26 | MAXIMUMPC | JUN 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
W
e turned this turkey into a usable
machine that would give us moder-
ate gaming performance and handle most
medium-intensity tasks. We concentrated our
upgrades on graphics, RAM, and a drop-in
hard drive for additional storage capabilities.GPU
Since the 3.8GHz P4 CPU is still ser-
viceable (albeit barely), our first up-
grade target was the substandard
FireGL V3100 graphics card. We
looked at two contenders: Nvidia’s
GeForce 9600 GT and the GeForce
8800 GT. Both feature 512MB frame
buffers, but the 9600 GT sports the
newer G94 core. The 8800 GT is faster at
higher resolutions, but given the potential
of a single-core Pentium 4, we felt it was
more prudent to save our ducats for now.
Still, putting in a $160 card takes us from a
machine that’s worthless at gaming to one
that can play most of today’s popular titles
at normal resolutions. Even better, GPUs are
in flux now. AMD and Nvidia are in a GPU
price war, so expect the 9600 GT to be even
cheaper by the time you read this.
Before the GPU upgrade, the Precision
was about 75 percent slower than the $
box in our Unreal Tournament 3 benchmark.
After the upgrade, the Precision was 158
percent faster.RAM
With RAM as cheap as it is these days, it’s
an obvious upgrade choice. It’s so cheap,
in fact, we decided to ditch the two 512MB
ECC DIMMs in the Precision and replace
them with a pair of standard 1GB Corsair
DDR2/667 modules for $40. Some people
believe that ECC RAM slightly hinders
performance, but we were more motivated
by the performance benefits we’d gain bymoving the machine from its 1GB of RAM to
2GB—the optimal amount for a 32-bit OS.CPU
As we mentioned earlier, the system’s 925X
chipset prevented us from using dual-core
processors, to say nothing of quads. The one
option available is the 2MB L2 version
of the Pentium 4 Prescott that Intel
released near the end of that CPU’s
run. The P4 670 can still be had if
you search the nooks and crannies
of the Internet, but once you find
one, be prepared to shell out some
bucks for it. The two sites we found
that stocked the processor were charg-
ing $199 for it. Even the secondary market—
that’s fancy speak for “used”—wanted $
for a 3.8 P4. That just ain’t worth it. Doubling
the L2 cache gets you, what, maybe a few
percentage points of improvement in a few
applications? It’s not worth the money or
the hassle. The highest clocked single-core
Pentium 4 is still a dog, but not dead meat
on a stick, so we’re sticking with it. Our
ProShow Producer test pegs the P4 at about
30 percent slower than the $500 rig’s 1.8GHz
dual-core Pentium, while PCMark05 puts the
P4 slightly ahead.HARD DRIVE
You know things are bad when your iPod has
more storage capacity than your computer.
The 80GB drive in the Dell isn’t even big
enough to be puny. To supplement our stor-
age, we dropped in a $169 Seagate 750GB
Barracuda drive for secondary storage. Hard
drives (and to some extent optical drives)
usually break the upgrading rules on spend-
ing because they’re easily transportable.
Even if we paid $500 for two 1TB drives, we
could easily move those to the next machine
that we build.A $160 GeForce 9600 GT is several times faster
than the ancient ATI FireGL V3100 that came with
the Dell.Instead of hunting down ECC RAM, we replaced the
rig’s pair of 512MB DIMMS with a pair of 1GB DIMMs.
Don’t mix ’n’ match ECC and non-ECC though.A $169 Seagate 750GB drive makes good upgrade
sense, as it can be easily transplanted into a new
machine.OPERATION UPGRADE
Our Dell Upgrades
New $500 box Pre-Upgrade Post-Upgrade % Change
ProShow (sec) 2,528 3,606 3,606 0%
PCMark05 Overall 4,785 3,460 4,029 16%
PCMark05 CPU 4,635 4,805 4,806 0%
PCMark05 RAM 3,966 4,400 4,425 1%
PCMark05 GPU 3,750 1,653 10,390 529%
PCMark05 HDD 5,877 4,497 4,576 2%
UT3 Omicron Bot (fps) 18 5 46 838%BENCHMARKSBest scores are bolded.TOTAL
UPGRADE
COST:
$
369