Better upgrade-memory or hard drive?

[smokinyoda]

Am in the process of building a new system including, Athlon XP 2000, MSI 6380e, GF4 Ti 4200 128mb, and 256mb Kingston pc2700. I have small amount left to spend in my "budget" and wondering which would give best noticeable performance increase. (1.) Another 256 of pc2700-extra $51, or (2.) Upgrade 3 yr. old 13gb. hard drive to a 60 gb. Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 7200rpm-extra $88. Im assuming that replaceing the old HD will be the best choice but welcome everyones opinion.

[NDD]

Harddisk.

[ukulele]

Definately go for the drive. You can always use the old drive for backup and the ram won't make a noticable difference unless you are heavy into multi-tasking.

[omega31]

Hard drive.

[millwork]

Hard Drive. There's no doubt. Also, you may find one larger than 60 Gigs for about the same price. Just shop around. Next, I assume, there will be a lot of chatter about brands. That's mostly a "Fords and Chevys" thing. WD and Maxtor - Seagate etc. All have worked fine - any brand can and does have a lemon every once and a while.

Have a wonderful shopping day.

:t

[smokinyoda]

Thanks to all. It's nice to know this is still a good place to come for answers.

[RayH]

This week, maybe both. You might be able to pick up the hard drive for about $59 on sale. I think you might be able to make a sweet deal on RAM. Check the weekend papers for the usual suspects.

[Ammok]

both, i'm with rayh, shop around get a bargain.:)

[cparker]

Yeah I was able to get a $64 HDD from Best buy, after rebates. Don't always assume that online has the best prices.

[Swordfish]

no doubt hdd...:)

[leprechaun_40]

I'd say go RAM. HDD is storage, not working space. If you are into graphics and such, ram will improve the speed at which the probgram will work. I just upgraded my g/f's machine from 128 to 384 Mb of ram. She does a lot of photo editing using Photoshop 7. She's noticed a marked improvement in the time it takes to make changes and such on an illistration or photo. It seems to load faster too.

A larger drive, while holding more software or data, won't significantly improve the performance of a machine once the program is loaded. It is nice however to have more room to put things.

I'd say, look at what you are doing, and decide which would best suite your needs.:D

[bassman]

I'm betting your HD is probably ATA33, so you'll be upgrading to (I'm sorry, I haven't checked neither mobo's nor HD's specs, I'm just logically assuming) to a ATA133 HD. You'll be gaining a lot in space and also in HD access time. Anyway...memory is never enough ;) so I'd buy that next :)

[stix_kua]

Well, you want speed, go for RAM, YOu want to be able to download the whole Star Wars DVD set, then go HDD.

256 MB Ram is becoming a standard not an extra so if I were you, I'd go for the Ram now and HDD later.

Shopping around will also get you both if you can find a good combo.:)

I've noticed differences, huge differences, when I jump form 128 to 384 MB. It feels wonderful...

[smokinyoda]

Thanks for the advice. I ordered a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 60GB hard drive from Googlegear.com last night for $88.50 including shipping. Will pick up another stick of 256mb DDR 333 in a couple of months. :t

[BipolarBill]

:cool:

[deadkenny]

OK, I'm a bit late, but what O/S?

[smokinyoda]

Windows 98.

[ukulele]

Originally posted by smokinyoda
Thanks for the advice. I ordered a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 60GB hard drive from Googlegear.com last night for $88.50 including shipping. Will pick up another stick of 256mb DDR 333 in a couple of months. :t

That sounds like a great plan. I hope you have a rockin' mama. :)

[mousepotato2]

...hummm...well....can't have too much storage...I like haveing 4 drives/ at least 2 OS's in any given system...can't have too much RAM (well...depends....but at least 512 works for me....ram is a cheep way to improve performance all around)....as far as drives I'd try for one with 8 megs buffer...7200 rpm and if you go with ATA133 you may need to go with a PCI interface card to get the speed and if you went with above 120gig (132 actualy) unless your MOBO has ATA133 you wouldn't be able to address the bus speed or the size of the drive...find out what the limits of your system are and work from there,....I've gained a lot of performance with carefull research....the old "bang for the buck" routine.....I also like the removable drive bays because I can play with a lot of systems/setups without a lot of worries....and I keep a basic/clean drive or 2.....3....sometimes 4....that I can boot from at any given time....makes backup and fixing things fairly easy....

[deadkenny]

Originally posted by smokinyoda
Windows 98.

Yep, definitely the HDD then.

[IanMatthew]

If going to migrate to Win XP i'd go for more Ram. Ram prices fluctuate a lot more than Hard Disks. At the moment the price seems to be cheap but could go up soon, so buying anther 256Mb NOW could make sense.