Hey guys!
I'm donating an old Windows XP-computer to my grandpa to introduce him to the modern world called: The Internet .
But even though I reinstalled the OS (Windows XP Professional SP3) the computer is quite slow...
I monitored some CPU/RAM usage and my RAM runs at 75% usage on average with spikes to 90%+ when I have 3 Google Chrome tabs open or when I open my Antivirus (AVG 2013).
So my conclusion is that I definitely need to get some more RAM for the computer, it has 2x256MB PC3200 400MHz. I will buy 2x1GB PC3200 400MHz Corsair Value select (Please, give your opinions on that memory if you have any )
But my question is: Will anything else in the computer bottleneck it severely when I upgrade the RAM or will it work fine and dandy?
Some general specs I can think of are:
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.6GHz (1 core but 2 threads with HT)
Motherboard: Some OEM-board called "Fujitsu D1627"
PSU: Some no-name 300W
GPU: ATI Radeon 9200SE
HDD: Western Digital 80GB
All help is very appreciated!
Edit1: I have now upgraded to 2GB RAM and boy is it fast. I am almost getting SSD'speed when loading programs (Not really, but very close to) It feels like I'm running a very fast HDD even though this one has been used for 5-6 years and is 10 years old.
The performance gain in 3dmark2001SE was only 25+ points so I guess that when it comes to benchmarks, it's just about the CPU/GPU but in terms of system performance, it's up to snuff now
The obvious bottleneck now is the CPU but not that big that it's worth to make a deal out of it. It spikes up at 80-95% usage when I load applications like Google Chrome but then immediately goes down to 0-10% after it has loaded. If it was my computer I would have overclocked the CPU but without being able to monitor temperatures that's not an option.
The next step is too see what grandpa thinks about it ^^