Noob needs help

 

New member
Username: Noob123

Post Number: 2
Registered: Apr-07
hi i have this compaq computer( 6 years old) came with 128 mb of memory, 1 ghz with windows me. but ive been running xp for a long time now and it worls alright if i just use the internet, but with some extra programs like itunes, it slows down quite a lot. for example just tried to open itunes and it took about 1 min to open it obviously cuz its been on for a while now and i was playing a game also earlier, but anyway my question is if i upgrade to 512 mbs, will it improve my computer's speed quite a lot??? don't really care if i will be able to run games like fifa 2006, nhl etc, but will applications like itunes, windows media player, etc load a lot faster??????? or will it not make much differnce if my computer speed is only 1 ghz?? someone pls reply, wanna take this to some computer store quickly, its very slow
 

Gold Member
Username: Illuminator

USA

Post Number: 5005
Registered: Apr-05
Yeah, 512 will make a really big difference. You might also want to scan for spyware with ad-aware.
 

Silver Member
Username: Stefanom

Vienna, VA United States

Post Number: 463
Registered: Apr-06
512 will make a difference, as would a faster hard drive. If you're running on an old 5400rpm drive, upgrading to a 7200rpm drive w/ 8 or 16mb of cache on board would provide a good boost.
 

Gold Member
Username: Illuminator

USA

Post Number: 5009
Registered: Apr-05

quote:

If you're running on an old 5400rpm drive, upgrading to a 7200rpm drive w/ 8 or 16mb of cache on board would provide a good boost.




Eeeeh, I dunno if it's going to be worth the effort of reformatting and moving all the files, because I haven't noticed that big of a difference between 5400 and 7200rpm, but that's just my experience.
 

New member
Username: Noob123

Post Number: 3
Registered: Apr-07
okay i just got my memory upgraded. had to pay 100 dollars plus tax so 115 canadian. it would have been 125 but i gave him the 128 mb for 10 dollars, i asked him if he could leave my 128 mb there and put 256 in another slot, he said he would charge around 80 dollars for that, but if i get both then its 50 each since usually he sells them together, i guess just some bullshit, but tbh i don't notice much difference, i think its probably just my computer, maybe 512 isn't worth it if its just 1ghz???? its loading my computer very fast, for example the windows security alert comes up right away whereas before it would take a long time, but it still takes quite a while to load firefox, internet explorer, windows media player, and for ituens takes the longest. i guess its probably my computer, as for getting faster hard drive, he said all 30 giga byte drives( which mine is around 40) come in 7200 rpm, so i don't need to upgrade, so just want to know i looked on a site, it did some system tests and came up with that if i bought 512 mb memory i would pay 100 dollars( us i think), so in the end is it a good deal i got??? could it have been cheaper, more expensive is whati mean, as for my computeri think maybe i should wait a little longer and see how it does when its been on for a while and ive downloaded some stuff and im running more applications at the same time
 

New member
Username: Noob123

Post Number: 4
Registered: Apr-07
actually ive been running lost of applications at the same time now and its running very nicely so far, i have itunes, limewire, wm, msn, firefox all open and switching between programs is very quick so so far pretty good,
 

Silver Member
Username: Stefanom

Vienna, VA United States

Post Number: 464
Registered: Apr-06
Heh, no, not all 30 and 40 GB drives are 7200 rpm. As for Jexx's concern of the time it would take to set up the new drive, most if not all new drives come with a utility similar to Norton Ghost that allow you to mirror the old drive on to the new one.

As far as the performance to expect, you obviously can't expect miracles to occur, but it is much more than just a 5400 to 7200 rpm switch. Things like disc data density, onboard cache, and design will come into play. Toms Hardware has a decent "history of hard drives" bit that shows how things have progressed in the past 15 years or so. They also have a hard disk chart, so you can get an idea of what all is out on the market these days.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/27/15-years-of-hard-drive-history/page10.htm l#pcmark05_windows_xp_startup_performance

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html?modelx=33&model1=117&model2=676&chart =40
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