It’s Time For An Upgrade… But What’s Best? – THG.RU

Introduction

The scene’s a familiar one to anyone who owns a PC and uses it on a regular basis – two years after buying it; the computer is a lame duck. In the past, constant updates of Microsoft’s operating systems and Office applications made hardware upgrades necessary. Times have changed however and 2D applications are no longer the driving force for new processors, as the following performance charts show. Today, 3D games are the most typical resource-eaters on the consumer market. In the professional segment, image processing, rendering, ray tracing and CAD constantly demand more processing power from a system.

Many users don’t want to dump their old PC after two years in order to buy a new one. This means that the only alternative is to upgrade. We’ll show you how new components can be integrated in order to ‘revive’ your old PC. The report investigates the various upgrading options that exist, such as a new processor, more RAM, a bigger hard disk and a new graphics board. Along with the effect of specific upgrades on overall performance, we’ll also take a look at the relationship between price and the effort involved in carrying out the upgrade. Furthermore, we will point out areas where a specific upgrade may not produce any overall benefit in the performance of your PC. Anyone who intends to add new components to improve an old system should always check which components would actually have the desired effect.

The Basic System

In order to be able to evaluate the various components that can be upgraded, we need a starting point, i.e. a basic system. We selected a PC that is fine for text processing and spreadsheet applications but which is no longer adequate for compute-intensive applications.

Our ‘oldies’ graphics boards were a Matrox Millennium II AGP with 8 MByte WRAM and a VoodooІ board from Hercules. These boards are now two years old. The Matrox board was very popular due to its excellent 2D performance and the signal quality it offered. The VoodooІ chipset found wide support due to its exceptionally good 3D performance (at the time). Two years ago, this solution, with a main 2D board and an additional 3D board was commonly regarded as the top solution. Today, for pricing reasons, graphic chips are used that incorporate both 2D and 3D functionality.

Test Configuration and Upgrade Components

The First Option: Adding more System Memory (RAM)

The size of the system’s main memory (also referred to as ‘system memory’) plays a significant role in most applications. Whereas the memory of the graphics card is a decisive factor for the performance of games, 2D and professional applications require more system memory. A large part of the system memory is used by the operating system. The official minimum requirements for Windows 95 and 98 are 32 MB, whereas we recommend 64 MB. Windows NT 4 needs at least 64 MB and Windows 2000 even requires 128 MB. These requirements include reserves for multitasking. This is the term used to refer to the system memory’s ability to have several applications open simultaneously, for example, Word, Excel, an Internet browser and an E-mail program. If physical system memory starts to run short, then the operating system starts to save data on the hard disk (the technical term is ‘swapping’). This means that additional system memory is simulated through the use of the hard disk. It goes without saying that access to the hard disk is much slower than access to the system memory. In other words, access times drop from nanoseconds to milliseconds. The minute the computer has to start swapping, the overall performance rapidly drops and the system noticeably slows down. Don’t be misled to believe that more system memory will lead to a linear increase in performance. If, for example, you have 512 MB in your PC, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your computer will be radically faster than one with 256 MB. Basically, the operating system and running applications determine the memory requirements. Remaining system memory is hardly used. The following diagram shows the possible performance increases for our system as a result of an upgrade to 128 MB and 256 MB respectively.

More RAM: Office Applications

Under Windows 98, an upgrade from 64 to 128 MB RAM yields almost an 8% performance increase. An additional upgrade to 256 MB, however, yields much less – the possible additional boost is under 2%. At this point it should be noted that the SYSmark 2000 applications run individually – multitasking is therefore not in use. If you often have to work on several applications simultaneously, then having 128 MB under Windows 98 will yield a higher performance than is shown here. It follows, however, that the additional upgrade to 256MB produces the same minor performance increase in multitasking as mentioned above in relation to individual applications. The following two diagrams set out the details on the SYSmark results:

SYSmark 2000 is divided into two parts: Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity. Internet Content Creation (ICC) includes Bryce 4, Elastic Reality 3.1,

Photoshop 5.5, Premiere 5.1 as well as Windows Media Encoder 4.0. In order to measure performance for Office applications, SYSmark uses Corel Draw 9, Excel 2000, Naturally Speaking 4.0, Netscape Communicator 4.61, Paradox 9, Powerpoint 2000 and Word 2000.

The results are explained by the list of applications used for the benchmark – the ICC programs place heavier demands on the processor.

More RAM: Office Applications – Continued

If you use the NT 4.0 operating system, you’ll achieve even higher performance in Office application with similar upgrades. SYSmark 2000 shows that NT4 has 12% better performance than Windows 98 with 128 MB. However, it can also be seen that with only 64 MB NT4 is really struggling to make ends meet. The operating system reserves a large portion of system memory for itself. For Office productivity, NT4 does best with 128 MB because 256 MB doesn’t significantly improve system performance any further. Note: this statement applies to standard applications for the office. Professional and high-end applications often demand more system memory. 128 MB may not even be enough for the latter type of applications.

Whether you are upgrading to improve Office Productivity or Internet Content Creation, the story remains the same – the system needs a certain minimum amount of memory in order to work quickly. Additional memory is only needed if corresponding applications demand it. If the applications you are using do not demand additional memory, there’s not much point in going over the top on a memory upgrade.

More RAM: 3D Games

Expendable, a Direct3D game, doesn’t appear to have any use for additional system memory. The deviating result at 256 MB memory is due to distribution factors during benchmarking.

Where Expendable doesn’t seem to profit from more system memory, Quake III Arena does. However, the performance boost is under 2%.

Not All RAM Is The Same

When buying system memory, make sure that the new modules will fit in your system and that the access time of the new modules is at least the same as that of the old modules. For our base system, simple DIMM modules with an access time of 10ns were fine because the LX chipset only handles 66 MHz for the memory interface. In theory, an upgrade of this memory type would suffice. If you intend to do a large-scale upgrade in the near future, or are playing with the idea of buying a new PC, then check whether you can possibly use the memory modules you already have. Apart from 10ns memory, which is slowly disappearing, PC100 and PC133 SDRAM are quite widespread. As the numbers indicate, these memory modules are intended for use in 100 MHz and 133 MHz clock rate machines. [A small note at this point: there is no ‘PC66 specification’. Intel previously only referred to PC SDRAM for such modules. The definitions PC100 and PC133 were only introduced at a later point in time.]

Three reasons exist for buying faster memory modules (quite apart from the fact that the price difference isn’t large):

1. You intend to overclock your existing system. For example, we want to run our 266 MHz Pentium II at with 75 MHz bus clock x4 instead of 66 MHz bus clock x4 (i.e. 300 MHz processor clock). As the access times for the memory chips must then drop, a PC100 module is good in order to be on the safe side.
2. You intend to buy a new mainboard in the near future and want to keep your old PC for the time being. Plan ahead a little – if you’re going to buy SDRAM for your Pentium II or K6-2 anyway, then buy PC133 from the start. This module is also suitable for the new 133 MHz chipsets.
3. 10-ns memory (“PC66”) normally costs about the same as PC100 memory due to decreasing demand in the market.

The Second Option: A Faster Processor

The most popular and effective method of improving a PC’s performance is to buy a faster processor. If your system already has enough system memory, a fast hard disk and a modern graphics board, then upgrading with a new processor is a good choice. Before you go ahead and buy one, consider the following points:

• Read the latest ‘readme’ files on the home page of the motherboard manufacturer concerning BIOS. Does the current BIOS support the new processor, or can this be achieved by means of a BIOS update?
• If the point above is answered in the positive, check whether the motherboard offers the correct voltage for the new processor as well. Can higher multiplication factors be set? You can normally get this information from the homepage of the respective manufacturer.
• Which processor type do you need? Slot 1, socket 370, socket 7, and slot A etc.? An upgrade normally doesn’t make sense (or indeed isn’t possible) for the older sockets 3, 5 and 8.

Beware of Pentium II PC’s because models that run at over 333 MHz work with a bus clock of 100 MHz. Therefore, if you own one of the first Pentium II’s (233, 266, 300 or 333 MHz) then you’ll only be able to upgrade to a Celeron, unless you want to upgrade your motherboard. Of course this isn’t a disadvantage, as the Celeron still represents the best price-to-performance ratio on the market at the moment. In fact, we fitted one into our base system.

A Faster Processor: Standard Applications

Our PC was about 40% faster when using standard applications under Windows 98 after exchanging the Pentium II 266 with a Celeron 466. The additional 64 MB memory increased performance by a further 12%.

Under Windows NT, the performance gain when using the Celeron 466 with 64 MB memory was about 35%, i.e. somewhat less than under Windows 98. If however, you buy the processor and a 64 MB memory module, then a gain of 60% is possible!

The diagram confirms that a fast processor can only reach optimum performance if it has sufficient system memory. The Celeron 466 delivers a 17% performance gain when memory is upgraded from 64 to 128 MB.

A Faster Processor: 3D Games

Whereas Expendable does not run any faster by increasing the size of system memory, it does however, with a faster processor. This 3D game then yields about 26% better frame rates. A boost of this magnitude often means that the next higher resolution can be used for the game.

Hold onto your seats because Quake 3 profits linearly from virtually every additional clock signal: merely by swapping the 266 MHz processor with a Celeron 466 results in Quake running about 85% faster! This means that Quake 3 also gains from the integrated, fast L2 cache because the CPU clock rate increases mathematically by only 75% when moving from a 266 to a 466 MHz processor. The memory upgrade of 64 MB therefore proved sufficient for Quake Arena.

Why Celeron?

Users who wish to revive their first-generation Pentium II or Celeron computer won’t get much better than the Celeron. These processors are currently available with 533 MHz but the performance gain in relation to the price isn’t significant when compared with the 466 or 500 MHz versions. A Celeron 466 currently costs less than $80, the 500 MHz versions costs between $90 and $100. The 533 MHz version costs about $110 and is the only one that is relatively expensive and therefore not really recommended. The advantages of Intel’s chip are as follows:

• High overall performance despite the slow bus clock speed of 66 MHz because the L2 cache is actually run at full processor speed
• Attractive pricing – therefore good for upgrades
• Well suited to older mainboards, as long as these have high clock multiplication factors
• Can be used not only in socket 370 mainboards, but also in Slot 1 mainboards (via a converter board, $5 – $10)

This image shows you a somewhat older socket 370 to Slot 1 converter board from ABit. Nowadays, most manufacturers offer these adapter boards and even more recently for FC-PGA processors also. Many socket 370 circuit boards can be made FC-PGA compatible with a soldering iron and a little patience. Read FC-PGA Pentium III on Celeron PGA370/Slot1 Converter Cards for more information about this.

Why Celeron? – Continued

The Celeron is shown in its socket here …

… and the heatsink and CPU fan must be there too.

Apart from all the virtues listed above, the Celeron is also a good choice if you want to upgrade your computer with the future in mind. Many users are thinking about a fast Pentium III today, but shy away when they look at the prices. As you may know, future generation processors will primarily be supplied as socketed versions instead of versions for the more expensive slot solution. In keeping with this, Intel is pushing the socketed Pentium III with FC-PGA packaging (Flip Chip Pin Grid Array) for cost reasons. As with the Celeron, this chip is mechanically designed to fit the socket 370 solution. However, from an electrical point of view, there’s two different versions of Socket370, one for the Celeron 266-533, the other for Celeron 566, 600 and the FC-PGA Pentium III processors. The Pentium-III FC-PGA processors and the new Celerons with Coppermine-128 core can’t be used in old socket 370 boards (with the LX, ZX or VIA Apollo Pro chipsets), however a Celeron works perfectly well in motherboards designed for the new Pentium-III FC-PGA. This approach currently seems like a very good investment because a fast Celeron is enough to start with. At the end of the year, Pentium III processors with 700 MHz and more will be affordable. An upgrade will then be really worth it.

The Third Option: An up-to-date Graphics Board

Gamers and multimedia freaks, in particular, will look to buy a new graphics board to upgrade their current system. We’d prefer not to recommend upgraders to buy one of the current top models with the GeForce chipset or the ATI Rage Fury MAXX unless their wallet needs to be emptied. They are a high-budget upgrade, and the main effect of those fast 3D-chips is that they make your CPU become the limiting factor in 3D-games, which might only be beneficial for higher resolutions, not for higher frame rates. More than $250 can be paid for the pleasure.

A good compromise is a card with the TNT2 Ultra or the Diamond Viper II with the Savage 2000 graphics chip, both lying in the mid-range. The price/performance ratios of our recommendations are decidedly better than for a GeForce.

We used the Viper II for our measurements. Read the S3 Diamond Viper II Review for statements about general performance.

New Graphics Board – Standard Applications

Run-of-the-mill Windows applications gave an 8% performance gain with a faster graphics board. Incidentally, this gain happens to be about the same as you can expect when upgrading from 64 to 128 MB system memory. Under Windows 98, the Viper II doesn’t profit from a memory upgrade to 128 MB.

Under Windows NT 4.0 we experienced a real surprise: the new, faster (?) graphics board actually causes office and graphics tasks to run about 5% slower! Only after we upgraded to 128 MB did the performance increase – and then by almost 15%. In other words, if you use a Viper II graphics board, the system will be about 21% faster if you also upgrade by 64 MB system memory.

Overall, the Office productivity benchmark dropped noticeably while the applications in Internet Creation Content were practically as fast as before. This means that the lower results can be tolerated because a graphics board that is three years old would still be adequate for Word or Internet surfing.

The reason for this result is probably the NT driver that comes with the Viper II board. The graphics routines seem to assume a certain memory size in order to attain optimum speed.

New Graphics Board – 3D Games

Expendable disappointed us once again. The current VoodooІ graphics driver (3.02.02) appears to be optimized for Direct3D, something that can’t be said for the Viper II. That wasn’t what an upgrade was intended to achieve.

The Viper II really convinced us when run under Quake 3. The game yielded about 26% better frame rate performance whereas you will recall that doubling the size of the system memory to 128 MB only brought about marginal gains.

At this point we’d like to ask the driver developers at NVIDIA and Diamond/S3 to go further than optimizing the drivers for the most common 3D shooter games only. There are other games that would almost certainly profit more from optimization – if only the drivers were good enough.

The Fourth Option: A Bigger Hard Disk

Technological advances have also been made in the realm of hard disks. If one takes a look at the current data transmission rates that are possible, then it would appear that a performance gain is realistic here too. Almost 30 MB per second are possible with the current IDE top models (e.g. Maxtor 54098U, 40 GB, 7200 rpm). A pleasant by-product is the reduction in access times.

Naturally we picked a model with a good price/performance ratio: the Seagate Barracuda ATA (ST320430A). This UltraDMA/66 drive costs less than $170, offers 20 GB and 7200 rpm and has both excellent data rates and access times according to current standards.

The current model is also available with 13 and 28 GB. The performance values are probably only minimally different.

Bigger Hard Disk – Office Applications

Exchanging our good old Quantum Fireball ST 3.2A with the top-level Seagate Barracuda ATA gave about an 8% performance gain – almost as much as upgrading system memory from 64 to 128 MB. A combination of both improvements gave the system a boost of almost 12%.

There is no need to go into the NT4 results here because they are exactly the same as the gains we had under Windows 98.

Bigger Hard Disk – 3D Games

You’d almost certainly expect a bigger performance gain with computer games. However, most of the program codes can be held in system memory these days whilst the graphics board handles rendering. Access to the hard disk is only necessary when loading altered game data (e.g. a new level, another opponent etc.) or textures.

With Expendable, the (much) faster hard disk only gave about a 4% gain, which is just about noticeable.

Quake 3 Arena also ran about 4% faster. The lower result, by 0.1 percent with 128 MB, is due to benchmark tolerances.

Exchanging the hard disk has the advantage of offering much more space for programs and data. As with other components, you should take a look at the price/performance ratio, in cents/MB. The hard disk performance plays a subordinate role for games. Of course, it makes sense to compare hard disks that belong to the same speed class – 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm. Hard disks will soon be a more important topic for us.

To Upgrade or Buy New Equipment, That Is The Question.

If you have already decided to buy a new processor, more memory or a faster graphics board, then you don’t have to ask yourself this question. However, if in the short term you intend to buy more than two components, then you should consider buying a new system altogether.

The moment you need to exchange the main board, you’re well advised to renew all the other main components. An old PCI graphics board, for example, is a waste of time in a Pentium III or Athlon computer. If your computer at home is completely outdated, then upgrading makes little sense, if any. Think about buying a new one if the following applies: –

• Your system is outdated in every respect: a processor of 233 MHz or less, hard disk under 4 GB, less than 64 MB memory
• Upgrading can’t be done without a series of additional costs: power supply (230W) is too weak for an Athlon CPU or GeForce board, main board doesn’t support the necessary processor voltage, main board voltage regulators aren’t suited to the power consumption of a modern AGP graphics board, old system memory won’t run in a new main board
• The intended upgrade would cost you well over $500
• A new complete PC system would give you overall advantages: a DVD drive instead of CD-ROM, better soundboard, additional interfaces such as USB etc.

Depending on the circumstances, it is often better to sell the old machine for a fair price and use the money to buy a new PC. It’s important to know that you’ll also get a better price for a complete system rather than just separate parts that are older anyway. There are plenty of people who will certainly be happy to be able to buy a low-price PC.

Benchmarks Summary

To finish the report off, we have collected all the results in large graphics so that you can compare them.

Standard Applications – Windows98 SE

You can see straight away that a fast processor with adequate memory can’t be beaten. In order to help you find the correct upgrade for your requirements, here again are the results sorted according to Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity.

Standard Applications – Windows NT 4

A faster processor and more memory are also a good bet under Windows NT 4.0

3D Games

Faster processors dominate where games are concerned. Buying a state-of-the-art GeForce performance wonder should be thought about carefully when upgrading because the price/performance ratio is not attractive in this field. Before exchanging the graphics board we recommend that you consult our Graphics Guides.

It’s possible to play at higher resolutions than 800×600 with the Viper II in comparison to the Voodoo2 (without SLI), but we expected a better performance gain. Boards with the TNT2 Ultra are interesting alternatives.

Summary

A carefully planned upgrade can be less expensive than buying a new complete PC system, however the additional organizational overhead is higher. If you can invest a little time and thought the one component really worth exchanging and upgrading is the processor. Upgrading from 266 MHz to 466 MHz for about $80 helped our PC run about twice as fast in most application areas. The average performance gain was about 30%. Pay great attention to the socket type, make sure the BIOS is up-to-date and ensure that the power supply voltage (for K6 devices) and possible multiplication factors are available on the main board. Investing in memory helps to improve things too because the system doesn’t have to swap data to the hard disk so often. 128 MB is sufficient for most Windows 98 users. The current price for 64 MB memory is about $45, which is an acceptable price.

If you’re thinking about buying one of the latest graphics boards, then consider the real use of the card very carefully because the prices are very high in comparison to the additional performance they offer. As the test showed, those high-tech boards don’t necessarily run better and faster than older ones, unless you are looking at high resolutions. If however, you’re swapping an old board that has no, or little 3D functions, then buying a new board is a good idea for gamers. Voodoo2 users (especially for boards with SLI combination) can, in our opinion, do without a graphics board upgrade for the time being, if games are only played occasionally.

Exchanging a hard disk is only worthwhile if you need more space. If you want higher performance, going for a new processor or more memory is a better idea. You should only buy a new hard disk if the old one is bursting at the seams. If you want to buy a new hard disk, consider the following setup: use the new, faster hard disk for the operating system and applications and the old hard disk as a secondary storage medium for your data. Installing the operating system and your applications takes time and each upgrade contains a certain risk factor. Therefore, look around for a competent and a good dealer because incompatibilities are not rare. If all else fails, you should be able to either swap or return a component in order to avoid wasting money.

Happy upgrading!