My roomate has a Dell Pentium 4, 1.8 GHz with a built in Intel video card, 256MB RAM and it's running windows XP. He's been having a lot of performance issues. I've already defragged the disk so I don't think that's the issue. As a linux person, I'm tempted to say it's all Microsoft's fault, but I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm thinking the best thing is to upgrade some of the hardware. We're going to put more RAM in no matter what, since it's so damn cheap. I was wondering about a couple of other things though:
1. Does the chip clock speed make a big difference? In other words, should we look into buying a 2.4 GHz P4 (I think that's the max his motherboard takes)?
2. Does the video card make a big difference in normal windows operations (like logging in, downloading music, word processing, etc.)? He seems to be satisfied with the performance while playing games, but it's very slow to load programs and in general operation.
3. Regardless of question 2, he's thinking of getting an agp video card anyway. What's the difference between all them? is there a good site out there that really describes the difference between GeForce4 TI 4800 vs. GeForce FX 5600 vs. GeForce FX 5200, etc. ?
Thanks,
Venkman
1. Does the chip clock speed make a big difference? In other words, should we look into buying a 2.4 GHz P4 (I think that's the max his motherboard takes)?
2. Does the video card make a big difference in normal windows operations (like logging in, downloading music, word processing, etc.)? He seems to be satisfied with the performance while playing games, but it's very slow to load programs and in general operation.
3. Regardless of question 2, he's thinking of getting an agp video card anyway. What's the difference between all them? is there a good site out there that really describes the difference between GeForce4 TI 4800 vs. GeForce FX 5600 vs. GeForce FX 5200, etc. ?
Thanks,
Venkman