Single best piece of hardware to speed up my computer?

[danzibr]

I made a thread in the desktop spec thread, but that probably wasn't the best place. Don't want to railroad it.

Back in the day (7 years ago???) it was quite the machine. My parents got my brother to build it for me for my 21st birthday, I think. It ran WoW pretty much perfectly back then, but it's starting to show its age. I don't know much about computers, so if I have to post anything else please lmk.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40 GHz
Memory (RAM): 2 GB
System type: 32-bit
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT

[Flickerdart]

One important thing to remember is that science marches on - the motherboard for your computer is likely so obsolete that you might not be able to slot in any CPU you can buy today. What's the model number for it?

As for the components, it really depends on what you want to do. For general web browsing and stuff, upgrade that RAM - you'll want two 2GB sticks, because more is pointless for a 32 bit system. If you have one 2GB stick, perfect - just buy another one exactly like it. If not, chuck them both and buy two new ones; they're cheap enough. Check what your maximum speed is, though, and don't buy anything faster than you can support.

For gaming, your biggest bottleneck is going to be that video card. The good news - your motherboard's slot should be compatible with new ones. The bad: your system is so old that it probably won't be enough to run new games. Are you on at least Windows Vista? Without that, you're not going to be doing so well in terms of gaming since you won't support DirectX 11. Also, check your power supply to make sure that you have enough juice for newer, more demanding cards.

Honestly, it shouldn't be too hard to replace that entire system with superior everything for very, very cheap.

[factotum]

One important thing to remember is that science marches on - the motherboard for your computer is likely so obsolete that you might not be able to slot in any CPU you can buy today. What's the model number for it?

No need to get the model of the motherboard to answer that--the Core 2 Quad 6600 was only available in LGA 775 socket format, and the Core 2 is pretty much the only CPU that fits that. Core i3 etc. started life on LGA 1156 and LGA 1366 formats, and I think the more modern ones have changed again.

I mean, it would be theoretically possible to get a faster Core 2 Quad to fit his motherboard, but the fastest they went is 3.2GHz, which doesn't seem like enough of an upgrade over the existing 2.4GHz to be worth the effort, frankly.

@danzibr: You're in pretty much the same position I'm in, having left it so long since I last did a computer upgrade that nothing is compatible with my existing motherboard anymore. Modern day CPUs all require DDR 3 RAM (mine is DDR2, yours might even be plain old DDR), and as discussed above, the CPU sockets are different--so you're looking at *least* to replace motherboard, CPU and RAM if you want to speed up that side of things. Getting a faster graphics card might make a difference if you mainly play games, but there's a limit to how much that will help when the rest of the system is so out of date. I'm with Flickerdart--you're probably best off just looking at replacing the entire machine at this stage.

[dark.sun.druid]

If I may respond to the topic by not responding to the topic:

One way to significantly speed up performance on your machine would be to install a relatively light Linux distro. I know you were asking about hardware, but it sounds from other answers like that's not going to be very possible at this point. If you mainly want more speed while browsing / working on documents / etc, Linux can definitely give it.

Of course, if you want to upgrade for gaming reasons, this would just be counterproductive. The state of gaming on Linux is distressingly far behind Windows, and without upgrading hardware the lighter OS wouldn't do much to help gaming performance anyway.

If you want to try this route, I recommend LXLE (http://lxle.net). I've not used it personally, but I hear great things about it, and it even has the option to make the desktop mimic an Windows XP layout, to make it really easy to switch without worrying about learning all of the new aspects of Linux right away. Potreus is also supposed to be nice if you want to run it from a Live CD/USB first, to try it without actually installing anything on your machine.

[halfeye]

I'd say:

The best way to make old systems a bit faster is install an SSD. The bigger the better, but the big ones aren'r cheap (I'd call 128 GB small, and limit that to the operating system only, but I've seen people recommend 32 GB).

If you can up the ram to 8 GB, do that. 32 bit operating systems limit you to 4GB at the most, go for 64 bit. <edit> I just remembered, I messed about with a Core 2 system a while ago, it did take DDR3, but it was entirely incompatible with 1.5 volt DDR3, and very fussy about 1.65 volt DDR3, beside which there are limits which can depend on either the motherboard or the CPU on how much DDR3 you can fit, supposing you can find any that's compatible. </edit>

There's nothing too wrong with your processor, if you can't upgrade the rest without changing the motherboard then consider replacing both, but I think I've heard it's overclockable if you want to (I don't overclock myself but I'm cautious that way, and my CPUs are newer (modern Intel compatible CPU coolers still fit those motherboards)).

That graphics card was never top of the line, there are fairly cheap ones with low power needs that would be better, supposing that your motherboard has a PCIe grapics card socket, which it probably does. The other possibility is AGP but that was already dying long before the Core 2 processors appeared.

[factotum]

I just remembered, I messed about with a Core 2 system a while ago, it did take DDR3, but it was entirely incompatible with 1.5 volt DDR3, and very fussy about 1.65 volt DDR3, beside which there are limits which can depend on either the motherboard or the CPU on how much DDR3 you can fit

I'd be surprised if a motherboard from a system 7 years old had DDR3 support--mine's only 5 years old and it only supports DDR2; also remember that the actual slots for these different types of RAM have different keying points, so you can't just drop DDR3 into a slot designed for DDR and expect it to still work in some sort of degraded mode. Non-DDR3 RAM is pretty expensive these days compared to DDR3, due to being obsolete and no longer produced in large quantities, so the RAM upgrade would likely cost a lot, especially since he has to buy a 64-bit OS to make good use of more than about 3Gb.

(Believe me, I've been looking at this myself recently, and getting very depressed over what it will cost to upgrade my PC to a point where I might be able to run stuff like GTA5 and Far Cry 4 on it).

[Flickerdart]

Far Cry 4 is pretty demanding, but GTA V doesn't need much at all - you could run it on a ~$500 machine.

[snowblizz]

A couple of people have said it, but I feel it bears repeating. There's no single piece that will really help you. Basically you'll continually be hamstrung by old tech. I'd think about a new machine entirely.

A memory upgrade would be great, 2gb don't take you far this day and age, but you are then limited by the 32-bit OS. Fun fact, the 32 bit limit counts for ALL memory, not just the ram. So plunk in a 1gb video card and 4gb of memory and someone isn't getting an address anymore. That was a surprise when a friend explained it.

The SSD is probably the best upgrade but then the question is, does your system have any SATA(2) ports, my similarly aged machine were a bit short on those because it was a half-and-half with IDE slots. At the end of the day you're stuffing a useful upgrade into a lowergrade shell.

As a rule I've mostly given up on the diea of rollign upgrades. Basically the upgrade window is too short to make it worth it (~2-3 years by my estiamtion). At the end of the day the upgrades tend to cause a cascading chain of upgrades which is probably more expensive than just upgrading into a new machine. Which you'll have to do anyway.

[halfeye]

I'd be surprised if a motherboard from a system 7 years old had DDR3 support--mine's only 5 years old and it only supports DDR2; also remember that the actual slots for these different types of RAM have different keying points, so you can't just drop DDR3 into a slot designed for DDR and expect it to still work in some sort of degraded mode. Non-DDR3 RAM is pretty expensive these days compared to DDR3, due to being obsolete and no longer produced in large quantities, so the RAM upgrade would likely cost a lot, especially since he has to buy a 64-bit OS to make good use of more than about 3Gb.
My original motherboard was an "Asus P5E3 WS Professional" which did take DDR3. I replaced it and that motherboard also took DDR3. It turns out Steam OS requires EUFI so the project was a failure, but apart from that it should have worked. The memory slots business is not just marketting I believe, if you fitted DDR3 into a DDR2 socket, there might be enough voltage difference to blow up the DDR3 I think.


(Believe me, I've been looking at this myself recently, and getting very depressed over what it will cost to upgrade my PC to a point where I might be able to run stuff like GTA5 and Far Cry 4 on it).
There are socket 775 motherboards still available which can be quite reasonable in price, and will take DDR3. You'll have to source a 64 bit OS, but it could still be cheaper than all new. New would be faster though, and the processors cost as much as modern ones, so it's only really an option if you have an old four core chip and you're desperate.

This is really not the time for buying DDR3 as an investment, it's relatively cheap now, but DDR4 is incoming, and those won't be interchangeable either.

[factotum]

I already have a 64-bit OS and 6Gb of RAM, though, so I'm not *quite* as bad a position as the OP--I still need to effectively replace motherboard, CPU *and* RAM to get anything like a worthwhile upgrade, though.

@snowblizz: That's not entirely true about memory. Graphics cards usually allocate a "window" onto their RAM which can be moved around, so the entire 1Gb of address space isn't mapped into the 4Gb available. There was a problem in the released version of Windows Vista whereby it *would* map the whole graphics card RAM into the 32-bit address space, but Microsoft soon realised what a stupid idea *that* was and it was fixed in a later update; Windows 7 and 8 never did anything like that.

[FLHerne]

Depending on the motherboard and cooling you might be able to overclock the CPU a bit - Q6600s were very good for that, and were quite often stable even at 3GHz and above.
It'll run hotter and possibly shorten the life a little - but you've already had plenty of use out of it.

I'd definitely add more RAM, but probably not spend any more on that system unless I had spare parts knocking about from something else. It's old all round - adding any one component would just lead to the performance blocking on something else.

To get a major increase in performance, you'll effectively have to build a new computer within the existing case and PSU (which is still a slight saving, of course).

[noparlpf]

At this point (especially considering your motherboard isn't going to be compatible with a lot of new stuff, but also because each new piece will just be held back by all the old stuff) I'd suggest looking at some of the "budget gaming PC builds" online. They're updated pretty regularly and you'd probably be better off with even a $500-range computer now.

[halfeye]

At this point (especially considering your motherboard isn't going to be compatible with a lot of new stuff, but also because each new piece will just be held back by all the old stuff) I'd suggest looking at some of the "budget gaming PC builds" online. They're updated pretty regularly and you'd probably be better off with even a $500-range computer now.
I think I don't necessarily agree.

A modern two core machine will have less cores. A modern two core machine with hyperthreading will be slower per virtual core than 2.4 GHz. You can definitely get a motherboard and DDR3 for a lot less than $500.

In the long run a new machine will be the way to go, but affordable DDR4 isn't here yet, and everything with DDR3 will be a dead end in two to four years time, so now is not the time to get something new and cheap.

If there was a half decent budget to spend, I'd say get a motherboard that can take DDR3, 8GB of DDR3, an OS, and juggle the remainder between an SSD and a graphics card, it won't be expandable in a few years (except perhaps the graphics card, those are still getting better fast, while CPUs aren't), but neither would a new machine bought now.

<edit> Make that affordable DDR4 systems aren't here yet. Amazon has the RAM, but the systems to use it are all socket 2011, and processors for those sockets aren't cheap. </edit>