Computer upgrading

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I'm going to upgrade my computer to eek a bit more performance out of it. Maybe doing some photo editing. At the moment I have 1gb of RAM and its a 3.4Mhz P4. I was planning on adding another 2Gb of RAM and upgrading to Windows 7. I'm going to also purchase photoshop elements and was wondering if a graphics card upgrade is worthwhile. Not really looking to play games but you never know. At the moment I have a ATI radeon x300/x550/x1050 in a PCI slot. I would possibly like to use it as a bluray player one day and I'm going to get a widescreen monitor too.

I've no problems with swapping the stuff about but the above is the limit of my computer knowledge, so nothing too mumbojumbo please :D

Many thanks
 
If you want to check your system for memory, go to crucial and do a system check, it will let you know how much you can run and at what speed. With a 32bit system it will probably only recognise upto 3.5gb anyway.
What you planning on doing with photoshop elements? Might sound daft, but there are other options
 
OrangeRetro":2ddpvwhw said:
Windows will only use a maximum of 3gb of memory on a 32 bit system... any more RAM is a waste of time.

I picked up on this bit and I believe 7 is the same.
 
P20":2v0bgda6 said:
If you want to check your system for memory, go to crucial and do a system check, it will let you know how much you can run and at what speed. With a 32bit system it will probably only recognise upto 3.5gb anyway.
What you planning on doing with photoshop elements? Might sound daft, but there are other options

I've been using paint.net for a while now but want to try something with a bit more manipulation. TBH I assumed photoshop was the main player, with the advent of elements 8, 7's came down in price a bit.
 
legrandefromage":qfgfh9ug said:
as much memory as the board will allow

graphics card - yes

windows 7 - dont know

bluray - er... why?


I've got a bluray on the main/only telly. I'm rarely in control of this so another place to watch a movie would be handy, most of my rentals from lovefilm are bluray now.
 
If you're going to upgrade your system,dont forget to upgrade the power supply.
Not just for a bigger GPU etc,if you buy cheap and it blows,then it will fry everything in your system :shock: mega replacement costs :shock:

And you've got to get one of these ;)
 
3GB of Ram will do, probably the best upgrade.

Graphics card upgrade, not required for Photoshop/2D graphics work, it won't offload any of the work from the CPU to the GPU.

Widescreen monitor, yep nice, dual monitors just as nice, until you get to bluray, and for full HD you'll want a monitor capable of at least 1920x1080.

Bluray. Add this and it's time to upgrade your graphics card to something that can handle H.264 without a hitch, pretty much anything modern.
 
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