Turbo PC
 

I think I have to upgrade my PC to get more speed. What I have is: 3 Gb RAM, Epox EP 5EPA + mainboard for S775 (915P), Sapphire Radeon X300SE 128Mb DDR PCI-E, Intel Pentium 4 530J 3,0 Ghz 1Mb, Fortron 350W.
Can somebody tell me what parts I need.

Really, really, really depends on what you want from a box.

You might actually find it cheaper to just buy a new workhorse - there's some corking deals out there at the moment.

I bought my last machine from a seller on eBay (they're based in Liverpool here in the UK). Cost me £900 for a Quad Core Intel box with 4Gig Corsair RAM, nVidia 8800GTX 512MB video, 500Gig Raptor HDD 16x DVD/CD rewriter on an Asus n35 based Mobo. Absolute bargain when I compared it to other systems out there ... and it absolutely flies whatever I throw at it...

I run XP, but Vista is the new OS. Do you have any experience with XP vs VISTA ? I've heard it is slower ...

Yep, Vista is slower than XP for the same tasks in general.

I have an OEM copy of Vista Ultimate which survived around 1 month on my machine before I wiped it again and reinstalled XP. Stability isn't an issue so much now since SP1 has been released, but the general performance of the machine by comparison, and the annoying constant popups and DRM cripples the OS. [Has to be the DRM - Server2008 uses the same core codebase as Vista and it's performance is much better once all the desktop bells and whistles are switched off - the only main difference being the lack of DRM in the Server OS]


Unless you seriously need to use Vista, I would recommend sticking with XP. Wait and see what happens with Windows 7 (which is allegedly due Q2/Q3 next year).

What about Mac?
(I miss the AMIGA ....)

lol .. I have a Mac Mini which I use for web development and email and suchlike.

I do like OsX ... but still find myself wandering back to the PC for most things ... maybe its just familiarity with the platform.

Still, having looked at a meatier Mac when I was looking for systems last year, I still think that a PC running XP is best value for money.

Also, don't forget that if you use any LW plugins, then you'll need to get new ones to run on the Mac ...