How should I upgrade this PC?

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smashedpumpkins

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I made the mistake of buying a PC that was too cheap... My father-in-law wanted a PC that would be quicker than what he had. He had an AMD Athlon 5200+ dual core, 2 gigs of ram, geforce 6100pm-m2 mother board and a few regular parts. I tried to save him some cash with the following PC I bought for $350. Lenovo H415 (30991PU) Desktop PC | Staples®

To be honest it runs about the same if not slower than his previous computer... (It was Windows XP but this Lenovo is Windows 7) It has 6 gigs of ram but the processor is weak sauce. He's an accountant and is constantly opening up software that's horribly designed and takes forever to load. From my limited knowledge I'm thinking a processor upgrade is all he really needs? An SSD would help too but I don't know if he wants to fork out the cash. Any recommendation on what processor will work here for maybe a few hundred? Is there anything else in this PC that will limit the speed of applications? I'm open to all recommendations. Thanks for the help!
 
Take the bloatware off and anything else that constantly runs in the background hogging resources. That will make the A6 faster than the X2 by itself. I think an SSD would also help a lot.
 
Well it looks like those A series cpus are cheap
Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, CPUs / Processors, Processors - Desktops, AMD, A-Series APU

You could jump the cpu... But i'd be hard pressed to think the a6-3600 is slower than a 5600+... but maybe.

What harddrives in the ibm? maybe its a slow model... er Lenovo


Actually paton I own that A6 APU 3600 my replacement for my my damaged 3670k cpu+apu chip.
In all honesty, it performs quite fast, it is in a tie between Core i3 540 and athlon II X3 tri-core speeds.
Since I havent reinstalled my os for about a year now, I'll need to do it next week with a clean start.
We'll see how she really performs without all the start up programs and heavy junk in its way.

"cory" if your reading this I am not comparing intel against amd I just wanted smashed pumpkins & paton to see how these chips rank up to each other respectively once you see them in action.

If anything at all, I would recommend this, the fx 8100 quadcore or a very good phenom ii x4 900's chip made for daily use and gaming.
 
Well as you saw, I said that A6 should be just fine. I think it is just loaded up with way too much junk making it slow. CPU speed can't really be blamed if a program takes forever to load on a clunky HDD.
 
Well it looks like those A series cpus are cheap
Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, CPUs / Processors, Processors - Desktops, AMD, A-Series APU

You could jump the cpu... But i'd be hard pressed to think the a6-3600 is slower than a 5600+... but maybe.

What harddrives in the ibm? maybe its a slow model... er Lenovo
Take the bloatware off and anything else that constantly runs in the background hogging resources. That will make the A6 faster than the X2 by itself. I think an SSD would also help a lot.
I'm fairly certain the a3600 is faster but the programs are taking longer to load and operate. I actually already wiped and reinstalled Windows to remove all bloatware. Maybe an SSD is what I need. I could probably do one or the other but not both.

Actually paton I own that A6 APU 3600 my replacement for my my damaged 3670k cpu+apu chip.
In all honesty, it performs quite fast, it is in a tie between Core i3 540 and athlon II X3 tri-core speeds.
Since I havent reinstalled my os for about a year now, I'll need to do it next week with a clean start.
We'll see how she really performs without all the start up programs and heavy junk in its way.

"cory" if your reading this I am not comparing intel against amd I just wanted smashed pumpkins & paton to see how these chips rank up to each other respectively once you see them in action.

If anything at all, I would recommend this, the fx 8100 quadcore or a very good phenom ii x4 900's chip made for daily use and gaming.
Thanks, the comparison does actually help. I've followed the Intel line but I don't have a clue about AMD.


Here's a screenshot of the system with more detail. I'm surprised that it's SATA 6Gb/s so an SSD may be worth looking into. The current hard drive is a Western Digital 7200 RPM so I can't imagine it should be that slow... Here's a link to the hard drive that I found on Newegg. Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive Overall I thought this hard drive with the processor should be more than enough. Right now looking at his PC he has 5 different heavy loading pieces of software open. Only 2.5gigs of ram is being used though and the processor isn't too active... Judging by what I've just learned I'm starting to think an SSD may be what he needs?

I can get this 240GB OCZ Agility 3 for about $215 after rebate and this coupon "HARDOCPX328D". If I was willing to spend $100 to $150 on a processor what would be my best bang for the buck? I looked at the links and recommendations and I'm still unsure which is going to be the best bet. If I was to only upgrade one piece should it be to an SSD or a new processor? Thanks everyone!
Newegg.com - OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

351wgsp.jpg
 
Definately a SSD. That way if it doesn't speed it up lots, its not a wasted peice.

I'd only go 120-128Gig drive with programs of less importance on the standard hdd.

Something has to be up, as I'm running a dual xeon hex, 1366, running at 2.23Ghz and its loaded to 96% folding and no program lags that I can notice, and my hdd is a 5 yr old Seagate.
 
It really depends on the programs in question. I mean on my Seagate I used to have in my machine things like Photochop and Word would take what seemed like forever loading compared to my SSD. Even if a program is small on a HDD it seems like it can take decades to load (like FF after a cold boot).
 
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