should I upgrade to 1GHz or 1.4GHz?

[pianowizard]

My Dell OptiPlex GX110 tower currently has a 600MHz 133FSB Pentium III CPU and 512MB of RAM. I am actually quite happy with its speed, but wonder whether upgrading the CPU would make it much faster. I am contemplating two options and hope you guys can help me decide:

1) The fastest CPU this motherboard can support without any adapter is the 1GHz 133FSB Pentium III, which I can buy used for around $30. My question is, will upgrading to 1GHz dramatically speed up my system?

2) The fastest Pentium III ever made is 1.4GHz, but it's Tualatin and so I would need a Powerleap adapter. But both the chip and the adapter are very expensive (and I am not rich!), and so this option is not worthwhile unless it is substantially faster than 1GHz. So, my question is, is it worth the extra ~$100 to get the 1.4GHz instead of the 1GHz?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[crossedup]

Depends on what you do really, the differance between 1000 and 1400 will be almost to slow to notice.

the differance between 600 and 1000 wont even be that great.

Depends on so many more things, I see the biggest differances from a faster RPM HD as I do from 400 Mhz CPU speed.

CPU can only work on it as fast as it can get it.

[pianowizard]

crossedup, thanks for your reply. There are two situations where I would really like my computer to speed up. In the first case, there is a 17MB Microsoft Word document that I need to open quite often, and at present it takes this 600MHz/512MB machine about 5 minutes to open. In the second situation, I use a data analysis program (Clampfit from Axon Instruments) to open big data files and then analyze them, and some of the routine analytical procedures often take a minute or more. 600MHz/512MB is plenty for Windows XP, surfing the internet, Photoshop, small Microsoft Office documents, etc., but a CPU upgrade might be helpful for those two special cases, don't you think? BTW, 512MB is the maximum RAM supported, and so I can't increase that any further.

[sechs]

For a couple of hundred dollars, you can put together a new system. I don't see how the extra 400MHz is worth the cost.

If you have slow loads, it's probably the storage subsystem which is the bottleneck.

[pianowizard]

sechs, good points. I too believe that adding 400MHz shouldn't do much, but I just found a $25 (including shipping) 1GHz chip on eBay and so I ordered it anyway. Spending an extra $100 to get 1.4GHz is not worth it. And yes, perhaps getting a hard drive with a bigger buffer (mine is a Maxtor with only 2MB) would make a bigger difference. When I use up my current 60GB drive and need to upgrade, I will take this into consideration. Thanks.

[crossedup]

Go by buffer size and RPM, but keep in mind that your motherboard is older and as such it will be unable to utilize a faster HD speed thouroughly but it will still be a big improvement.

If that Dell is the one I think it is you might run into heat problems if you get a faster RPM HD as the case is quite cramped, might want to think about modding a fan in there in the event that you do.

For what you describe you are doing you will see some improvement from a faster CPU.

[sechs]

Never pick a drive by physical characteristics, such as buffer size or spindle speed. It's 100% possible to make drive with a big buffer and high spindle speed that performs worse than a floppy drive.

Decide what performance characterics you desire and choose a drive based upon that criteria.

[pianowizard]

Originally posted by sechs
Never pick a drive by physical characteristics, such as buffer size or spindle speed. It's 100% possible to make drive with a big buffer and high spindle speed that performs worse than a floppy drive.

Decide what performance characterics you desire and choose a drive based upon that criteria.

sechs, thanks for the intriguing comment, which I must admit I don't completely understand. What are some performance, non-physical characteristics that I ought to consider?

[sechs]

Why would you pick something that looks nice and doesn't work, when you could pick something that works?

You need to decide what kind of performance you want out of the drive and determine what characteristics furthur that goal. StorageReview.com may be a good place to start if you need to do furthur research.

[pianowizard]

I have been using the newly purchased 1GHz PIII for two weeks. While I don't notice any difference for most applications, Photoshop definitely starts slightly faster, and Google Earth runs much much faster. This is now my 4th fastest computer, after a 1.6GHz Pentium M, a 1.6GHz P4, and a 1.1GHz PIII.