Upgrading processor

el · Joined: Nov 14, 2006 Posts: 255

Hello,

I've run a test on one of our computers to see how we can upgrade it (using SiSoft Sandra Lite)
And according to the test, the motherboard is compatible with a processor of up to 3.6 GHz
currently there's a processor of 2.8 GHz in there..

now i'm wondering, if i were to put in a faster processor (of course making sure it fits Laughing

), what effect would this have?
would the windows version and all the programs still be activated?
or would they have to be reactivated?
would exchanging the processor have any other side-effects?
anything else i would have to watch out for?

thanks :]

El

micker377 · Joined: May 27, 2005 Posts: 994

The computer O.S. would accept it with no problem. The question is "Why"? You wouldn't see any speed difference. The only reason to change the CPU, would be to run a program that auto detects the speed of the CPU, and needs it to run. You would be better off to increase the memory to at least 2 gig, and switch to a faster hard drive.

goretsky · Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 5:40 am Post subject:

Hello,

Depending upon the model of CPU, you may not see much of a performance gain. Or you might. Or, it might be a better investment to add more RAM, as Micker377 suggested, install a faster video card or get a faster Internet connection.

It might be helpful to know application or use of the computer needs to be sped up. With that information, I am sure some of the forum members can provide some recommendations about what to upgrade.

One thing about processors is that as they increase in speed, they tend to consume more electricity and radiate more heat. Your current CPU cooler may be up to the task of cooling a 2.8GHz processor, but it may need to be replaced with another model in order to adequately cool a 3.6GHz processor.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

el,
Since you didn't give the other specs on that PC we're all just guessing here, but in general, computers run slow for several reasons.

1. There is less than enough RAM to efficiently run the OS and all the programs that run all the time. Shutdown un-needed programs and services and then make sure there are two (2) gigs of ram installed. On most XP systems, the difference between one gig of ram and two gigs of ram is very noticeable.

2. There is way too much junk on the HD and it's badly fragmented.
Fragmentation slows down program loading and the junk slows down any and all scans by AV and AS software and of course any backups, defrags, etc.

3. An old/slow hard drive slows down everything. SATA2 hard drives are highly preferable to the older and much slower IDE drives.
The mobo must be SATA compatible.

I add a shutdown of unneeded services and a couple of registry tweaks to the above to greatly improve performance, of ANY PC.

On every new PC that I see, I regularly improve system performance by as much as 100% without ever changing or adding any hardware. Most people don't want to spend any more money on their computer anyway.
Some of the early XP machines came out with only 256 megs of ram. Evil or Very Mad

Cheers!
The Doctor Cool

el · Joined: Nov 14, 2006 Posts: 255

Rightio..time to reply to all the posts :]

so..first for the specs..(sorry for leaving them out Confused

)

It's an XP Pro SP2 machine
1GB RAM
Intel Pentium 4 Processor, 2.8GHz
ASUS motherboard (....ASUS P4P800S-X),
the computer is used for graphical work (mainly Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign..in future also some form of CAD, most likely Turbo/AutoCAD (probably also including 3D graphics), besides the standard Windows Explorer, Word, Excel etc.)
Partially, it has to handle very large files.
It never was, and more than likely never will be, connected to the internet.
..and I'm not sure if I left anything out Laughing

..putting in a faster processor generally doesn't have as much of an effect as adding more RAM? I didn't know that Laughing

I personally prefer adding RAM as I already know how to do that and have done so successfully before..I've only been shown how to exchange a processor..I just thought that adding a faster processor may make quite a difference too.

So I think I shall see how much of an effect more RAM will have first..
According to the motherboard manual, I can add up to 2GB RAM (1GB per slot)
and according to Sandra, I can add 4GB.
I will of course go with what's written in the manual..but I still just wonder..is it possible that the motherboard can take more than the manual says it can?
probably not..but still worth asking Laughing

the computer was already given to a computer technician once, a while back, to bring it up to top-speed....and I find that there isn't even the maximum amount of RAM installed Shocked

can I assume that he didn't do a proper job, or that he had a good reason for only installing 1GB?

Thanks for all the input Very Happy

and hoping i haven't left anything of importance out Shocked

El

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2636

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

el,
When I built this (New) PC I was on a tight budget so I only installed one gig of ram. After doing all my tweaking and tuning it ran very nicely indeed!

I got a real deal on more ram so I decided to add the second GIG. I didn't think I needed it, but I was very pleasingly surprised that the performance jumped a very noticeable amount with the second GIG.

Because I also run Vista Ultimate on this machine, I decided to up the count to three gig's of ram. Vista liked it better but XP seemed to just ignore it.
Maybe I'd see more effect if I were running high end games with lots of graphics, but that's not the way I use my PC.
I still shut down all running programs before I try to burn a CD or DVD, just to give the burner as much system resources as possible.

A new and faster CPU would put even more demand on your ram so you could even see a performance "Decrease".
It should be very self evident to everyone today.....ONE GIG of ram is just not enough for Windows XP.
The PC manufacturers have finally got the message and they are putting two to four gigs of ram in their new PC's running XP.

Good Luck,
The Doctor Cool

Ram it till it gigahurtz! Rolling Eyes

goretsky · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 1:47 am Post subject:

Hello,

From looking at the specifications for the Asus P4P800S-X, I see it is an older (circa 2002) model based on Intel's 848p chipset, which uses DDR-400 (PC3200) memory and provides an AGP video expansion slot. The motherboard was marketed in the "value" space, which means it was more geared towards offering basic features for general computer usage than specific niches such as gaming or workstation use.

The 848P chipset recognizes a maximum of 4GB, however, the motherboard itself only has two memory slot, which would seem to limit you to a maximum of 2GB of memory by installing two 1GB DIMMS in each slot. If you are using one 1GB module, than you can install a second 1GB module for a total of 2GB. If you have two 512MB memory modules, you can remove both of them and replace with two 1GB memory modules.

Installing a 3.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 CPU and a new AGP video card will give you some benefits over the current CPU and video card, however, I would strongly suggest thinking about whether that is more economical than buying a new computer, especially when you consider the power consumption for the CPU. Today's systems perform much more efficiently at slower clock speeds, have faster memory and use the PCIe interface for video cards, which is much faster than the old AGP standard. It might be better to start saving up for a new computer instead of upgrading, in this case.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

el · Joined: Nov 14, 2006 Posts: 255

oh yes..I forgot to mention Rolling Eyes

..it is a 32bit OS..though i'm not sure if that was already obvious from some other part of the specs given Laughing

So..using a 32bit XP..4GB wouldn't be of any use anyway, regardless of whether the motherboard can take that much or not..
I shall have to remember that :]

oh my Shocked

I really couldn't do with a performance decrease Confused

I think i shall really stick to just adding more RAM..it's not like the computer runs slow..it just doesn't run fast enough for me, especially when working with large files Laughing

And i would just like to increase the performance as far as is possible, without installing a new motherboard or the likes.
I hope more RAM has as much of an effect as I'm hearing here Wink

@Goretsky
thanks for the explanation..so I guess Sandra just tells me how much the chipset recognises, but not that the motherboard slots limits it to 2GB..?

There are currently two 512MB modules in there, so I shall have to buy a completely new set of memory..and will have still more spare RAM Laughing

The problem with buying a new computer would be transferring all the programs, activations etc. as I'm assuming that putting the system HD into a new machine would make the windows version and every other program on there with an activation unactivated..which wouldn't be any good Confused

So..to say it all in short..it looks like i will just buy new RAM sometime in the future and hope that increases the performance enough for me Wink

The only thing that considerably scares me about doing ANYTHING inside that computer is that previously, everytime I did so, it wouldn't boot anymore afterwards Crying or Very sad

Although I haven't done anything since the last time, where I then had to exchange the battery to solve the problem..perhaps that was the only problem, and I wouldn't have any more difficulties now Very Happy

(I believe I also posted about that problem at the time..)
I'll just have to risk it Laughing

El

micker377 · Joined: May 27, 2005 Posts: 994

I have XP Pro-SP 3. My mo-bo will accept up to 8 gig - (two slots), too bad Windows won't ! Anyway, I fooled around and managed to get it to run with 3 gig (took some matching!). What it does, is that most everything runs in the first 1 gig, and the 2 extra is used instead of the page file! (I have a program that shows mem usage). You might give this a try. Thank goodness for Fry's Electronics's liberal return policy! By the way - 4 gig wouldn't let Windows boot all the time!

AMD dual core CPU. I guess it would work the same on the Intel chip.

goretsky · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2008 12:32 am Post subject:

[Message edited to insert missing word. AG]

Hello,

Given the age of the computer, I assumed it was a 32-bit OS. Also, I did not see any 64-bit drivers for it on ASUS or Intel's web site.

With a 32-bit operating system, you can typically access 3.25-3.5GB of the installed memory. The remainder of the memory's address space is used by the computer's hardware in order for the various parts to communicate with each other. There are ways to increase the amount recognized by a 32-bit operating system through a technology called Physical Address Extension, but it may slow the computer down slightly. In any case, the 32-bit version of Microsoft Windows XP is limited to 4GB, according to this page on Microsoft's web site, so the increase would be minimal, even if the motherboard supported 4GB of RAM.

You can verify the amount of memory supported by opening the chassis and looking at the available memory expansion slots. If there are two present, then the limit is 2GB. If there are four present, then the limit is 4GB.

As DrWho07 noted, adding more RAM will definitely improve the computer's performance.

The motherboard also contains two of the first generation Serial ATA controllers, which support the SATA/150 standard. This means you can install a current SATA hard disk drive and use it in the computer, which may provide a modest bump in performance.

If you were to install the existing hard disk drive in a new computer, you would likely need to reinstall the operating system, or at least perform a repair of it, in order for it to boot up. I am not sure what effect, if any, this would have on installed applications.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

As I think I mentioned earlier, SATA is highly preferred above IDE for a hard drive that runs the system's OS. For a storage or backup drive, not so much.

I don't want to get into a p'ing contest about whether it's bits, bytes or widgets, but the maximum speed you can get from an IDE drive is 133 (whatevers),
while the SATA1 speed jumps up to 1500 (whatevers) and SATA2 doubles that to a whopping 3000 (whatevers).

Don't get all hung up on the fact that manufacturers label their SATA1 drives as 150 and SATA2 as 300. I never did understand why they want to leave off the last zero. You'd think they'd be so proud of the speed that they would print it in big, bold type and use all the digits. Oh well, what do I know about marketing.

Anyway, if you put a SATA2 drive on that ASUS mobo without the SATA1 jumper installed, the bios will never even see the drive.

I got bit by that bug once myself, so it's still very much on my mind.
I bought a SATA2 HD and put it on an older Asrock mobo that only supported SATA1 drives. The SATA2 drive was not even seen.....like it didn't exist.
I took it back to the store........the tech there slipped a little jumper on the back of the drive and handed it back to me, saying, "Now it will work".
Don't you know, I felt like a perfect idiot!

However if you buy a Retail Boxed SATA2 drive, it will likely come with the SATA1 jumper already installed. (Maybe....it's best to check)
I see people posting on the internet all the time that their mobo doesn't see their new SATA hard drive, and I know in an instant why. Rolling Eyes

On the other side of the coin,,,,,if you put a SATA2 drive, with the SATA1 Jumper, on a SATA2 compatible mobo, it will run just fine, but at HALF speed.

If you have a SATA compatible mobo and all you have is an IDE drive, you can get a huge increase in data transfer speed by connectiong your IDE drive to a SATA port on the mobo using an IDE to SATA adapter.
Here's a pic of one of my own IDE drives with the IDE to SATA adapter installed:

<<-- click to expand

I've written about that several times on this very forum as well as other HELP forums. The first time I tried that, I was blown away by the data transfer speed that came from that IDE drive. It was almost as good as a SATA1 drive.
That led me to believe that the big bottleneck in IDE data transfer is not the drive so much as the IDE controller on the mobo.

One of the few programs that actually show the data transfer speed is "Ghost".
Here is a screenshot of Ghost doing a backup with a SATA2 HD:

It's a little hard to read, but as near as I can tell, the data transfer speed is about 2645 MB/Min. But at any rate, I'm backing up my whole C: drive in just over seven minutes, and that ain't too shabby.

I seem to remember that with just an IDE drive, my backups used to take over a half hour. Crying or Very sad

Good Luck and Happy Holidays !

The Doctor Cool

louis-the-cat · Joined: May 13, 2006 Posts: 307

if you don't believe the lockergnome gurus, ( and why wouldn't you!)

here's a good article:

http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/what-your-computer-does-while-you-wait

from my reading of it, it confirms and explains why the cpu isn't the bottle-neck in the system.
It re-iterates the advice given by previous posters.....
get sufficient RAM
get a faster hard-drive ( or at least keep the one you've got free of junk and regularly defragged).

I liked the pictures in the article....I'm a sucker for diagrams with boxes and arrows Wink

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

I'm sure there aren't too many readers here that remember the little Commodore 64 computer. Right?

Commodore did something very unique for the time.....they broke up the clock cycle into two components, not just one like the rest of the computing world.

One clock cycle is comprised of a positive pulse and then a negative pulse.
Typically computers for years had done all their data stepping and command execution on the "Rise of Clock". So what happened during the negative portion of the clock cycle? Nothing....Absolutely Nothing.
The computer just sat there, waiting for the next "Rise of Clock".

I don't want to get too technical here, but Commodore found that they could use that negative clock cycle to do work, instead of just sitting there waiting for the next positive clock cycle.

AMD picked up on this quirk of clock cycles and within their CPU's they have been getting more work out of their chips during each clock cycle than Intel and other CPU manufacturers.

An AMD CPU for instance that is marketed as a 3800+ (like mine) actually runs at an external clock speed of about 2000mhz. They get the 3800+ from how the chip compares to an intel CPU, in how much work it can do at the same clock frequency.

Anyway, seeing that AMD can do more work than Intel per clock cycle, made me start using ONLY AMD chips a very long time ago.
Running at a slower clock speed saves power and reduces heating.

A huge bottleneck that I was sure would be brought up in that great article, linked to above, but wasn't, is the Windows Kernel.

The Kernel is sort of like the command interpreter in DOS. It contains all the little sub-routines that Windows needs from moment to moment as it runs programs, accesses hardware, etc. The Kernel sitting on the HD could conceivably be accessed over a million times a day, at the comparatively SLOW HD speed.

When I boot up my own PC, I have reprogrammed my Registry to load that Kernel into ram where it can be accessed MUCH faster than from the HD.
That gives me a huge BUMP in system efficiency and speed.

Microsoft foresaw this function and made it available in the registry by just changing one little digit.
Similarly, there are other great Speed-Up secrets hidden in the Windows Registry.

Out of the box, so to speak, Windows is set, by default, to run at its slowest speed. I guess MS thought that slower was safer. (Go figure!)
That may be ok for driving a car, but for operating a computer, it really sux!

I posted this tweak on my website a long time ago and I install it for every one of my customers to make their PC's run better. It works!

********************************************************************
Memory Performance Tweak:
These Settings will fine tune your systems memory management -
at least 256MB of ram recommended, 512 preferred for first tweak.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \
Session Manager \ Memory Management
1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive.

2.LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory improves system performance a lot. This tweak can actually slow down a system with less than 256 megs of ram. DO NOT use this tweak on any Windows Media Center PC. It will cause that PC to fail to boot up.
***************************************************************

As always, it's advisable to make a Registry Restore Point before ever changing anything in your registry, just in case you want to go back to the defaults.

Happy Holidays Everyone!
The Doctor Cool

el · Joined: Nov 14, 2006 Posts: 255

sorry for my very late reply, once again

@micker377
thanks for the info Smile

I'm afraid I don't trust myself enough with computers to do such things yet though Laughing

so I shall just keep it in mind for the future..

I'm a bit confused though about the amount of RAM
because Goretsky says that one slot can take 1GB
but micker377 says that his takes 8GB with two slots..which would mean 4GB per slot..
I'll just stick to what the motherboard manual says, which is a limit of 2GB (:

@Goretsky
I'm afraid that's exactly what we can't have. The computer is essential, and we can't afford to risk losing any activations or programs or the likes.
So a new HD is also not an option.

However, the IDE to SATA adapter sounds interesting. It would be great if it does speed up data transfers that much Very Happy

@doctorwho07
thanks for the images Laughing

and
@louis-the-cat
thank you for the article link Smile

I shall indeed go for more RAM, and probably one of those adapters Very Happy

@drwho07
the tweaks could be of interest..I shall try them on my own computer first, and then possibly will use them on the computer being spoken about here..
I'm just not quite sure what a Media Center PC is..I take it I would know if a computer is such a PC? and if not..how do i tell if it is?
because of course there's no way that I could risk the PC not booting up Laughing

El

micker377 · Joined: May 27, 2005 Posts: 994

Reply on two points: My motherboard will accept 8 gig memory (could be used with Vista or 2000, Windows XP will only accept 2 gig (operational). How much each slot will allow, depends on the motherboard.
Doc: I tried to use the sata/pata adapter, and found that my cheap ECS board only allows the sata ports to be used for RAID! It (mobo) only recognizes the IDE ports for boot! So much for upgrading to a true sata hard drive!

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Mick.....
I doubt that anyone would want to sit here and read all my reasons for NEVER using an ECS mobo. Crying or Very sad

So I'll just leave it at that. Rolling Eyes

But even with such a lame mobo, I'm really surprised that you can't set a SATA port as the 1st boot port. "That does not compute!" (said the Robot).

I bought my first SATA hard drive about a year before I had a mobo to accept it.
In the mean time I ran the SATA drive off of a SATA controller card in one of my spare PCI slots.
I don't remember the brand of the card.....probably some generic, but it did have the Silicon Image chip-set, like most controller cards.

It ran great till I finally found a mobo that would accept my CPU, ram, video card and had two SATA ports on it.

That was several years ago, and that old PC is still running like a champ today as my #2 PC. It runs both XP and Vista Ultimate.

Cheers Mates and Happy Holidays!
Doc Cool

el · Joined: Nov 14, 2006 Posts: 255

I don't think I've actually heard of an ECS mobo before Laughing

but I shall have to keep that in mind..

other than that
I believe it's all sorted? on my part at least Very Happy

thanks to all who helped :]

El