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10/11/2008 06:19:26 AM · #1 |
Long story short, it's time to upgrade.
I'm dealing more with photos and editing etc. I wanna speed things up and need more HD space. My HD is an 8 yr old 30 gig and it needs to go. I'm sure a lot of my 'slow downs' (2 minutes to start things up completely from the time I push the power button) will cease after a new HD is in. Question 1: How big a HD can my mother board take because I don't know where to look. I want an IED HD. I do have a 300 GB SATA drive but for some reason when I got it I had issues with loading Windows, drivers etc...I use my 30GB for the OS and storage on the 300GB drive. Regardless, IED is what I want.
This is my motherboard GA-K8N Pro-SLI F4 and I don't know what to check for the max as far as HD size it will take.
Also, since this is an upgrade for speedy photoshop stuff, I was thinking of getting more RAM. Just wondering what would be recommended. I currently have 1GB
And, at the end of the day, it seems that my video card is nothing compared to some cheap ones that are out now. I have a NVIDIA GeForce 6600. Just wondering if this would help with anything...other than maybe getting me back into some gaming.
CPU will stay as it is (AMD Athlon 64 +3200).
So, can I get some help/suggestions. I plan on shopping tomorrow.
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10/11/2008 10:05:15 AM · #2 |
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10/11/2008 10:19:41 AM · #3 |
More is better...
Depending on what your manual says... (The online is 9 meg, my connection is a bit slow for such fun.) I'd go at least to two gigs on the ram, if your MB will take it. Win 32 bit OS (XP/Vista) don't see past 3 gig.) XP 64 is pretty much a waste of time. Was never well supported. Vista 64 is a bit better and will see a full 4 gigs of ram if the motherboard will take it.
Your motherboard will probably support most any reasonable sized drive. Does it do SATA? IDE drives are fastly dissapearing. My old Athlon 64 board, bought several years ago, took a 300 gig drive, no problem. So you should have no worries there.
The biggest improvement will come from additional ram. More ram means fewer visits to the hard drive to save and load swap files. A larger/faster hard drive will give you a small increase in speed, but much more room for files. According to the Gigabyte web site, if your bios is later than January 2002, it will support up to a 262,144 gig hard drive. If you find one that size cheap, let me know. I want one too.
-alex
Message edited by author 2008-10-11 10:23:59. |
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10/11/2008 10:26:48 AM · #4 |
Originally posted by heavyj:
Long story short, it's time to upgrade.
I'm dealing more with photos and editing etc. I wanna speed things up and need more HD space. My HD is an 8 yr old 30 gig and it needs to go. I'm sure a lot of my 'slow downs' (2 minutes to start things up completely from the time I push the power button) will cease after a new HD is in. Question 1: How big a HD can my mother board take because I don't know where to look. I want an IED HD. I do have a 300 GB SATA drive but for some reason when I got it I had issues with loading Windows, drivers etc...I use my 30GB for the OS and storage on the 300GB drive. Regardless, IED is what I want.
This is my motherboard GA-K8N Pro-SLI F4 and I don't know what to check for the max as far as HD size it will take.
Also, since this is an upgrade for speedy photoshop stuff, I was thinking of getting more RAM. Just wondering what would be recommended. I currently have 1GB
And, at the end of the day, it seems that my video card is nothing compared to some cheap ones that are out now. I have a NVIDIA GeForce 6600. Just wondering if this would help with anything...other than maybe getting me back into some gaming.
CPU will stay as it is (AMD Athlon 64 +3200).
So, can I get some help/suggestions. I plan on shopping tomorrow. |
Although usable I retired my AMD64 +3200 last year, nVidia 7800, 3G RAM and 500G IDE disk. Quite usable but once I used the AMD Phenom 9600 Quad I could never go back.
That being said, you can beef your current rig up with a few pieces.
What OS will you be using? WinXP or Vista 32bit? You can get 32bit to recognize and use 4G with a tweak, but even with the tweak that memory above 3.2G can get unstable... I would suggest 3G of RAM.
I am assuming you mean IDE (aka PATA) for the hard disk, you can pick up a couple 500G drives for $70.00 //www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822147008 a piece and slap them in there. Run your windows swapfile and print spooler on the second drive to increase performance, and give you more capacity.
Video Cards do make a difference, even though there are those that use the ol but I don't play games line excuse to not upgrade. Your nVidia is not the worst card out there right now, and (I didn't look) I believe that you are stuck with an AGP slot so the best you can do is prolly an nVidia 7800 which doesn't DirectX 10 anyways...so I would do the other parts first. A newer card (which is older by today's standards) for your system might get you a faster Core, more Memory, a second head and possibly HD out.
As to why your system is slow at start up number on cause is Maintenance and All those BS services that get installed by 3rd Parties. Defrag once a month, Checkdisk a couple times a year and third of the physical issues will go away.
When we install stuff we need to read what they are doing closely. HP (not the drivers) installs customer service software with a hook back to their site to "watch" your stuff so they can better serve you...gateway and all the rest do this as well.
Load Adobe Reader and you end up with at least 3 pieces that you really aren't aware of (not including Google Toolbar if you don't uncheck that)... adobe air, adobe.com and the download manager. All these DL managers for all the different software load a start up and go out and check for updates. It's all these BS services that drag a pewter down during start-up.
The one I see now with my users is Desktop Search. MS is pushing Windows Desktop search as an update, many users have Google Desktop Search (Sun/Adbobe force this on you if not careful) installed... theres nothing like indexing a hard disk twice at the same time to crush a pewter at start up. Get rid of one of em... (hate to say but MS's is more efficient).
Message edited by author 2008-10-11 10:43:43. |
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10/11/2008 10:42:57 AM · #5 |
Originally posted by ambaker:
According to the Gigabyte web site, if your bios is later than January 2002, it will support up to a 262,144 gig hard drive. If you find one that size cheap, let me know. I want one too.
-alex |
Where did you see this?
Originally posted by awpollard:
I am assuming you mean IDE (aka PATA) for the hard disk, you can pick up a could 500G drives for $70.00 //www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822147008 a piece and slap them in there. Run your windows swapfile and print spooler on the second drive to increase performance. |
Yes, I meant IDE. I saw one in the store here in Japan that was 100USD for a Terabyte. Not sure if the board can handle that much. In any case, I've been reading about the swapfile/spooler thing: Does this mean have OS on one drive and programs on the other?
Originally posted by awpollard:
Your nVidia is not the worst card out there right now, and (I didn't look) I believe that you are stuck with an AGP slot so the best you can do is prolly an nVidia (my fav brand) 7800 which isn't DirectX 10 anyways |
The board takes 2 x PCI-Express X 16 slot, supports two PCI-Express interface Graphics cards with SLI mode
Originally posted by awpollard:
As to why your system is slow at start up number on cause is Maintenance and All those BS services that get installed by 3rd Parties. Defrag once a month, Checkdisk a couple times a year and third of the physical issues will go away. |
I do all that, but stuff gets slow regardless. I have to format and start from scratch to get it working crisp but I haven't done that in a year.
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10/11/2008 10:53:12 AM · #6 |
Originally posted by heavyj:
Originally posted by ambaker:
According to the Gigabyte web site, if your bios is later than January 2002, it will support up to a 262,144 gig hard drive. If you find one that size cheap, let me know. I want one too.
-alex |
Where did you see this? |
Found it at the Gigabyte FAQ page, right here:
Motherboard Info |
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