HELP: Should I upgrade my set-up?

[illippinno]

hey everyone. i just started getting into building and upgrading computers since i built mine a few months ago. when i first built my computer, it definitely blew me away since it was a step up from my old p II system. anyway, here's what i got right now:


2.4ghz Intel Pentium IV
512mb pc2700
128mb ddr GeForce 4
200gb hard drive
533 fsb

I'm not sure what else I should mention, cuz frankly, I don't know what else matters =] But yeah, it used to run FAST, that is until I installed so many video, audio, photo and game softwares (ie. halo, adobe photoshop, adobe premiere, adobe auditions, etc.) There's really a lot more in my system right now that is probably contributing to my computer being slow. But, any suggestions on what I can do to speed it up more?

My friend told me to add more ram, but I thought 512 was sufficient enough. Would adding 512 mb more ram work? and how much does ram really affect the speed of the computer?

Also, I recently got into looking into new processors with hyper threading. What is that exactly? and how does that contribute to speed?

I really need speed (I guess) because I do a lot of photo and video editing, as well as do audio recordings and play pc games. So yeah, any suggestions?

 

[Apokalipse]

double posting?
the Hyperthreading is a feature designed so that the CPU can process more than one piece of data at a time, this makes processing faster.
Adding more RAM won't affect the speed at all, if anything it would actually make it slower.
getting a 3.2GHZ CPU is not too expensive now, they've dropped to about half their price!

 

[tech4hire]

apokalipse
Adding more RAM won't affect the speed at all, if anything it would actually make it slower.

This is a confusing statement, pleas explain. Does this mean the less ram i have it will make it faster.

 

[trebor]

Tech4hire, Not sure either what he meant by the less ram the faster. For most comps 512 is sufficient, unless you are a serious gamer, then more would be better. Then again if you are running a windows older than xp, then more than 256 is being wasted since prior does not recognize it, unless you are running a nt.

Illippinno, you did not mention this, and I know this may seem stupid, but have you cleaned up the unused files and defraged it?

Also, 200gb hdd seems a bit excessive, do you really need all that space. I use a 30gb on one of my comps and 40 on the other. One comp is more for gaming, while the other is more internet, data crunching... etc.

What you might be better off doing is just build a new comp, and spliting the work load between the two comps. But that is just what I would do.

 

[tech4hire]

I agree with trebor, you may want to also check the virtual memory. And uninstall programs you are not using. Also check your Temp internet files. Run disk clean up.