Perhaps it's time to upgrade...

Upgrade? Do you really think that you can accomplish such a feat in this economic depression? What’s that you say?! Electronic component prices are going down AS WELL as advancing in technology? Well, Alright…

Let’s break down into parts that you can upgrade.

Processor: Make sure that your Motherboard is compatible. The latest line up in 4 classes (I’ve organized them, it’s not official), and here are your choices (as of late 2008)

1. Single Core (AMD Athlon LE-16×0, Sempron LE, or Intel Celeron Conroe-L) not too many choices. Ultra-Casual gamers, Web, Mail, Basic Computing tasks, NOT AN UPGRADE (since most people already have single core), Energy Efficient
2. Dual Core (AMD X2, or Intel Celeron E1200 through Core 2 Duo E7×00 series) video encoders, somewhat-casual gamers, budget, best bang-for-buck. Also Energy Efficient
3. Upper Echelon Dual Core/Triple Core (AMD Phenom X3 or Core 2 Duo E8×00 series. gamers, video encoders, can handle most stuffs.
4. Quad Core (AMD Phenom X4 through Intel Core Quads through i7) heavy gamers, enthusiasts, heavy multitaskers.

Starting from when I said Core 2 Duo, there’s this price gap now where AMD is cheaper, it also performs less too. So where it stands right now, AMD is better for budget users . Do not assume that the processors in each category will match the processor in the other category, the market has formed itself so that the price fits where the performance should, about. You do get what you pay for. (So just go for whatever is in your price range. Just be aware that Intel processors, especially on the lower end tend to overclock alot more than AMD processors)

Personally, if I had to choose one, it would be a dual core processor, since if you already have a single core processor (Hyper-threading doesn’t mean much to me) then it won’t be much of an upgrade. I would get either an E7300, or an X3 Phenom. Alot of people (including me) find 3 cores to be the sweet spot. The only difference is that the E7300 is a much better overclocker. For me whether the system is one that I pick out or what I actually build myself would determine whether I choose AMD or Intel. (OEM systems in most circumstances cannot overclock or you need to know the PLL code and use clockgen, but let’s not go into that.

Motherboards: As a general rule of thumb, to get the most performance, the Motherboard should cost about the same as the processor. The more you deviate from this rule, the more bottlenecking there may be. Also, make sure that your computer is on dual-channel ram, if it supports it.

Graphics: Tom’s hardware guide has a section called “Best Video Cards For the Money”, it covers AGP (briefly) and then goes on to stating the best deals for GPU in each price range for PCI-E. Here’s the December edition, but they don’t organize it into a category. But for what I’ve personally seen, a Geforce 9500GT would cut it for most people. Upper end should go GTX260 since it has Nvidia CUDA which is awesome, since it helps your processor out when you’re not gaming, or not utilizing all of the card, i.e. CPU bottleneck. CPUs always bottleneck these days. But if you don’t game, and just want a video card that can watch HD videos, then anything is fine, even that 7200GS that’s $20 good for up to 720p. But for 1080p h264, be sure to at least have dual core, and a 8600GT or equivalent.

Memory: More memory is always good. Don’t get more than 3-4GB if you don’t have a 64-bit OS, you can’t fully utilize it all. Vista users should have at least 2. 1GB is good for XP, but 1.5-2GB is the sweet spot. Readyboost also sort of helps, I’m using an XP port of Vista called Eboostr, and I can see how it works now. It doesn’t ruin your flash drive like sticking a paging file in there. What happens is that it places all of your most commonly used files into the drive. Then from the USB flash drive, it reads exceedingly fast, through fast seek times. Add more than one for a RAID effect. So yeah, readyboost helps, but not for gaming, it’s just that boot time is faster and application open/close is faster. If you plan to overclock, don’t get value ram, otherwise, do get value ram, unless you’re intent of game performance, or can find a good deal for it. Readyboost is great for laptops where the user can’t upgrade his memory readily. Crucial memory’s Crucial System Scanner Tool can help determine what memory upgrades are possible, if it isn’t already obvious.

Monitor: Widescreen and dual set-up is good (or maybe even both 0_o). Monitors are cheap nowadays. More screen estate is better, widescreen DVDs are more enjoyable on a widescreen monitor, or what the hey, plug it into your 50″ HDTV and try it out for crying out loud.

Optical Drive: Light scribe is useless, but it’s standard, and so is DVD-RW drives, Blu-ray? No, media costs alot.

Hard Drive: Seriously, no one ever uses all their hard drive space. I wish I could have their hard drive space, I don’t even have enough left to defragment. 7,200 RPM is good for desktops, 10,000 is better gaming performance at the cost of more money for less actual space. Solid State Drives aren’t cheap enough yet, but as we’ve seen, it can help one get to that 60fps on Crysis maxed out. Also, when you see things like 32mb cache, or 16mb cache; in terms of performance, anything over 8mb cache offers diminishing returns. This may be so in the processor realm, too, but hardly any CPUs have reached 8mb cache yet, so we’ll never know. But when it comes to hard drives, only look at interface (SATA/eSATA/Firewire>USB/IDE), and RPM speed. Unless, of course, you’re going for a solid state hard drive.

OS: Get Windows 7 once it comes out. RC is out, check out the topic in the forums.

Sound Card: Motherboard sound usually has HD sound and usually cuts it. But a Creative X-fi extreme gamer can cut load off the processor and improve game performance and sound. But don’t even bother, since it’s not worth it if you don’t even have 4.1 surround sound at least, since even my Mp3 player can do stereo sound.

Computer Case: You don’t upgrade your computer case…. unless you’re me. I have this LED light on my northbridge fan spinning crazy rainbow color frenzy, but there’s no window on my case. I’M IN DESPAIR! Computer cases are pretty cheap nowadays, if you’re a gamer who’s building his own gaming rig, feel free to spend more on a tricked out lian-li one with LEDs or the ones with case temperature monitor diodes.

Mac or Laptop: Considering replacing your desktop with a mac or a laptop? Well one option that people are doing is that they’re getting a netbook or an iphone/htc touch diamond/G1/Blackberry to go with their desktop, since they want something portable and on the go to like watch videos, surf the web, instant message, check their e-mail, and listen to music. But a laptop would work if you want something in one piece, like when moving around the house, or when Lan parties occur and it’s a BYOC, in which case a fragbox or a gaming laptop would be nice. A mac is something one has to be used to in order to go for, and it’s not as good for gamers, although they did up the ante on the processors and the graphics. Can’t upgrade it though, and even if you do upgrade the base when customizing, it’s gonna cost more than say replacing the hard drive itself.

Tweaks:

Internet:The Internet breaks down into two major parts that you can change, the ISP and the browser.

ISP is meh, most home users these days rely on heavy download rates and barebone upload rates, my suggestion is to get Verizon FiOs as a first choice, but in the end you might just ahve to go with some other fiber optic network, but to say that DSL is fine too @ http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks you can fine tune your internet connection to make sure that you’re getting the best. The Second portion, the browser is err… also important, for example Google Chrome and Firefox 3 both run gMail twice as fast as Internet Explorer [source]. So as you can see just upgrade from Internet Explorer, I recommend Firefox 3 with a Internet explorer plug-in called “IE tabs”, just in case, since we all know that although Internet Explorer is slow, it’s still arguably the most compatible.

Virtual Memory: Chances are, you have plenty of hard drive space, so max out your Virtual memory. Go Control Panel>Performance and Maintenance>System>Advanced>Performance>Virtual Memory, and then chance it so its System Managed, so that it’s given a healthy dose. If you think it’s too low, just make sure it’s 2-3 times the size of physical ram that you have.

Defragment: In your hard drive’s property’s tools there’s an option called defragment, if you think of your files like a book, and the disk like a book shelve, disc defragment would be like organizing that bookshelf, making access times faster. Vista defragments for you automatically. XP and 2000 will benefit from this.

Linux: The speed is in between 2000 and XP, it’s more clean cut and aesthetically pleasing than Windows. You need Wine to run windows API apps, and installing and compiling stuff can be complicated, not to mention the drivers. Ok scratch this out.

Start-up delayer: If you don’t hibernate your computer, you can speed up the cold start-up boot time time between log-on and actually being able to use the computer. Using start-up delayer. If you have lots of memory, and little free disk space, un-checking the hibernation disk reserve and using this can be instrumental in freeing hard drive space.

ADDENDUM: This is anything that’s not part of the original post, suggestions from itechportal members/readers, and more tweaks, upgrades.

Awesome! Let’s begin:

Computer PSU (Power Supply Unit): This addendum is inspired by the soon to be released GTX295 which draws a peak close to 300 watts, that’s the entire capacity of a low-end computer Power supply. If you’re like Red-Jet, the size of your power-supply, in his case (250watts) could mean the difference between being able to go Dual-Channel or not. The current recommended for most computer users with Dual Core, 1 hard drive, 4 USB devices, 1 CD drive, Mainstream to Lower-Mid-Range Graphics (Nvidia Geforce 8400GS-9600GSO, AMD HD2400PRO-HD4830) should all have at least 400 watts, 420w and 500w are recommended and not much more expensive. 550w or SLI certification should allow for SLI usage, 500w is enough for lower-end SLI and crossfire. But to be sure, look at the requirements when buying a graphics card, for it is the most power-comsuming component, besides the CPU. Since 420w is good, most cases that comes with a PSU should be sufficient, but when buying a PSU, I strongly recommend Antec’s Earthwatts it’s a very efficient PSU with good amounts of maximum wattage. Don’t worry, 500w PSU doesn’t mean that your computer will always consume 500 watts necessarily, however some are more efficient than others, so when picking out your own custom PSU be sure to buy Corsair or Antec and go with a name brand. Watch out for those cheap OEM PCs like HP, eMachines/etc, the sub-$500s come with 250w or 300w Power supplies, so if you plan on upgrading the graphics (No, installing a 7200GS/8400GS/94ooGT or an HD2400/HD4350 does not constitute an upgrade), be prepared to upgrade the power supply, unless you want to risk all of your components frying, consult your graphics card power requirement for details.

Spyware/Malware/Adware:  Do you want to upgrade your spyware? If so, then I’m going to have to dismiss any claims about how highly intelligent you are. the three-wares are something you want to get rid of, and there are three programs that are capable of doing so. Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-aware SE, and Threatfire. Don’t worry, you don’t have to download all three, each one of them is capable of deleting all three of the infestations, but threatfire is an obscure one that can also protect you from future three-ware.

Software to get you started on your new computer. Here’s a post lifehacker put out that contains a bundle of all of the must-have software (that’s free) that they recommend. I’d get the bundle, but not get VLCplayer, since that’s a no-no in the anime community.

http://lifehacker.com/5271828/lifehacker-pack-2009-our-list-of-essential-free-windows-downloads