Gossamer Forum
Home : General : Chit Chat :

A Hardware Upgrade Question

Quote Reply
A Hardware Upgrade Question
Hello!

Before I pose my important question, let me tell you that I am a new member of this forum. I have come here to look for an answer to the question that so interests me.

Here it is: I have an old computer that needs definate upgrading. Really, I am replacing everything on it except for the hard drives which are scuzzy based and work fine for now.... Later I will replace those too. Here is what I have to get: a new motherboard, a proceesor, 512 megabytes or higher of DDR Ram, a video card, a box, and a power supply. With my budget of under $1,000, what would hardware would you suggest? I was thinking of an Intel board with a Pentium 4 2.2 processor, the ram or course, and the GeForce 4 Ti4400. Tell me if this is the way to go. Should I go for a higher performing video card. All suggestions would be helpful.

By the way, should I upgrade from Windows 98 to XP? I hear that is a bad choice. What do you think.Sly
Quote Reply
Re: [The Wizard] A Hardware Upgrade Question In reply to
I would personally go with an AMD Athlon XP/MP processor. They're cheaper and a slower XP/MP performs on the same level as a faster Intel PIV. (The dual Athlon MP processors in my board clock at 1.6GHz, but perform as well as an Intel Pentium IV 1.9GHz.). At a bare minimum, get 256MB RAM, but save yourself a headache or two and get at least 512MB DDR RAM, or depending on what you're doing, you may want to go ahead and get a gig while you're at it. Video card, again, depending on what the purpose of the machine is will determine what you want. If you you're doing graphic design or gaming, more RAM is better, and definately spend the extra money for an AGP card. You'll also probably be able to find an ATI video card that performs as well or better than the nVidia card you mentioned, at a lower price. For a PSU, get at least a 350 Watt, but if you intend to add more hard drives and cd/dvd drives, I suggest a higher powered one with more power cables. You should easily to be able to build a system for under $1000 if you build yourself instead of one of those junky poorly supported mass-produced systems. Get a Dell if you want a vendor manufactured pc though, and expect to pay for the quality and excellent support.

As far as win98 versus winXP, there is no way in heck upgrading win98 to winXP is a poor decision. Yes, some archaic programs will no longer work. Yes, there are issues when you start reinstalling the OS numerous times, but that's just MS's piracy prevention scheme and nothing to worry about if you're legit. But the many benefits far outweigh the few downfalls. If you don't go with XP, at least upgrade to win2k. I would suggest as an alternative to just upgrading, to set up a dual boot system. That way you would keep your current OS and programs as they are, and then install XP/win2k on another drive/partition. If you come accross any software that's incompatible, boot to win98 and install and run the software there. You can edit your start menu to include programs from your other windows installation.

Philip
------------------
Limecat is not pleased.

Last edited by:

fuzzy thoughts: Mar 10, 2003, 9:33 PM
Quote Reply
Re: [The Wizard] A Hardware Upgrade Question In reply to
You didn't mention what the computer is going to be used for? A GeForce 4 TI is complete overkill and a waste of money unless you are doing serious gaming.

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
Quote Reply
Re: A Hardware Upgrade Question In reply to
Guys,

First, I should of obviously told you what I was doing with the machine. I am an avid gamer who works with editing pictures from digital cameras. Mostly I play games, however.

So that is what I am going to do with the machine, but I have a few more questions to bring up. I am a little hazy on creating a dual boot system. Do you install the other OS on a secondary drive and call that drive another master? Will that work or do I do something else? Another thing, can windows 98 and Xp handle more than 512 megabytes of RAM?

A question about Linux? I was thinking about setting up another Linux based OS on my computer using a dual boot system. My reason was to use the Linux for when I go gaming on the internet as I have recently received a most terrible virus on another computer. Is this a good idea? If so, what kind of Linux OS would you suggest I use?

Anyone have a suggested motherboard with a very good built-in soundcard for AMD processor? So do you think that anything over 2. Ghz is overkill on the processor? Also, an ATI V-card would be better, right?

Well thank you for your time,

The Wizard
Quote Reply
Re: [The Wizard] A Hardware Upgrade Question In reply to
Quote:
I am a little hazy on creating a dual boot system.

For Dual boot win98 and win2k, install win98 first, then win2k, win2k will detect the win98 sysytem and ask if you want to replace it or make a dual boot system. Note these need to be on different harddrives or partions, so make the partitions first. Not sure about XP but it would probably work the same way. When you boot the machine it will give you and option of operating systems.

Quote:
can windows 98 and Xp handle more than 512 megabytes of RAM?

I thought win98 had problems mapping memory beyond 128k, XP should have no problem, but I'm just guessing.
Quote Reply
Re: [joematt] A Hardware Upgrade Question In reply to
Quote:
I thought win98 had problems mapping memory beyond 128k

I doubt you could boot with 128k Wink

I dual boot Win98 and WinXP with 640MB RAM and it works fine.
Quote Reply
Re: [Paul] A Hardware Upgrade Question In reply to
Windows 98 doesn't recognize anything above 256MB RAM so anything above this will be redundant with Windows 98. But of course, will be utilized with Windows XP when booting into XP.

- wil
Quote Reply
Re: [Paul] A Hardware Upgrade Question In reply to
Quote:
I doubt you could boot with 128k

Opps, that's kinda funny, I still hang onto my MS DOS ver 1.0, but I'm not sure why. I never had to work with less than 640 k, I remember when 1 mb was a big deal.

Can win98 access memory above 128 mb ram?
edit see above.

Last edited by:

joematt: Mar 12, 2003, 8:44 AM
Quote Reply
Re: [joematt] A Hardware Upgrade Question In reply to
In actuality Windows95/98 can only use about 160MB. Anything over 256MB will supposedly slow the system down, depending on the BIOS and motherboard. Although I have found WIndow98 with 640MB RAM to be quicker than XP. When Windows95/98 came out people weren't using that much RAM - I remember my dads pc came with 96MB, so 95/98 were never designed to support large amounts of RAM.