CPU upgrade to Barebones

[haha86]

Hi there,

As a photographer I'm using Photoshop and Lightroom to process my images at the moment and find the image previewing, edits and conversion process too slow. What would you recommend is the main limiting factor for speed in graphics work, CPU? RAM? System details below.

Would adding more RAM of this speed help or do I need to get a whole new system with dual core etc.? I've got two sticks of 1Gb RAM on order and want to know what you recommendations are for the CPU? Can this board take dual core of some kind? All the different sockets etc. confuse me!

Thanks

System:

Barebones with 945P7AA-8EKRS2H Foxconn motherboard, P4 3Ghz currently. 1.5Gb DDR2 RAM
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz LGA775 945
PCI-E 800FSB, Heatsink And Fan
No. BB-L630512

[system7]

The latest bios for that board is 22/05/2006, which predates Core2Duo and Conroe E2140, so your upgrade path is limited to old Dual Core Pentiums like the D925, which you might pick up cheaply. About twice as fast.
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/en-gb/product/Motherboards/detail_overview.aspx?ID=en-tt0000175#

4 GB of memory will doubtless help. A very modest graphics card like an 8400GS or HD2400PRO would probably improve graphics responsiveness a bit.

Quite possibly a new mATX motherboard and processor would be all you need to do a Core2Duo or Quad upgrade, if your memory is DDR2-533 upwards. And a retail Windows OEM disk to install the software, of course.

Edit: Fixed Link

[Jonny2Bad]

945 chipsets are getting on a bit now for the newer cpu's, my advice would to upgrade motherboard and cpu, what ram did you order? Give us idea of budget? But for what you want a quad would be the best bet, they just eat through video encoding and photoshop tasks.
7 the 925's etc are just renamed p4's really there would be no point in spending money on that upgrade.

[haha86]

Hi. Thanks so much for the responses. I was considering a new Barebones bundle and then moving my hard drives and graphics card across, but I am really trying to make this upgrade super super budget, as I'm just in the process of forking out for new Photoshop software and a Blu-Ray burner (for archiving)......

I've ordered 2 sticks of 1Gb DDR2 533 RAM to replace the original 2x256mb ones. This should give me 3Gb in total and I've flicked the boot.ini /3gb switch to allow Photoshop more access. They cost me £30 so doing well! A good barebones costs over £140. Was hoping just to be able to throw in a Dual Core processor and carry on with my current XP installation (which is a fairly complex one!). So the D925 is the fastest processor that my machine can take? How does it compare to my P4 3.0Ghz and to the newer Core Duo and Quad cpu's?

Thanks again!

[haha86]

now the guy on livechat says my processor is the best one my board can take i.e. no dual core at all.........is this right?

[system7]

He may well be right...The Intel 945P chipset (http://www.intel.com/cd/products/services/emea/eng/chipsets/216243.htm) supports Pentium D dual core with ease, but Foxconn may have cheaped out on the CPU voltage regulators so as not to be able to power one. It's a shame, especially since the mobo has RAID, I use the £58 Pentium Dual Core D820 at work and it's not too bad, about the same as an E2160, but hot-running.

Now don't listen to Jonny if you want to get this done on a budget. He'll empty your pockets faster than Paris Hilton drops her knickers... :D

Firstly here's a tried and tested budget overclocking motherboard, Dutchy's old £44 Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GIG-G31S2L

Here's 2X 2GB of £56 Geil DDR2-800 for your Photoshopping which is evidently happy up to DDR2-1066 with a voltage bump:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GEL-BD644G
You can exchange that DDR2-533 for this.

Finally, here's an OK £51 2.2 GHz Core2Duo E2200:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?IL-E2200

You should be able to overclock that CPU to a healthy 2.93 GHz with a bump to FSB 266 and memory running at DDR2-833. The £85 E7200 CPU (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?IL-E7200) is worth considering too, since it has support for SSE4 video encoding extensions which may up performance about 25% in that application.

That's £150 exactly. Last issue is that you can install a Windows CD using the COA license number on the back of your machine, provided you've never activated that license before. I'd guess you've been using Nova's pre-activated restore disks up to now. :wink:

[Jonny2Bad]

wont be as fast as the quad though :lol: 8)

[system7]

wont be as fast as the quad though :lol: 8)
Or as expensive.
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?IL-Q6600E
But don't let me stop you.... :P

[Jonny2Bad]

Lol yeah but here we have some1 that is acually gonna use the power of a quad to its fullest seems silly to suggest anything else, plus there is plenty of money in photography lol i'm sure they can afford it :wink: