A colleague has asked me whether he should buy a new computer or just upgrade it. Currently he owns an HP d325 (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/12454-64287-89301-321881-f9-321883.html)

It's pretty much the base model w/ 512mb of ram. I was thinking about upgrading it to 2GB of ram, 160GIG hard drive, and a new PCI video card (probably 128MB). My concern is will there be an improvement in his PC if I do it? The processor he currently has is an Athlon 2600+ and I am not sure if that processor could handle it (especially w/ its small cache).

I would have suggested to buy a new computer but he was looking to spend $500 max and for what he was asking, its hard to find a basement priced computer to meet his high performance demands.

So, would I be crazy just to upgrade his computer for $300 worth of new components?

It's not worth it. He miles well go buy or build a new pc. Because the Socket A platform is too outdated now to even upgrade for that much money. It would be a waste because he will have to turn around build a new pc within a year.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0+1
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

Yeah, but he is only willing to spend $500 dollars. I don't think you can buy a computer for $500 dollars that is cheaper than upgrading the current one he has.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...

try there.

Jim R

Like Beginner showed you you can buy a pc that's 3x better or more then the one he has for 500. It wouldn't matter if he upgraded 500 dollars worth in that pc, his pc still wouldn't match the preforamnce of that pc that beginner showed.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0+1
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

thx beginner but still have a question. i know vista does not run well w/o a minimum of 1gig of memory. do you know of a site i can build a clone just w/o the operating system or at least 1gig of memory?

i think zipzoomfly.com still has Athlon XP cpus for sale but those cpus are over 120 dollars plus right now, because AMD stoped making them nearly 3 years ago and there a very little new ones of those types left.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0+1
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

- there's no need for 2GB. The problem with that board is that there's only two RAM slots & both are already filled (2 x 256MB). 2GB (2 x 1GB) will set you back about $150 & probably isn't worth it. One 512MB stick would cost about $40, 1GB (single stick or 2 x 512MB) would cost about $75.

- There's no need to upgrade the CPU...the 2600+ is fine. Don't be concerned about the L2 cache.

- The board has an AGP slot so I don't know why you'd even consider a PCI video card. You can get a Radeon 9600XT 256MB card for about $50.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

- I don't know what size HDD you have now, but you can find 160GB HDDs fairly cheap....about $60 or so. Sometimes you can find them for even less if there's a rebate involved.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

BTW, steer clear of Vista for at least 6-12 months.