Upgrading woes start worrying us every 2 to 3 years and we either go to the market or depend on our vendors to get ourselves the newest hardware. As per Moore's Law, the performance of a component doubles in almost every two years. After the launch of the Core 2 Duo processors we have seen almost double the performance than what we used to see in the hot Pentium days which generated more heat than processing power.
The first thing we want to upgrade is memory - both RAM and ROM . So as per today's needs an ideal system should have atleast :-
1. 2GB of DDR-2 667MHz RAM
2. 250GB Hard Disk
3. DVD-RW
Next comes the processor and the motherboard. There are many people who upgrade these components after a long time but as of today we have many enthusiasts around who upgrade more frequently. Now motherboard+processor combos can be classified into several categories namely: Entry-level, All rounder, Gaming rig, Workstation, Enthusiast platform.
1. For Entry-level PCs buyers should look for decently powerful Dual-core processors. In this category AMD has some of the best processors at sweet
prices as compared to Intel. The processor to look out for are Athlon 64 X2 4200+. Its is a very good processor at a throwaway price tag of around 3K.
For a motherboard, one should consider something having a GeForce 7050, GeForce 6100, GeForce 7100, Radeon 690V or Radeon 690G based on-board graphics solution.
2. For an All rounder PC, I would suggest the slightly powerful Athlon 64 X2 5600+ processor and a AMD 780G based motherboard. This configuration can also be used with a HTPC as the new 780G handles HD content pretty well.
3. For a gaming rig a fast Dual-core like the Core 2 Duo E8400 is good enough. For the motherboard, something based on the P45 chipset is good enough. Discerning gamers who want SLI or CrossFire should rather look at motherboards based on the nForce 780i or 790i for SLI and X38 or X48 for CrossFire.
4. For a workstation a Quad-Core processor will be good. The older Q6600 is still good enough to handle all the bandwidth-intensive applications but if some wants a newer processor the Q9450 will be great but it costs atleast 5K more than the Q6600 for the performance it gives. For the motherboard one should look at the P35 or P45 boards which have good connectivity options. Brands to look out for are Asus and Gigabyte.
5. The Enthusiast will always look for something extra. The Core 2 Extreme processors and motherboards like the Striker-II Extreme or Maximus-II Extreme from Asus should be enough to fulfill his needs.
Hardware Upgrade Guide
Re: Hardware Upgrade Guide
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