How can I know im getting the most of my computer?

[Bithpq]

How can i know i am getting the most of my computer. Speed, internet gaming anything?

I have a Dell Dimension 2400 windows XP SP3 fully updated drivers and software, its defraged, protected and scanned regularly.

Is there anything i can do or is my computer just old.

[drragostea]

Is there anything i can do or is my computer just old.

Well it can be old . Souping up an old machine might not always bring desirable results, because the upgrade might not always work. DDR2 and DDR3 RAM work a lot better than regular DDR RAM. I've upgraded my DDR RAM (Sony VAIO 2003 Model) from 512MB to 1.5GB, but I haven't seen much of a noticeable difference. Maybe performance is decreases of loading time by a few seconds, but besides that that additional 1GB was redundant (like unnecessary extra).

A Google search on your machine tells me that it's pretty old, like my current one. It accepts DDR SDRAM and runs Intel Pentium 4 or Intel Celeron.

The guess the most you can do is keep it protected. Keep your drivers updated, antivirus+firewall updated, defrag if necessary, and clear those tracking cookies and Windows Temp. files once in a file to keep it running in top speed.

As for speed... your connection only goes as fast as it can go. Like if your ISP tells you, your DSL connection can only go up to this fast (768kpbs for example), it'll go up to 90KB/Second at max. Not really any faster than that. During certain times of the day it might reach peak speeds and might even go even faster by a few KBs (natural).

As for gaming, even basic games like Halo:Combat Evolved (a pretty simple game) was a bit lagging on my PC on high graphics. It's just the old hardware. If you play in real time, you might need a good upload speed and a good graphics card to keep everything running smoothly (your CPU type, speed, and the amount of RAM will contribute).

[bitman]

Unfortunately, many of the current games require fairly high performance systems with multi-core processors and lots of RAM, as well as benefitting from dedicated video boards which were rarely included in systems like yours.

I've run into the Dell Dimension 2400 series in several businesses and they usually perform OK with general business applications, though the disk subsystem seems to be a bit slow resulting in quite a performance drop if the PC also lacks RAM and begins to swap. This could have a drastic effect on some of the newer games which also have large numbers of images stored on disk.

If your PC has a small amount of RAM, your gaming might really benefit from increasing its capacity, generally far more than upgrading the processor which is also usually much more expensive. Adding a second hard drive with larger capacity and better performance might also help, though this is generally more expensive. Placing the Windows swap file on a new additional drive as well as installing some of the larger games there can help these more disk intensive applications.

If you've got the money, buying an entirely new PC is a better choice, but if the money's a bit tighter and you need to get more life from an otherwise good old PC, try the RAM first and then the disk, especially if disk capacity is a bit tight. A new video card is probably the least effective upgrade to most older systems since unless the video card is very high performance, it will actually require more processor and potentially RAM to support the higher resolution screens it will provide.

Bitman

[honda12]

Along with Bitman, I would suggest saving up for a better system in the long run. If you are technically experienced you could like I did, build your own computer which saves a bit of money, but of course if anything goes wrong you won't have a warranty to 'fall back' on.

As for gaming, you can't just rely on a good graphics card as some games (examples include Grand Theft Auto IV) are extremely CPU intensive.

(If you are feel especially adventurous you could install a lightweight linux distro like xubuntu - made my old pc run as good as new)

[nOInfectIOn]

Is there anything i can do or is my computer just old.

There is really a lot you can do:
-> read about "disk management"
-> or something new like this (example: Commercial: archicrypt|com/UltimateRAMDisk_Details|htm - sorry, there is no english site for this product)

-> OR: Try this one completely free for 30 days (I checked it out myself, it is true: "test the ... fully functional version of ... for 30-days free of charge"!)
Afterwards tuning I think there will be amazing more of speed

www|tune-up|com/products/tuneup-utilities/