computer upgrade - help

[protein]

please bare with me, I'm a bit rubbish with technical stuff. I'd appreciate your input.

I currently have:

p3 3.12ghz.
mobo - Intel D865PERL
1 gig DDR SDRAM
Radeon 9200SE
Barracuda 7200.7 SATA hard drive (partitioned)

all in a nice silver box.

My DaveC count is about 25.

If I get one of my nice computer savvy friends to install one of these:
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=58431
and one of these:
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=59993
into my current box, would I see a dramatic increase in track count/plug processing power?

[albee1952]

Right motherboard, but wrong cpu(you want the 3700+ "Clawhammer"). Read the first page of the thread "Best desktop PC for Protools"(it is updated on a regular basis). You absolutely need a seperate hard drive for audio. Adding a partition to your system drive will do absolutley nothing to increase performance. WD, Seagate and Maxstor are all great drives so buy the cheapest in the size you want and make sure it is 7200rpm and 8mb cache. If you get 160gig or larger, I would partition the audio drive into 60-80gig sections as it makes for easier "housekeeping". My cheap system below scores 32+5 on the DAVEC test.

[protein]

Ah, that's a big increase in price. So the one I have listed won't be an improvement?

I thought a partition with the system on one and the audio on the other helped. The music computer specialists who sold it to me were lying to me. Bastardos.

[protein]

bump

[protein]

Would the Athlon 64bit 3000 not be a vast improvement on my p4 then? I was under the impression it was a previous Allenstein component.

Sorry to keep asking.

[albee1952]

Since money is tight, try to at least go for the 3400 clawhammer which should seriously outperform the P4.

[albee1952]

Something to consider: You may end up wishing you spent the extra $ after a year or two. Now your money saved today is gone down the road. If you consider that the more expensive cpu(let's say its $350) will service you for more like 4-5 years, then it cost you more like $70 a year vs. $50 a year for 2 years of the cheaper cpu before you give up and go for the big one. Just an opinion, but I'd hate to save a few bucks now and regret it in a year. I'm also power hungry and plan on the 3700 upgrade as soon as I can afford it. We need more power Scotty!!!!

[protein]

Thanks mate, wize words.

I may sacrifice a new mic for a new processor then. Unless I get a load of clients sign up in the next few days. *sigh.

[protein]

Okay, so, (bare with me, I'm a little dim), the AMD (Clawhammer) Athlon 64 3700+ 1mb L2 Cache 754pin processor can be easily fitted onto the Asus K8V-SE Deluxe S754 VIA k8t800 ATX Sound Gig lAN Firewire USB 2.0 FSB 800 and put into my nice silver box by one of my more computer savvy (geek) friends and I will get [bleep]-kicking results?

I'm just asking before I click "buy" on this website. I don't want to make a costly mistake.