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looking to upgrade.... wut do u guys think?


Grama
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hey folks here is my situation...

 

i have an old acer veriton 7600G desktop which i do my daily computing from. it is mostly custom now except for the mobo and proc. the specs are:

 

Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 2.5Ghz (SSE2 only)

MSI Something or another with a 865 something chipset.... (have yet to completely determine :))

1x512mb pc2700ddr and 1x512mb pc3200ddr (total 1 gig)

eVGA 6800gs agp 8x 256mb

160gig ide drive

and some new psu... i didn't install it and have not looked yet.

 

here is my question.... i would really really like to upgrade something as for one i am starting to look into coding (i am in grade 11 and looking into computer science career)

 

and i have limited funds. i use freebsd, linux, (hopefully solaris soon) windows (all) but spend most of my time in OS X. i should also note i live in canada!

 

my question is would it be more economical to upgrade just the ram, adding 2 more gigs (and potentially pulling the pc2700 ram) or should i go for broke and buy a new AsROCK 4COREDUAL-SATA2 mobo with all its new features and a corresponding core2duo or core2quad and upgrade to ddr2-667 later? the nice thing anout the mobo/cpu option is that i can get SSE3 (hence faster updates to os x) plus much better compiling time (and gaming performance) while continuing to use my current vid card and ram or would it be more economical to just upgrade the ram and go? is it even possible to use the pcefi and vanilla kernel on the PT800 ultra chipset? that would be a big bonus.

 

i can use tiger and leopard but am using leopard at the moment... i find it is quite slow on my system (understandably) and was looking for some help as to wut i should do. any and all opinions are welcome!

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From the wiki it looks like the board you are looking at supports Leopard.

 

Unfortunately DDR memory is about twice as expensive as DDR2, so neither upgrading your current RAM (expensive) or using it in a new system (1GB DDR2 = ~$25, therefore you may as well get new RAM) are really worthwhile. If you are really strapped for cash I would suggest seeing how cheaply you can pick up used DDR sticks on ebay or craigslist, but don't pay retail for outdated tech, and if you get a new motherboard I would suggest getting 800Mhz DDR2, as I said above it is really cheap and 1 GB should do to start with. Your FSB/RAM speed/processor are much greater bottlenecks at this point that the size or your RAM.

 

I think the best price to performance upgrade would have to involve a new core 2 duo. Keeping the video card will save you a lot of money, but will hold you back to older chipsets. You could consider finding a recent board with integrated graphics and PCI-E so you can add a video card in the future.

 

Hope this helps, and good luck with the CS career.

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My suggestion would be to keep your current rig, as it is completely adequate for any coding.

It has enough bang to do pretty much everything except gaming. Finding some more ram is always a good idea, but only if you can get it cheap, as Viscaria said.

 

For what you do, it should tide you over another year or so. It might not be all neato running OS X on it, but its still a half-way decent system. Use the meantime to save up some more, and then spring all that on a nice, all shiny, well-rounded system.

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well having done more research i have a VERY decent system priced out from pccanada.com:

 

Asus TA863 Case

Thermaltake PurePower TR2 ATX 12.0V 430W PSU

Asus P5K Motherboard

Intel E6550 C2D Processor

2GB Corsair DDR2-800 RAM

500GB HD

LG GH20LS10 DVDRW+/- drive

Asus Extreme EN8800GT 512MB Video Card

 

It better suits an osx86 install than most any barebone pc kit i can find and it has extremely compatible parts. the best part... after shipping and taxes the cost is only $827. not bad for a pretty good system... and i may be able to nip and tuck.... this is just a quicky pricing... its been a while since a priced out a computer for somebody!

 

the real question becomes, what can i get for my current system? if i could squeeze 600 bucks would be amazing however i have a feeling that i am dreaming when i say that.... what do u think i could reasonably ask for my rig? (see first post for specs)

 

again any and all comments are welcome!

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