upgrade or new pc?

[Zod]

So I still have not bought a new pc.

Not sure if its worth it.

I am thinking about just adding more ram, from 3 to 6 gigs and upgrading to windows 7 64 bit (currently xp 32 bit). I have a quad core phenom processor thats a couple years old

I am thinking for less than a couple hundred bucks this upgrade will get me through until the next gen processors drop in price a great deal or the bigger and better comes out.

Thoughts?>

[natty]

I'd say you're fine. A memory upgrade would do you good as I assume you do a lot of photo editing.

[Kevin Greene]

I'd say if your mobo can take 6 gigs you'd be fine with the quad core which 7 will probably take advantage of better anyways.

Now how about that server upgrade?

[Ranucci's Big Butt BBQ]

Get more ram, go to Win 7, get a good cpu cooler and overclock that phenom. And get a 5850 video card for DX11.

What phenom do you have? I have the 9950 which overclocks very easily, just bump up the multiplier in bios.

[Zod]

I think its the 9950 as well. I will try that. It has a huge heat syc on it now and I leave the case open anyways.

[mmmbeans]

from what i understand leaving the case open is counter-productive. If you want more cool get a water cooler.

[natty]

from what i understand leaving the case open is counter-productive. If you want more cool get a water cooler.

It allows more air flow keeping the case open but it also increases the amount of dust that's collected. It's only bad if you don't clean out the dust (most people don't even if they leave the case closed). Water cooling is only necessary if you overclock, which is becoming a thing of the past.

[mmmbeans]

It allows more air flow keeping the case open but it also increases the amount of dust that's collected. It's only bad if you don't clean out the dust (most people don't even if they leave the case closed). Water cooling is only necessary if you overclock, which is becoming a thing of the past.

right on. that makes sense. i'd heard varying things about airflow with cases opened and closed. i stopped building machines five years ago when i switched to Mac. Though I imagine water cooling is going to become more prevalent given we are beginning to stretch the limits of silicon as a chip. I know the power macs are watercooled, though i'm the first to admit they're a little overbuilt.

[TerriblePizza]

Well, for a little more I'd just build a new one. How old is your system now?

[neverlosethefeeling]

New Mac.

[Zod]

New Mac.

I am leaning towards desktop PC upgrade and getting a new macbook pro. I am travelling a lot this year on shoots, would come in handy.

[Guild]

Provided you have a 64bit FSB upgrading your OS to actually take advantage of that is going to be the cheapest most effective thing you can do. You will be nearly doubling your throughput. I doubt you need more RAM, but if you still aren't happy after upgrading your OS then it won't hurt.

You can also overclock and buy a cooler.

Make sure your PSU is capable of dealing with anything else you add (like a smoking new video card).

[cookinwithgas]

What I did....

Bought a new SATA 2TB HDD

Added more RAM

Installed Win 7 on the new HDD, now it dual boots

Ran the Windows easy transfer on the Vista boot, had to change a couple of permissions so both OSes could read and write to the transfer file

Booted Win 7, ran the easy transfer and all my old settings and docs went right into my Win7 account in the same places they were before. Now I have my docs backed up on 2 local drives in addition to my quarterly offline storage backup.

I was going to run 64 bit Win7 but there is no 64 bit driver for my wireless card. 32 bit is working really great though, Win7 is much faster and more responsive than my Vista was.

[mmmbeans]

I am leaning towards desktop PC upgrade and getting a new macbook pro. I am travelling a lot this year on shoots, would come in handy.

macbook pro is the farking TITS.