Need Advice...

I need some advice. Right now my system is very strong in areas and very weak in others. For instance, on the up side, i have an Asus A7A266 mobo, [email protected] ghz thunderbird, and Geforce 2 Pro. While on the down side I have PC-100 RAM, and a slow hard drive. My pc mainly takes a long time to load up the OS (Win XP Pro), load programs, somewhat slow sometimes on internet (could be faster I believe), and takes a very long time to load up games (40+ seconds to load Wolfenstein Multiplayer Test). I am not exactly sure which areas of the system will improve the above problems, whether memory, hard drive, or a combination of both. I will post pics of my current sandra test to demonstrate the weaknesses. I am open to suggestions on fixing up these problems ($200.00 dollars max). Thx

Here is the memory benchmark: PC100 @ 133 mhz

As far as upgrades I am considering, my mobo only has 2 slots for DDR, so if I were to upgrade it would be beneficial to buy one stick of 512 RAM, to allow for future upgrades. I am also considering a new FAST hard drive, possibly around 18 gbs, simply for the purpose of running the os, applications, and games. I would keep the slower 40 gb drive for backup of movies, mp3s, and whatnot. Any suggestions to economical improvement would be appreciated

I have the same issues with my ram... but how do you have a 2.2g @ 2.5?????

If you truly are that fast than you need faster ram than pc100 or even pc133 !!

That would be like putting hard rubber tires on a porsche, your choking your performance!


*****edit*****

I just saw your sig ... 1.2g @ 1.4 - thats sound better... I recomend buying some Micron MT or Crucial Ram - PC133 CL2 or PC150

You can get that fairly cheap!

Go with DDR, its the same price as PC133. You can get a stick of Crucial DDR PC2100 and a 40gb IBM HD for under 150. They only have 256mb stick though, no 512's. But its great RAM.

Yeah, that was a typo, [email protected], although I can push it to 2.47, i like to keep it cooler. Anyways, right now I am going to try defragmenting the drive. I have formatted that drive about 5 different times and suppose it needs a thorough defragment. I ran a benchmark on my other hard drive which is twice as old as the other, and it scored 2X higher, kinda strange . One question I have is if the upgraded RAM will have a "noticeable" effect on the computer, and in which areas. Thx again for the replies

They will both be an improvement. However i think the harddrive would be more noticible. When i got my new one it was very noticble, and when i upgraded from ATA66 to ATA100 though a mobo change that was noticible too. Things load so fast now.

Yeah, I have worked on PCs with 7200 RPMs which absolutely toasted my own. My drive is rated at 5400rpm at ATA 100, although I do not think this is enabled. I hate these tough decisions on what to upgrade. I also need to upgrade my 15 inch monitor and diminutive speakers. But I think I will save that for later. Oh, and I posted another thread ( http://forums.overclockers.ws/vb/showthread.php?threadid=44388 ) in regards to attempting to defragment the drive to improve performance....

Am I missing something here? 2.2Ghz Thunderbird?

Your correction seems even too mad to believe. Please dont tell me they have like XP2200 out now or something.

Sorry, I can't type