SAS-Lynx wrote:
what COULD it be?
already upgraded these over the hollidays:
...
ram - to 2GB...
You got the RAM upgrade then? Hope it went smoothly?
Anyhoo, as for what to get next - if your mobo does RAID then get a second 80GB harddisk and stripe them - you'll get nearly twice the performance from your HDD(s)...
Oh, and again this is one of those things where it's best to get exactly the same model HDD as you've already got - if I understand the tech correctly I believe they
must be the same capacity - getting the same make and model will ensure that it'll work smoothly. I've not yet striped drives myself, but I understand, from an IT-guru friend, that you can even stripe an existing drive without losing any data...
If you're mobo doesn't do RAID, then a new HDDs still not going to hurt - in this case I would use your existing 80GBer for just windows XP and install a second drive for data - that way if you ever need to reformat and reinstall XP you won't need to back up all your data first! Actually, even with one HDD you should really put data onto a seperate partition from XP, if you don't already, for exactly the same reasons.
A new soundcard isn't going to hurt either - you'd probably be wise to go with a
creative if you're going to go down this route, unless you do alot of sound editing/recording/processing (in which case you'll be wanting a sound card that designed for this type of thing) - but, if you just play games, watch the odd movie and the like then something like a creative X-Fi will rock...