata2 over ide or sata1 is also very noticeable esp. on boot up
You have to remember that sata1 wasn't very good, due to high overheads it was actually no faster than some IDE interfaces, Ultra ATA/133 the last and fastest IDE was actually slightly better than SATA1

[kingpotnoodle]

I just wanted to give an alternative solution:

Motherboard: H61 chipset mATX £45.
CPU: Pentium G620 £53.
RAM: 2GB Corsair DDR3 £13.

Total is £111, which is obviously more than others, however i'd recommend a read of this article (or at least the summary):
XbitLabs review of Pentiums.

Granted, you are not after gaming, but I think it holds non-the-less.
Just FYI.

I would also go for the Pentium, it's faster than the Athlons, notably so in Photoshop CS5, you obviously don't use much graphics power so the Intel integrated should be fine, you'd always have the option to upgrade later via PCI-E. Load power usage is better than the older Athlons (idle is low across the board in this segment). I would stretch to 4GB of RAM though to avoid having to upgrade later, especially if you buy a motherboard with only 2 slots.

And for your own sake - get a new hard drive! New drives are much faster than a Pentium IV era one, which must also be creaking for reliability by now...

EDIT: Ah wait, there was a page 2, and you got an X3 rather than an X2, probably a good choice... and a new hard drive... top :-)