Upgrading Suggestions

[patzeep]

HI Everyone! The system I am now using is an ETOWER 500is. The information on the machine Emachines Tech Support sent to me is
as follows:

"Chipset: Intel® 824403LX Supports ata/33.
The motherboard supports the Intel Celeron® Socket 370 (PPGA) CPU's.
· Supported Processors (66 MHz bus)
· Intel Celeron® (300a, 333, 366, 400, 433, 466, 500, 533 MHz) processors.
There are no jumpers to set the CPU speed. The CPU speed and voltage are
automatically detected.
This system's bios (basic input output system) should recognize
a hard drive up to 8gb naturally. It will probably recognize
a drive larger than 8gb as long as you use a dynamic disk
overlay program, which commonly is included with the new
drive. If it was not, you may consider checking the drive
manufacturer's web site. You may also consider obtaining an ide controller card. (The hard drive now in it is 4.3gb)
The bios chip is soldered onto the motherboard
and is not replaceable. "

Now, considering this info, what are your suggestions for upgrades for
better preformance? I know I HAVE to have a larger harddrive; would it matter if I actually got a larger or could I get decent preformance
by slaving a new one to the old one? Main use is for games- The Sims
and all their expansion disks is the game of the month this month anyway, schoolwork and surfing. Could I put all the gaming stuff
on 1 drive and still have it easily accessable? I vaguely remember
from our 1st computer that I had problems.. but that was Win95 and
I had to partition the drives.

Now I gather from the information they sent that I can't upgrade the processor past 533 so why bother. Is there any way around this?

I now have 190mg of Ram, but have had it up to 256 and frankly didn't see any real differance in operation.

What I'd REALLY like to do is buy a new set, but well, finances just don't allow it at the moment.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks so much!
Pat

[pentachris]

What processor do you currently have installed? And talk to us about your video.

------------------
Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

[patzeep]

Intel® Celeron™ 500MHz ATI Rage Pro Turbo 2X AGP with 4MB SGRAM
Crystal CS4280 3D PCI Audio ....

[mjc]

Firstly, finding an 8GB drive is not going to be cheap....I recently purchased a 40GB Maxtor fo $80...new from a reliable source. So you are either going to need touse overlay software or many partitions....or if you have a free PCI slot an add-in card (like a Promise ATA100 card)...

Secondly, price things out, you may be suprised at what you can get for a couple of hundred $$$ (about what an 8GB drive would set you back getting it from eMachines...), a new (like a 32 or 64MB) video card would help improve thins somewhat.

Under win98 the perfromance gains from additional memory flatten out between 128MB and 256MB, usually at or near 128. You won't see much if any gains in performance, but you may be able to run more apps at once (depending on how resource intensive they are)

------------------
mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.


[This message has been edited by mjc (edited 02-18-2002).]

[patzeep]

Thanks mjc! I think you're right. I've been looking around at harddrive costs---Amazing that a 8-10gig is almost as much as a 30-40! May just start saving pennies and get a new one.
Pat