Want to make your computer faster?

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Layzie Bone
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Of course. I find that it isn't the memory, the CPU, but it is your Hard Drive that makes your computer load program slowly and so fourth. You have two options. Flash hard drives, or get a WD Raptor. Flash Hard drives are really in thier infancy and really don't operate a whole lot faster and they're very expensive. The upside to them is that they'll never crash even if you throw it on the floor. WD Raptors are the fastest hard drives to date, they use a good deal of power and they generate a lot of heat, considering the 10.5 krpm speed. I was working on a special order core 2 duo system and I tell you what that thing hauled some ass!

Even if you're still using an original Pentium 4, or even a P3, getting a faster hard drive will make a difference.

Other things that will make a small performance gain.

Defragment - Usually only make a difference if your drive is fragmented all to hell. Basically the time it take to read a file that is sequential over a fragmented file is greatly increased. The problem is when you load a program the drive has to read multiple files on different physical locations on the drive, this will always be a problem. there is a tool from microsoft called BootViz. what it does it first monitors your computer booting up and then it moves all the files it loads in sequential order, so that every time you boot, your boot time is significantly reduced.

So if your wanting to put some money into making your computer faster, get a WD Raptor. Memory only if it underperforms to your motherboards capability. Basically if your motherboard supports DDR 533, and you've got DDR 333, you might want to upgrade your memory, this will make a difference when processing a large request.

This is the bottleneck of computers: (fastest device to slowest)

CPU
Memory
Video
IEE1384
USB2.0
Hard Disk (7200 rpm or less/ no array)
10/100 LAN
CD/DVD
USB 1.0/1.1
Floppy Disk
Dial-Up Internet/Modem

One little piece of information. Some people are confused about USB2.0, USB2.0 bursts at 480 mbps, where as IEE1394 can maintian the 480 mbps, therefore FireWire is faster. If you're speed demons go with FireWire.
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