well i ran spyware doctor and it came up with 210 filles

Guys guys guys, more ram does not equal more speed, necessarily. If you put in slower ram along with your original ram, it will run at that slower speed. You need to find out your motherboard info, and how fast a DDR it can take, and get that speed. It won't be the cheapest, but you will notice a HUGE difference. I went from DDR2400 to DDR3200 [512 -> 1024] and my boot up took about 20 seconds slower [win2k at the time], and just everything increased in speed. It was one of the best upgrades I did on my system, and it was only aroun $80 or so for the gig.

A faster hdd isn't going to increase anything if you have enough ram. The trick is to have enough ram to never really need a paging file. If you have a gig of ram, and don't run a BUNCH of **** [like spyware and such], then you aren't going to see much of a gain from an increase in paging file speed. HOWEVER you will see a speed increase with HDD usage, like when video editing [a HUGE hog on HDD resources]. When going for the best, I recommend nothing other than Serial ATA [150mb/* instead of 133mb/* with IDE, not to mention smaller cables, better for cooling], 8mb cache [again HUGE difference between 2 and 8], and I use Seagate HDD'*, but Maxtor or Hitatchi are good too.

Grab Diskeeper.. that is 100x better than the windows formatter.. it isn't free, but if you PM me I think we can work something out.

Video cards increase performance if you have an onboard video controller that uses the CPU to process it'* ****, and onboard RAM to have ****. This is only in bargain basement systems, and if you are going for speed, you probably didn't buy that kind of system. Also a lot of newer Dell'* DO NOT have AGP ports and only PCI.. so you may have to look into a PCI video card.

If you have an unlocked BIOS, increase the BUS speed by 10-30mhz [the safest numbers] or 33-66mhz [pushing it a little], or 100mhz or more [I don't recommend this for you]. But, you are going to want RAM that can take this increase, so make sure you have good quality components before doing this [you run the risk of frying your RAM with this mod, so use this at your own risk].


-justin

As far as the Ram goes, I think GO knew not to go slower.

So a 5400RPM drive is going to go as fast as a 7200 if we monitored them?

The other stuff your talking about is like adding a K&N filter to your car, yea some performance will be gained, but you will be hard pressed to feel or recognize it.

Check your motherboard, and see what the fastest processor will be accepted in your computer.

What is diskeeper? And what is windows formatter? Is that just to format windows? If so, all you need is a free utility from download.com to write zeros to your harddrive if you want to go that far.

The windows defragger in XP is the same as Diskkeeper, just a few less extras. Its really all you need. And a faster hard drive will improve boot time, as well as reading larger files, which helps when you run most office apps, since they're so bloated anyhow. If you want to get serious, I recommend reading Maximum PC magazine. Lots of great tips on tweaking. Just don't load up all of the crap they give you on those freebie CDs. You'll have more junk installed then you'll ever need or use, and it will gunk up the registry.

Keep up the spyware scans on a regular basis. That, and anti-virus and firewall are required these days.

I think he meant to say defragmenter, not formatter. The one in XP is actually a licensed version of Diskkeeper.

Take a close look at the cost of the CPU upgrade. It might be more money than it is worth. 2.6ghz vs 2.8 ghz isn't that striking a difference. not too many boards will let you make huge leaps in processor speed, (not counting overclocking) since the pin config often changes between the processors.

Serial ATA hard drives are ok, if your system has the port, and can make use of the bandwidth. Generally, a faster hard drive is a good all around bet, since a fair amount of performance delay is often slow loading of executables or dll files. Boot and program launch, or opening larger files (photos, etc.) can benefit from 7200 rpm drives.

PCI Video cards are available, but AGP is preferrable. Check your sytem manual, or the manufacturer'* website or tech support to see what you can accomodate. Again, it is worth upgrading the video subsystem if you are going to play games, or do photoshop or video capture/editing. Otherwise, it might not be worth it.

could u post some better specs on ur pc... and tell us faster in what way...

browse with firefox

dell p4 2.66 not ht
80 western hd @ 7200 rpms
512 DDR ram
dell video card
dell sound card
DVD-rom
DVDRw/CDR burner

i browse with firefox
i have spyware doctor and norton IT 2k5

You don't mean the on baord video card, do ya? That sucks up RAM insted of using it'* own. Even a cheap AGP card would speed you up.

thats only if he is using intel integrated graphics....

could u give us the model # on ur dell...

and can u tell us in what way is ur system slow.