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Mar 3, 2001, 3:31pm

I am looking at upgrading my PC for AW and Truespace use. The only thing is
I can't afford to do it all a once. So I need your advice on what
components I should get first to upgrade my PC. I will get the case, cpu
and power supply last. So what should I get first to boost performance on
my old PC that I will also be able to use on a new PC later.

Old PC .....

PIII-500 intel cpu.
Asus P2-99B MB
Voodoo 3-300 graphics AGP
128 meg ram


look forward to hearing your replies

Mar 3, 2001, 4:21pm

Heehee, I used to run TS and AW on a 486-100. :)

If yer usin PC100 RAM, you can decide to upgrade to a < 1 mhz Intel "flip-chip"
pretty cheaply right now, since both old and new mboards will take PC133 RAM
which is cheap as all getout right now. Or you can just throw some cheap RAM in
there for now, I get PC133 256m sticks for around $80 now.

But really, what are you doing that is slow? Usually the things that bog
systems most are (1) configuration, (2) disk I/O, (3) video. You can upgrade
to SCSI and I guarantee it will speed you up. (I assume yer usin IDE because
you don't mention SCSI.) Can run both at once too.

If SCSI is too expensive for you (I suspect it may be if yer upgrading in steps)
or for a quick fix, get a Promise Fastrack 100 board (< $100) and some fast IDE
drives. What kind of hard drives ya got now? The Fastrack supports ATA/100 but
it also is a RAID board so you can stripe up a coupla drives and get double /100
speed. Or double whatever yer drives will do. Still not nearly as good as
UW2SCSI, but a heckofalot cheaper.

As far as config goes, defrag yer HD completely and then set your system to use
the same size for min and max under virtual memory (say 2-3 times the size of
RAM.) This will keep Windoze from continually allocating/deallocating HD space,
which also leads to a lot more fragmentation. With a contiguous, permanent
swapfile Windoze usually performs a lot better. If yer loading stuff you don't
need in startup (run MSCONFIG, be careful you do need to load some stuff [g]) it
will slow things down. Typically RealPlayer and it's gang of ill-behaved apps
wanna live in yer system tray and they are really a drag on the system. Also MS
Office Startup seems to just garbage things up. Loading Findfast? Not searchin
yer HD all the time? Kill it.

That voodoo 3 card should work decently but newer cards seem to be more
compatible and probly faster, how much RAM does it have? Vid card is one thing
you can probly upgrade and no matter what kind of system yer movin to it'll work
in both.

[View Quote] > I am looking at upgrading my PC for AW and Truespace use. The only thing is
> I can't afford to do it all a once. So I need your advice on what
> components I should get first to upgrade my PC. I will get the case, cpu
> and power supply last. So what should I get first to boost performance on
> my old PC that I will also be able to use on a new PC later.
>
> Old PC .....
>
> PIII-500 intel cpu.
> Asus P2-99B MB
> Voodoo 3-300 graphics AGP
> 128 meg ram
>
> look forward to hearing your replies

Mar 3, 2001, 4:34pm

I can't find information on the Asus P2-99B, is it slot1 or FCPGA? Anyway, I
suggest grabbing some PC133 RAM in a large amount (256mb is only like $45
online) and getting a Hercules 3d Prophet II MX 32mb. These 2 upgrades are
fairly cheap and will increase performance tenfold assuming your hard drive
is fast enough. And then, later on, grab yourself a pair of IBM Deskstar 20
or 30 gig 75GXP hard drives and an IDE RAID/ATA100 card.
[View Quote]

Mar 3, 2001, 5:03pm

guess I should have mentioned .....

windows 2000 professional
slot 1 MB
ultra dma/33 bus master IDE - on board
only a 5.1 gig drive I forget the make



[View Quote]

Mar 3, 2001, 5:26pm

Win2k with a 5.1GB hdd? I'm sure you don't have a lot of space left, it's a good thing to have at least about 300MB free at any
given time... otherwise you'll probably experience big slowdowns... Moreover, i guess it's a little old and not as fast as new
drives... so I suggest you first buy a new hard disk...
An IBM Deskstar 7200 30GB or something would do... (I have a deskstar 45GB and it's really good)

To increase your performance, as datedman said, you can set min & max virtual memory to the same value so the file doesn't get
fragmented... I'd also suggest you ran Norton SpeedDisk after that and tell it to defrag & move the pagefile at the beginning of the
disk, so it's accessed faster... (the 30 day demo can be downloaded from Norton's site, and since it must be done only once.......
:o) )
But that won't help much if you don't buy a new disk first...

Fox Mc Cloud

"crazy canuck" <ps-aw at home.com> a écrit dans le message news: 3aa1401d at server1.Activeworlds.com...
> guess I should have mentioned .....
>
> windows 2000 professional
> slot 1 MB
> ultra dma/33 bus master IDE - on board
> only a 5.1 gig drive I forget the make
>
>
>
[View Quote]

Mar 3, 2001, 6:56pm

5.1 gigs is plenty of space for win2k..My windows folder is only around 800
megs on win2k..thats 4 gigs thats plenty to hold some mp3s, a few programs
and microsoft office..

[View Quote]

Mar 3, 2001, 7:54pm

I find you grow with your hard drive until you get to 20gb. When I got a 1
gig drive, it took a year to fill. Same with my next 2 gig drive. Then my 10
gig drive, which was filled to near capacity after a year. Now my cheesy 20
gig drive, I can't get it beyond 11 gigs.
[View Quote]

Mar 3, 2001, 11:15pm

I know that it's enough for just win2k... but I'm sure taht when you have AW, truespace and probably a lot more programs there
mustn't be a lot of place left...
I'm having trouble keeping my free space over 1GB on my 46GB... so... :o) Anyway it was just a guess.

Fox Mc Cloud

"xero" <xero at darkvapor.com> a écrit dans le message news: 3aa15a72 at server1.Activeworlds.com...
> 5.1 gigs is plenty of space for win2k..My windows folder is only around 800
> megs on win2k..thats 4 gigs thats plenty to hold some mp3s, a few programs
> and microsoft office..
>
[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 3:48am

I just got 256MB of PC-133 RAM down in Delaware a few weeks ago. I paid
$149.95 for it from Best Buy. I guess I got ripped off...but at least I
didn't have to pay sales tax :) The RAM was actually more expensive than my
new WD hard drive. Well I guess I will just buy online for now on lol.


[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 3:51am

I have a total of 70GB of hard drive space which I filled to the top in a
matter of weeks. I think I will need to get another one soon and maybe use a
RAID lol.


[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 4:45am

LoL IA didnt i show you a link showing where to get ram for like $90 the
same day you went and bought that? loL...you gota just buy stuff
online.lol..
[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 1:43pm

www.pricewatch.com
I found out my $300 monitor only costs $150 with shipping. Also, check out
the hella software prices, never feed MS your paycheck again :)
[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 5:19pm

I've got a related question. I have 512MB of PC100 RAM, should I upgrade to
PC133?

Specs:
Windows 2000
Thunderbird 1.1GHz
Maxtor 7200 RPM 40 GIG EIDE
nVidia GeForce2 Ultra


[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 5:50pm

Absolutely assuming your motherboard supports it.

[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 5:58pm

Yeah, it does. When I built the computer in December all I could afford was
PC100 RAM (especially after buying the GeForce2 Ultra). How much of a
performance boost would PC133 have over PC100?

[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 6:27pm

I can't give you numerical stats, but I can tell you that Win98 SE loaded
hella faster when I noticed my mistake in my BIOS last week (left it at
PC100)
[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 6:36pm

Thanks for the advice. Looking at the prices of PC133 right now, I'll just
go ahead and upgrade.

[View Quote] [View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 7:22pm

That's my wholesale price, but basically the retail stores usually lag way
behind market prices. When PC100 went high, some friends made out like bandits
buying from Office Depot and such ;)

[View Quote] > I just got 256MB of PC-133 RAM down in Delaware a few weeks ago. I paid
> $149.95 for it from Best Buy. I guess I got ripped off...but at least I
> didn't have to pay sales tax :) The RAM was actually more expensive than my
> new WD hard drive. Well I guess I will just buy online for now on lol.
>
[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 8:12pm

Well, if you think you got ripped, I just found out that one of my very
close friends spent $200 on 32mb of an odd off-type of RAM specific to her
motherboard. It would've cost less to grab an Asus A7V133, a Duron 700 and
256 megs of RAM, and a little extra to switch to an ATX case. Thats a
helluva lot better, going from a K5 200MHz to a Duron 700 and 32mb RAM to
256.
[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 9:29pm

Even if yer mboard dont support it, if you get new RAM get PC133 because it's
cheap as crap now and will work fine as PC100.

[View Quote] > I've got a related question. I have 512MB of PC100 RAM, should I upgrade to
> PC133?
>
> Specs:
> Windows 2000
> Thunderbird 1.1GHz
> Maxtor 7200 RPM 40 GIG EIDE
> nVidia GeForce2 Ultra
>
[View Quote]

Mar 5, 2001, 12:07am

Make sure you get CL2 ram (cas 2)..Sometimes costs a tiny bit more but that
makes it even more worth upgrading to PC133..
[View Quote]

Mar 5, 2001, 12:58am

my dad paid about a dolar a Byte of ram on a 256 mb ram chip from costco-one
of the chips in it burned out a month after we got it.. took 4 months to
figure out the chip was the reason our comp was crashing... my parents
bought a whole new comp cuz they didn't know (nor the place we took the comp
to get fixed) that it was just the chip *sigh* i wish they'de listen to me
every once in a while, lol

--
news://awjbell.com
--
J B E L L
http://platinum.awjbell.com
G O I N G P L A T I N U M


[View Quote]

Mar 5, 2001, 8:53pm

Well I bought a 7200 rpm hard drive, another 128 meg of ram and a radeon 64
meg graphics card. We'll see how that works for now. Next step .... larger
monitor, a motherboard and cpu

Thanks for the help guys


[View Quote]

Mar 5, 2001, 9:48pm

Watch it with the big monitors :) They're expensive as hell to ship and
don't fit in most cars.
[View Quote]

May 27, 2001, 5:31pm

how did you fill a 70 gig hard drive in a matter of weeks?

May 27, 2001, 6:00pm

Easy. Images of Windows CDs, installs of games, porno AVIs, MP3s, gigantic caches, etc.
[View Quote]

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