Hardware and speed

What's the most important piece of hardware in terms of computer speed? Is it the CPU, RAM, or which? In terms of getting a faster PC which is the most economical way of speeding things up? Is it to increase RAM?

Maybe I'm just being greedy for computer speed. I browse the Internet, use email, sometimes download music, and I use the various MS Office applications. I don't play games or download or watch movies online so maybe I have enough speed.

My version of Windows is Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3 (build 2600). I don't know if this shows what I've got in terms of speed but it's info about my PC generated by Belarc Advisor. Processor: 2.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4, 8 kilobyte primary memory cache, 512 kilobyte secondary memory cache, Not hyper-threaded. Memory modules: 1280 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory.

 

In your case, sufficient RAM and running XP, the best way to increase the performance is to minimize the number of auto run programs you have.

You can use startup cpl, FROM HERE to accomplish this.

Disable anything but your anti virus and firewalls to see how much difference you can get.

Also, security software, including remnants from past installs, can bog things down depending what and how you have it installed.

But likely you'll get the best improvements through auto run management. I do this all the time for people. :wave:wave

 

I would have to disagree with the above suggestion, or at least express extreme caution since we have no clue what the OP is loading. While certainly the number of programs loaded at boot increases boot times, once programs are up and running, they generally step into the background when not actually doing anything, and leave only a small footprint "dedicated" to the program. Yes, they do add up, and a review of what auto-loads is a good idea, but not likely to result in any thing significant - unless free disk space is at a premium. This assumes you don't have more than one major security program running at once, which will bog down a system, and can cause conflicts. Another problem is that too often, users get overzealous, and cut something needed, and end up in more trouble.

It depends on your starting point, but normally increasing RAM offers the best bang for your money. I generally recommend 2Gb for best performance with XP and single core CPUs. Adding more than 2Gb would not help much, if any. Those starting with less than 1Gb would see a big jump in performance going to 2Gb.

You indicated you have 1280Mb of RAM. That "suggests" to me you have 2 x 512Mb + 256Mb, or 1Gb + 256Mb. Since 256Mb sticks tend to be pretty old, it is likely it is slower than the others, and systems slow to lowest speed.

You also did not tell us about your graphics solution, but if on-board, the next best bang for the money is to install a graphics card. Even a budget PCI card will likely improve over-all performance because the card will likely have a better GPU than the on-board, and the card will have its own dedicated RAM tweaked for graphics processing. This, in turn, allows the on-board graphics to be disabled, thus freeing up any snagged RAM previously taken for graphics processing, and in effect, giving you a RAM boost in the process.

Finally your CPU is not the fastest, but that would be last in line after ensuring good amounts of RAM and a decent graphics solution. With lots of RAM, the CPU has lots of room to work in and that also means it does not need to bang on the slow hard drive's page file as often. And today's computing world is very graphics oriented so the more capable the graphics solution, the more the CPU can hand tasks off to it - and it takes very little CPU horsepower to hand off tasks.

 

Add another gig of ram it will boost you enough to put a smile on your face, many say 1g is enough for XP I beg to differ. You can go to any major ram makers site ot get the proper spec ram for your machine, then go to Ebay and hunt some up for very cheap $$.

Phil

 

1Gb used to be the "sweet spot" for XP - any less and the performance suffers, any more and the improvements were insignificant. But we have to remember that XP came out over a decade ago. Since then, thanks to badguys, we have had to create massive security defenses on our systems just to safely use Google! Also, dual and quad core CPUs have become commonplace today, even with many XP systems and while they don't require more RAM, they can sure take advantage of it.