Help with upgrading-Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 or Pentium 4 3.0

[blindspott81]

Hi,

I am new to the upgrading buzz after recently replacing my DVD writer. Prior to this I had never opened a case before despite using a PC on a near daily basis for the past 5 years. I would now like to upgrade my existing computer, and would like to hear your thoughts, advice and suggestions. The reason for upgrading is that I like to do some video editing (Premiere Elements), not every day, but often enough to know my computer needs some upgrades. I like to multitask and have more than one application running at once, i.e firefox, premiere elements, itunes...

My specs: MSI P4m800 + 8237R Chipset Motherboard with a Celeron D 2.66GHz CPU. 512MB DDR RAM, 80gig Hard Drive

My main question relates to upgrading the CPU. What would give me more "bang for my buck"? An Intel Core 2 Duo E6300, 1.86GHz LGA775 or an Intel Pentium 4 630 3.0GHz Socket 775??? They are roughly the same price in my country (New Zealand).

I would also like to get a graphics card. My gaming experience has being limited to a trial version of Rise of Nations but I would like to get a little more adventurous. What graphics card (AGP) do you suggest is in the "sweet sport" right now? Any reason to choose one brand over another (GeFroce vs nVidia etc)??? Go graphics card improve video editing or is the improvement more in gaming? I will still do more video editing than gaming.

Finally, any thought of hard drive brands? I have heard some users have had some poor experiences with Western Digital and being told to stick with Seagate?

I thank you all in advance for taking a couple of minutes out of your day to share your hint, tip, suggestion, advice, feedback with me.

Bruce

 

[blindspott81]

Is there a way that I can check to see if my motherboard can support an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300???

 

[Jesse_hz]

P4m800 + 8237R is your chipset and AFAIK that chipset doesn't support anything higher than a 3.4GHz P4. It will not support a Core 2.

 

[nismo91]

hello and welcome to techspot

I greatly recommend E6300 if you're willing over it.
Here in singapore i found that the price of E6300 nearly doubled the pentium 4 3.0 ghz (even doubled pentium D 2.8ghz)

Core 2 Duo E6300 uses LGA775 as socket, if your mobo has the same, maybe it could support core 2 duo.
Graphics card change performance in 3D Games and Video playback (little noticable). For the brands, just choose between ATI Radeon OR nVidia GeForce.

For the HDD, just choose between Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital.

Hope you can choose wisely, this all mainly depends on your budget and need

 

[DonNagual]

As Jesse_hz has pointed out, your board will not support a core 2 duo CPU.

These are your upgrade options: Intel P4 5XX, 6XX, 8XX, 9XX , P4EE and Celeron D processors.

 

[Steve]

Not sure if you read our recent article were we built a Core 2 E6300 system but it sounds like this is what you are after. As the guys said the E6300 will smoke the Pentium 4 and unfortunately your existing board will not support any new Core 2 processors

 

[blindspott81]

Thank you to everyone for their thoughts and comments. I read through a few of the forums and have come to the conclusion that the E6300 is the way to go, however as Jesse_hz and DonNagual have pointed out, my motherboard will not support this. Was amazed to hear that E6300 blows a P4 3.0 out of the water so conclusively!

What would give me more noticeable performance - an extra 512MB RAM or a 128MB Graphics Card? They are roughly the same price...

Thanks -steve- I will use this as my starting point when I start my first build later in the year...

 

[SNGX1275]

If you want to go the core2duo route as you now know you will need a different motherboard, and depending on the board perhaps a different type of RAM (ddr vs ddr2) so be wary of that.

As for your hard drive question, Seagates are IMO the best to buy right now, but in reality there isn't much difference, just look for one with a good warranty.

For your RAM question or video card. Get an additional 512, having 1 gig of RAM in your system will help with video editing/processing, a new video card has almost no influence on video editing since that is handled by the CPU.

 

[raybay]

Seagate usually has a five year warranty, but watch out for some low prices OEM sales which have Seagates with only a one or three year warranty.
I agree on the extra memory... The wisest purchase you can make, next to a reliable hard drive.

 

[danimur]

Hello,

If you want to make video editing I suggest to buy a HDD with at least 160 Gb capacity or above and 1 or 2 Gb of RAM(DDR or DDR2) as was suggested above.

You must buy a new processor and my suggest is to buy a Dual Core type (as was suggested by my predecessors) . But I'm not the one to decide what processor shall buy, you are.

Of course, you'll need a good video adapter one with 256 M or above. The new video adapters with 512 M are very expensive.

 

[blindspott81]

A big thank you to everyone for their advice, help and suggestions. I have lined up a 160gig HDD and an extra 512mb RAM.

Much thanks,

Bruce