Should I upgrade my PC or buy a new one?

Question

Question

Should I upgrade my PC or buy a new one?

by Melpomenia Mar 26, 2017 3:56AM PDT

Hi everybody!

My Desktop-Computer is about 8 years old and I use it mainly for work (Darktable, Gimp, Inkscape, some video & music editing) and some gaming (e.G. Layers of fear, ...). I have some problems with the performance, e.G. I couldn't use the Affinity-programs by serif - drawing a line took about 5 seconds. And Layers of Fear is just almost fluent on the lowest settings. You should know, that I use both Windows 7 and Bunsenlab Linux (dualboot).

I wonder if it would be worth it, to invest into some new hardware (additional RAM, better GPU, SSD-drive) or if I would be better off, if I bought a new Desktop/Laptop.

I am looking forward to your answers and hope you can ignore my lack of english-skills. If you need anymore information about my setup, feel free to ask.

Thank you very much <3

I am not too much into Computer-Stuff, so I just printed my hardware information with the debian-Terminal, i guess the most important things are:

-memory
description: System memory
physical id: 3
size: 8005MiB

*-cpu
product: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 840 Processor
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
physical id: a
bus info: cpu@0
size: 800MHz
capacity: 3200MHz
width: 64 bits

*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Caicos [Radeon HD 6450/7450/8450 / R5 230 OEM]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
version: 00
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
resources: irq:44 memory:c0000000-cfffffff memory:dffe0000-dfffffff ioport:e800(size=256) memory:dffc0000-dffdffff

*-multimedia
description: Audio device
product: Caicos HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6400 Series]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 0.1
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.1
version: 00
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=0
resources: irq:43 memory:dffbc000-dffbffff

-disk
description: ATA Disk
product: WDC WD1001FAES-0
vendor: Western Digital
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: 1D05
serial: WD-WCATR1862999
size: 931GiB (1TB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: ansiversion=5 logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512 sig

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12 Posts

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RE

by Melpomenia Mar 27, 2017 10:24AM PDT

Thank you very much for your answer! I run linux and win7 "side by side" and both are freshly installed. I wrote by mistake, that my pc is 8 years old, but it is from 2011 I think.

I was thinking about getting a fancy nvidia gforce gtx 1050-ti, do you think it's a good idea for this PC? Maybe together with a SSD, for faster processing of pictures etc.? I don't have that much money, and if I think I could invest 200€ in a GPU and a SSD instead of buying a new machine for 1000€, this would be nice. Because I guess my CPU is still quite fine and should handle semi-professional multimedia-production software and new games.

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Your CPU compared

by James Denison Mar 27, 2017 2:39PM PDT

Mainly you would need a stronger graphics card.

Here's the rating on the CPU

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Phenom+II+X4+840&id=357

You can compare it to others here, look for around 3619 on rating area and then see those above and below for comparison.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/mid_range_cpus.html

They also have a page for comparing video cards.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

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Here you go

by Melpomenia Mar 27, 2017 10:25AM PDT

Thank you for the advice, here you go: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/b7VhrA2g4QMSN1YJHasIcrA

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Upgrade

by Bob__B Mar 27, 2017 12:17PM PDT

I would NOT upgrade.

Your maxed out on the ram.
There is no cpu upgrade path.
The mobo has sata 2 ports.
The mobo does not support usb 3.
Your video card is low end.

Too many parts have to be changed, shop for a new machine.

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Speed

by Bob__B Mar 27, 2017 2:40PM PDT

If you want to play around a little.

Set your power profile to high perf.
Go through each setting and change it to off or never.

Make your startup group as skinny as possible.
You can start stuff on an as needed basis.

If your using 32 bit color set it to 16 bit, that will take some work off your video card.
Test with your different apps.

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I guess you're right.

by Melpomenia Apr 2, 2017 2:48AM PDT

Well, indeed I did try to max out my perfomance for some time, but nevertheless I can barely see improvement in vector-programs nor games. Maybe you're right and I should really head for a new PC. Thanks for the hard truth

For I'm a student, I'm pretty much on a budget and would like to get a workstation for under 1000€, do you think a HP Z-Book G2 (refurb.) for 800€ would do the trick? It's not high end, but at least it has i7-4900MQ, Quadro K2100M, 16GB RAM, USB 3.0, Thunderbolt and SSD-Drive. And I've heard the colours are really great, which is quite important for me.

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Zbook

by Bob__B Apr 2, 2017 4:18AM PDT

That machine is a data cruncher, it won't game.
The video card/chip does not have the muscle.

Opinion, unless you need the machine to be portable stick with a desktop.
At least you'll have an upgrade path if some area needs a little help.

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Saving up

by Melpomenia Apr 2, 2017 7:33AM PDT

Okay, thank you. Then I will probably have to save a while and go for an Dell XPS-15. I am going to study abroad in the next years, so a notebook would be nicer.

Back to Desktops forum

James Denison · Answer 1 · Mar 26, 2017 7:17AM PDT

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Answer

Depends on what you do and....

by James Denison Mar 26, 2017 7:17AM PDT

...how you are doing it. For instance, is your Linux installed in a "side by side" method, or is it running as a virtual system under windows? If the latter, then making it "side by side" will speed up GIMP and other linux based imaging programs. If already "side by side" and you are having slowdowns in Linux programs, then perhaps a newer computer is in your future. Considering you are doing graphics a lot it seems, then better graphics chip would help a lot.

Bob__B · Answer 2 · Mar 26, 2017 3:46PM PDT

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Answer

Speccy

by Bob__B Mar 26, 2017 3:46PM PDT