Hi All,

I have an old pc with a AMD Athlon XP 1500+ cpu and 768Mb of ram.
It's running fedora 14 with KDE 4, but as soon as I open more than say 5 windows the system becomes rather slow. I don't need to buy a new pc, as I don't use it for work. In any case I could upgrade it up with 3GB of ram and a XP 2700+ cpu (the max the motherboard allows) within the budget I am willing to spend. Do you reckon it will make a significant change? Which upgrade is going to have the most noticeable effects? The ram or the cpu?

I am not aiming at having a spectacular machine, I'd just like to have a more snappy system for casual use. (I know I could switch to a different wm etc, but I'll consider that if people here tell me it's not worth upgrading this machine).

Thanks,

tessx

Up grading the ram should do more than the cpu.

Your favorite system monitor (top, gnome-system-monitor, etc) will give you useful data. If your RAM use is high then more RAM will help, if your CPU is high then a better CPU will help.

Personally I would not put money into an old machine; I would save that money toward my next computer purchase. Due to Moore's law it is an exponentially better investment; that's just my philosophy anyway.

For old machines I try to improve their performance not with hardware upgrades but with software tweaks, for example using a "lightweight" distro like SliTaz, AntiX, CrunchBang, and/or a DE/WM like Xfce, LXDE, Fluxbox. (Since Fedora 14 is now obosolete, this is a great time for you to transition.) Really there are so many optimizations available: for example simply installing ad-block, flash-block, and noscript in your web browser will give an enormous perceived performance boost. Or simply don't open 6 apps at once, that is the simplest solution to your problem.

Thanks for your replies!

OK for a start when I mean 5 windows, I mean 5 instances of Kwrite! That's enough to slow the machine.
I might go for the ram update and see how it goes, there is no point really for me to buy a new machine in the near future. I guess I can try a combination of hardware + software tweaks!

Cheers,

tessx

I highly recommend you use a light-weight WM like fluxbox, openbox, etc
make sure you only have services turned on that are needed

except for the 1500 vs 2400, I have almost the exact same PC as yours and have many distros all running light WM's, also have a 1.6GHz athlonXP-M lappy and it runs fluxbox and hardly ever gets bogged down.
no matter whats open it hardly ever slows or goes above 300MB ram

[root@nfluxos guest]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 8
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+
stepping : 1
cpu MHz : 1995.000
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow up
bogomips : 3994.57
clflush size : 32
cache_alignment : 32
address sizes : 34 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management: ts

Kwrite is described as a "lightweight text editor" so it shouldn't slow your computer down that much. Again I really recommend using the system monitor to find out what's bogging down your computer. Specific information/data will help you troubleshoot the problem rationally.

Hi,
The cost of upgrade for the RAM & CPU should be justified as to how much longer you wish to use this PC. Along with which Gnu/Linux & DE to be used.

Bump the RAM by using a reseller like: Computer Geeks or the like. You should be able to get pulls at a reasonable cost. That class of CPU could be had for under $10US. RAM should be around $30/GB or cheaper for pulls for that system. Recyclers do provide some good avenues to upgrade your system cheaply so I would get the CPU & RAM if you intend to keep the machine longer.

Totally wrong approach. If your car wouldn't drive like it is intended to would you buy random spare parts and see if the issue is fixed?
I recommend to follow snowpine's suggestion. If you don't know how to find the culprit we can help you, of course.
As a start, just start the applications until the machine slows down, then open a terminal, launch the command and post the output here.

if you are going to keep the same base hardware add some ram

but do not spend much soon you WILL want a new box

but in the mean time CentOS6.2 or RHEL 6.2 will run just fine on that
I have ScientificLinux 6.x full Gnome3/kde4 running just fine on a 11 year old Pentium 4 box with 1 gig of ram

Which type of RAM does your computer need? This summer I realized that DDR1 (for a comparable old machine) was about 3x more expensive than DDR2 as both are out of production but there are still more DDR2 blocks around. So I would be conservative in installing new rather expensive DDR1-s which you later only can sell on e-bay for a change...

the price that is why i only put 1 gig ( added 512 more) on my old dell from 2001
the cost for 2 gigs was a new bargain basement computer

Hi,

That is one reason to use a local reseller/recyclers to keep the cost down. Pulls are a lot cheaper than new. Be it CPU or RAM you will pay a fraction of the cost for new. My money is on DDR for the OP's class of machine.

Mine too. For an Athlon XP there is a small chance that it uses SDR-DRAM, but most likely it will be DDR-SDRAM.

In our area schools are replacing their computers and selling their old pentium D850 1gig for 69 USD that I have set up in retirement homes. I can upgrade to 2 gig ram for an additional 15 USD.

With prices like that you can not afford to upgrade older sets.

KDE 4 (an early KDE 4, at that, which may have memory leaks, as well as not having the improved kwin) and limited memory is unlikely to be a good recipe. You should measure things (or look at the disk drive light... ), but it is a fair bet that you are starting to swap before you have many windows open, even if they are for relatively lightweight apps.

With this kind of workload, a lighter wm could easily help, but I'd want to fix the computer; YMMV.

Check whether you are swapping (ie, traffic as seen in vmstat, free -m isn't all that helpful in that it gives an amount of swap used, and it is traffic that slows you down...although, if you do have extreme amounts of swap used, it is difficult to do this without causing traffic), and if you are, there is no point in upgrading the CPU unless you also increase the amount of memory.