New Computer, is it the right choice

[Saphire]

I have been having lots of problems with my computer not being fast enough for editing photos (30 sec to open a photo). I have decided it was about time I up-graded. In the past I have always built my own but this time I thought I would find the best specs with a ready made. I could buy all the parts listed and build myself but it only costs £30 extra for them to do it for me. I will be picking it up this week.

I did ask if I could have 4gb of Ram instead of the 2 but they said that XP would really only make use of 3gb (I didn't know that), they could have put 4gb in and not said a thing and made extra profit, they said if I wanted 4gb then I would have to go to Vista.

Have I made the right choice


Intel Core 2 DUO E6550 2.33GHz Processor (Socket 775)
- Abit IP35-E Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
- OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC8500 1066MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
- NEC 7170 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black)
- ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
- Western Digital 2500YS 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache
- Antec NSK4400 Super Midi-Tower Case
- Antec 380W PSU

[jamieZ740]

i think you know you have, just showing off to us 512 ram users.
saying that, 512ram can run photoshop and dreamweaver at the same time and an athlon 64 processor seems to be fine with it, i think having 3Gb ram id would see as many green "working/loading" bars. which i can handle. but i suppose it depends what you need. i need a Pc wih Usb ports and photoshop.
Jamie

[Saphire]

Jamie, its the processor I am running now that is causing the hang-ups, Its an athalon XP 2.2 with 2gb of Ram but it isn't coping at all. I bought the Ram a couple of weeks ago, thinking it was that but it isn't. I have been doing a lot of comparisons to get a good spec at reasonable cost, overclockers is close to us so I am going that route otherwise I would build my own again from scratch. So I don't have to re-load everything I will be putting the hard disk out of this machine in as my boot drive.

[yelvertoft]

Christine,
I strongly advise that you do a full back-up of all your data before you swap the drive over. As it's a different processor and motherboard, I'd be surprised if it will boot from the old HDD in the new machine. The data may well be there on the drive, but it will be easier in the long run to wipe the original HDD (after backing up) and rebuild from scratch.

Duncan

[Saphire]

Thanks Duncan, unfortunately I don't have the means to backup so so many programs and files., I have the disk partitioned so when I did the re-install of XP a few weeks ago I only formatted the first partition to put the new OS on.

I have found this tip on TweakXP.com so hopefully it will work.

Before you swap out the current motherboard go to device manager and select the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller and select your current storage controller. Right click, select update driver and select install from a list or specific location. Click don't search I will choose the driver to install and select the standard dual channel IDE controller.
This will prevent the inaccessable boot device blue screen. I have done this multiple times on different platforms with no problems.
Also I found that booting the first time with the new motherboard is best done in the Safe mode where XP will install the drivers it needs and at the same time you can install the new motherboard drivers from its CD.

[Saphire]

Well I have my new machine and it is wizzing along but now its the dreaded re-install of everything. I had done a backup but the new machine would not load it, probably because of the diferent processor.

[wolfie]

Christine I built a new PC earlier on this year, similar specs to your purchase, but unlike you I opted to use Vista Ultimate (£100 for the OEM version). and also 2 x 350Gb Ide drives & 2 x 350 gb sata drives.

I used the "C" drive from my old XP-Pro PC as slave and moved stuff across as required. I then backed up my old "C" drive to an external drive and did a reformat. This drive as now been placed in storage just in case.

So now my PC which is a dual core Athlon Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8GHz) Socket AM2 2MB L2 Cache (2x1MB) with 4 x 350gb drives. with 4Gb ram.

Now the point of my response just like XP, Vista 32bit will not recognise 4Gb ram, in my case only 3326 mb. But I feel that two matched pairs of ram are giving me a faster PC than just 3 sticks of ram, but this is marginal.

My PC also whizzes along, making CS2 and Lightroom a real pleasure to use.

[Saphire]

Wolfie, I tried to have my other drive as a slave but it didn't like it with it having XP already loaded. I have Tornado which is brilliant for linking the two machines together no software needed just plug into both via USB and copy. I have copied everything I want, I am re-installing the programs over the top, its a reminder of what I was running before. I have noticed that some programs will run without a re-install I just make a new shortcut to the program which must be good for saving on registry space.

I notice in the new case that there isn't quite as much space as my large tower , so I have bought an adapter to plug on the back of my 160gb IDE drive to turn it into Sata, whether it will work I don't know. Then I can format it ready for use.

[wolfie]

The big problem I had at first was due to having 3 operating systems on three different drives, resulting in the PC at start-up randomly using different drives. these being Vista Basic, Xp-Pro, or in fact Vista Ultimate. It took me a while to find out how to make the PC always choose my "C" drive.

Now it runs perfectly using my Sata drives in a Raid level 1 so back-up of my photos is automatic.
As I'm a little tight for room I bought a large tower which will take 2 Ide drives and 4 sata drives, so I think I'm now covered for the future.

The big problem for me is a combination of old age and newer technology, the two are not really compatible, well at least in my case.

[Saphire]

Originally Posted by wolfie

The big problem for me is a combination of old age and newer technology, the two are not really compatible, well at least in my case.

LOL! Thats why I decided to get a ready built this time around and not build myself.

Any idea's on how to low level format a drive that has been a slave for the last couple of years. I have been trying for the last 4 hours to make the drive a master.

Rather than trash my old machine it is going to a good home. I have removed the large drive which was my main drive. I had the 60gb maxtor as a slave, now I want to make that the main drive to leave in the machine. I managed to format it in Windows, is there anyway I can do a low level format as a couple of sectors seem to be corrupted. It works as a slave with no problems so why can't I get it to load either the maxtor boot software or a new install of XP.