Upgrades

Hi yall,

I have an Acer aspire SA90-A97Z with a Pentium D 925 processor

I have upgraded the ram to 2GB and the graphics card to GeForce 560 gtx

I want to upgrade the processor next but am uncertain what I can use or what would be the best option, any help would be much appreciated.

 

My first counseling would be, "Do not spend one new penny on this old computer. Save up new money and spend on a new computer."

I don't believe any processor will (1) give you a significant boost in services or productivity that you'll notice past a week or two without stop-watch-measurements on everything, or (2) be worth the risk of a swap-out, which includes total destruction of a currently-working machine.

That said, over on PriceWatch, I was looking at prices for the Intel D-series and here's that page which you can use for 'relative pricing consideration'. (Look at the far right column and the "Intel D" series is listed...) There's a 3.6ghz D-960 for $45, too.

Here's a D-950 at 3.4ghz for $15. That's not much money. The performance should be detectable BUT then I go back to the Risk Factor: "If you spend $15 and end up with a dead computer, are you willing to spend $500 on a new one? Why not $500 in the first place, and have two working computers?"

Having a working second computer - even if it's a dust collector most of its future life - has been more useful than $15.

(And remember, you'll want to add a new fan for Socket 775 Intels, and new heat-sink 'goo' - so I'd automatically tack on another $50 approx to my considerations.)

 

Ok thanks for the advice.

I have to confess I was much of the same line of thought, my other option was to try building a new system for myself.

The problem is I realistically don't know where to start, in that it is going to have to be done slowly over time and the last system I built was about 10 years ago and I built it all in one go.

Any advice as to where to start, which motherboard I should get and processor to go with it. The system needs to run graphics programs like autocad, mudbox, dreamweaver and cinema 4D, I also need to get some video production software and games like skyrim.

Ideally it will have a dual screen to boot and has to run all my printing software / hardware.

I am so out of date with which pieces of hardware would be suitable I'm kind of feeling out of my depth, not to mention that this time I have to construct on kind of a budget (hence why I want to build it over time.)

 

AMDs come in two flavors - the AM3+ sockets are for the good Phenom-II (and less-cache'd Athlon-IIs). Up to 8 core, with speeds topping at about 4ghz.

The FM2 sockets are APUs - a combined Radeon GPU and an Athlon-II styled CPU. Usually 4 processing cores and up to 8 Graphics cores. Speeds often top 4ghz.

Intels have the older Socket 1155 (Sandy and Ivy Bridge) which are often considered "better" for overclocking purposes than the newer Intel Haswells, but part of this is because these two older chips have a longer history of overclocking know-how.

These are crippled, however, because they will only give you 2 SATA3 (faster) HDD connectors and stick you with 4 older, slower SATA2s.

The "Z77" motherboard chipset is the top-end of the Socket 1155 series.

Intel's newest Haswell chipset is the 1150 (yeah, out of sequence!) has 6 native SATA3s, and it's top-end motherboard chipset uses the "Z87" designator.

* * * *

The AMD FM2 and these two Intel 1155 and 1150 chipsets have built-in graphics, but most folks believe AMD's graphics are the best. For AutoCAD and Dual Screen, the AMD FM2's will handle that fine. But for gaming and Dual Screen, I would let "the Game" be the decision maker. Gamers prefer separate video cards, which can be changed out with every new game-generation too.

I'd also ask how many Storage Hard-Drives you need, and I'd distinguish "storage" vs. "boot drive". All of them will require a boot drive, but how many additional hard drives after that will you want?

If you want 2 or more Storage HDDs and are cost-conscious, then the AM3+ route will provide the best bang-for-the-buck, or maybe the FM2's. You'll be starting in the $350 for RAM, CPU and Motherboard.

If you only foresee a Boot Drive and a Storage Drive, and cost isn't much of a limit, then you'll be starting in the $450 range, but you've got both of the Intel chipsets to consider - the older Sandy-Ivy Bridge (Socket 1155 Z77s), as well as the newest Haswell (Socket 1150, Z87s).

You may find the lower-end Intels (i3's) offer satisfactory production performance, but I'd probably check around AutoCAD users and see what their experience is like.

The Intels will have Cores and then Threads, by the way. A "thread" will be a pseudo-core so a Dual Core Intel can have 4 concurrent 'threads', with almost the same performance as a Quad Core.

 

In Boot Drives, I only recommend two choices to consider. "Small SSDs" in the 90-128Gb range offers a vast space for the OS and Programs, plus these are often in the $60-90 range. And I'd get two identical units, so I could clone one to the other occasionally. This would allow me a very speedy swap-out in case of Boot Drive Failure. Think of the second unit as insurance.

The second option is the newer Seagate hybrid drives in 1tb or 2tb flavors, which offer huge caches (Seagate markets these as "an SSD plus a hard drive" but I consider them to be merely huge cache'd hard-drives - they ARE pretty fast, though).

Western Digital has just released their 2.5" true-hybrid 1Tb drive with a 128Gb SSD - a true SSD. When you install this drive, you end up with 2 actual Drive Letters - one for the boot SSD, and one for the 1tb 'spinner'. VERY nice - two drives, one 2.5" case! These are called Duet Blacks, by the way, and are PRICEY - ie, not a good value because they're more expensive than a separate SSD and a separate hard drive.

If I was limited for Case Space, and was looking at Only Two Drives, I'd consider a one of these Hybrids and then some 3-4 tb hard-drive.

AND I'd be looking only at 64-bit OSs.

 

Now... back to that "worthless" $15 CPU update... ha ha