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My XP desktop is in need of an update (no really!  ), as it is about 5yrs old. I definitely want to go to Win7 or 8, from 2GB memory to 6 or 8GB, I want to put an SSD in and increase my HDD capacity.
I'm debating a new motherboard / GPU.
I'd like to move to a 64bit system. But what about i5 vs i7? Are i7s worth the extra money? If I go there though, that's effectively a new machine - the price of which probably won't fly with the wife!
Typically I've been updating my machine to make it 'game-capable' for specific games - it was HL2 last time, this time Titanfall and (eventually) Elite:Dangerous.
What do recent updaters think? Will an updated OS, more memory and an SSD compensate for an old (dual core) CPU and GPU for a while longer? Or would money on those updates be 'wasted' being held back by the old components?
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At today's prices and given the age I would buy new.
Check out my upgrade article here[^].
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I finally figured out that it is less expensive to buy new rather than upgrade old systems. Seems like a waste, but cost effective.
You can donate the old equipment to a good cause and your conscience will be clear.
Pleasing your wife is another kettle of fish. 
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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JimmyRopes wrote: Pleasing your wife is another kettle of fish.
I love reading between the lines  .
I will never again mention that Dalek Dave was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel.
How to ask a question
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As the others have said: buy new.
Upgrading RAM is a PITA: you normally find that the old ram is unsuitable to run with the new, so you have to chuck that. And then, does the motherboard take the amount you want? And then there's the processor...and the hard disk...and the video card...and an SSD would be nice...and hang on, does the PSU supply enough power?
You end up paying more for the upgrade than you would have for the new system most of the time, particularly when you are trying to catch up 5 years!
The only drawback is that a new system is likely to come with Win8 - but you may be able to pay a little extra for an upgrade to Win7...
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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OriginalGriff wrote: he only drawback is that a new system is likely to come with Win8 - but you may be able to pay a little extra for an upgrade to Win7...
You are evil.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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A 5 year old box is past the point where substantial upgrades make sense; time to replace it entirely. You're probably only a year or two from starting to see component failures that will junk it. No sense throwing good money after bad now.
If you're planning to keep your system more than a few years and use it for either gaming or dev work, I'd suggest going all the way to 16GB of ram. Windows will use it as disk cache now for a minor speedup and as your software continues its inevitable bloating it'll protect you from swapping. DDR4 is expected to start appearing in high end systems late this year and in mainstream ones sometime next year, so the DDR3 the box you build now will use isn't going to get much cheaper in the future; easier just to buy the extra ram now and not worry about it.
In the short term, an i7 probably doesn't offer a whole lot. Relatively few games can take advantage of more than 4 cores (although with PS4/XBOne both having 8 core CPUs this may change in a few years); and unless you're building really large applications you won't be able to parallelize the build enough to benefit from 8 cores much. If you can afford it, I'd still tend to lean toward an i7, it's only $100 on top of a $1k+ system, just for future proofing; but if you need to cut costs for wife approval this is a relatively safe place to do so.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Definitely, if you can, get a new machine. It'll be worth the extra money.
If you can stand it, get Windows 8. I know many people around here aren't fans of 8, but it does, in most cases, run faster and lighter than XP and 7 (and definitely Vista ).
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My personal recommendation to my customers is if it was originally running Windows XP then you may as well buy new.
The newer hardware generally has more or different requirements for ventilation.
If you want more than 2 Gig of Memory then you will need to go to 64 bit. There are also certain things built into the 64 bit that is not in the 32 bit that can help protect the system.
As far as the processor you have to look very close at the part numbers to decide on what you need and want.
They don’t make it easy to break thru the hype on what is what for either Intel or AMD. I even tried to contact them thru the Intel partner chat.
With some of the research I have done for finding a new laptop, if you were going to be multi tasking you may want to go with an I 7, again look at the part numbers they are not all the same and most of the new systems put the less effective ones in them. Take Note of the wattage too, or “Max TDP”
You can start here http://ark.intel.com/[^] and here
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processor-numbers.html?iid=prod_core2duo+body_processornumbers[^]
Another thing you will want to look at is the video they support.
If I had the only choice of Windows 7 or Windows 8 I would go with Windows 7 mainly because I have no use for the new, um, “Features” that Windows 8 brings and the difficult way to navigate the UI.
One problem that has been discovered for people trying to “Upgrade” Windows 8 to Windows 7 is the lack of proper drivers for the systems when going to Windows 7.
Hope that helps some.
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I would also say that buying a new machine is a better bet. You can give the old one to someone else in your family who has less intensive needs, use it for a backup file server or just keep it as a reserve, which you can't do if you gut it, and it is likely to be of a similar cost if not cheaper.
I play Planetside 2 which is fairly intensive, and the community view there is that a high end i5 is as effective as an i7, because the game engine isn't fully capable of using 4 cores to the max. That's probably true for other modern games too. A large part of the game experience is dependent on the GPU, extra money is probably better spent there.
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Movie Quote Of The Day
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and provide new Guards for their future security.
Which movie?
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The Liberation of Q&A
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Nonsense Revolution[^]??? 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time
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That's what I said... but I disguised it... 
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Things Paris does not understand.
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Yet another Cage movie?
Hmm i wonder why its doing that......ARGHS NO STOP, ROLLBACK ROLLBACK...F*** That's how i learned to "Always Backup"!!
Dogs are man's best Friend,
Cats are man's adorable little serial killer
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Nope it's not Mad Max III
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Today i came across a scene where we had a discussion on this topic.
we have some work on the database side where batch files data is insert (row count is several thousand per operations )/ some text files generated by windows services / flag status maintain based on the data insert in the database per operation and many other small operations happen during this process. obviously correctness of the operation is must but at the same time performance of the operation came in to the picture. some teammates says that as there are lot of process happens during per operations it will take time to complete things while some believe that there can be something done to reduce the time. Client is okay even if that takes time as for him accuracy is more important rather than time taken. How to manage such scenarios ? after some level we can not think of optimization on query as all the things which is written is necessary. does anyone face such things ? how do you manage things to improve the performance?
Ravi Khoda
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ravikhoda wrote: Client is okay even if that takes time as for him accuracy is more important rather than time taken.
So it appears that from the client's point of view there is not a problem with 'performance' - so who is pushing for 'performance'?
ravikhoda wrote: after some level we can not think of optimization on query as all the things which is written is necessary.
There are always tweaks one can make to speed things up - proper analysis with regards to indexes, table structure, partitioning, staging the data from the batch files and indexing those staged tables, improvements at the hardware level...
You have not given much information in order to be able to answer the question.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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ravikhoda wrote: Client is okay
So why wasting time on something no one wants?!
ravikhoda wrote: accuracy is more important
So work on accuracy...
In a much theoretic level - split your operation into smaller junks (it seems you done it already, but see if there is more), examine every step on it's own. Also consider asynchronous handling. Sometimes you do not need all the data in real time, so you may use multiply (synchronized) databases, one for writing and one for reading operations...And much much more things, most depend on your specific solution...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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ravikhoda wrote: we have some work on the database side where batch files data is insert
So is it done by a sheduled night job or something similar? If it is do you have a risk that other things might take to long time time or not getting the data (other night jobs that needs data from the previous job, etc) ?
If it is a seperate night job with no other dependecies (and given that it doent take a long time = >3-6 hours) leave it be, then it's better to focus on accuracy. But it all comes down to what is done and what do the import achieve?
If a user presses a button to start the job and expect the outcome faily rapidly then 3-6 hours is way to long and you need to work on both accuracy and performance.
ravikhoda wrote: does anyone face such things ?
Yes, constantly.
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