Need Speed

[dkauf]

My work PC was once a screamer (Win7 64-bit; Intel i5, 8GB RAM), but it now exhibits considerable lag when refreshing data from external sources and compiling it all in its calculations. As such, I've been given the green light to explore options for improving the performance of my machine. While I'm sure the 'easy' solution would be to drop in two hex-core Xeon processors into a new motherboard, I'm not convinced that spending $3,000 on the 'finance guy's' computer is the best option.

Where will I see the biggest performance improvements?

1. More RAM? How much?
2. Solid State Drive? Does it help that much when most of my work is saved to a network drive?
3. i7 processor upgrade? Is the difference over the i5 all that noticeable?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[SydneyGeek]

That sounds like a reasonable machine to me.
How big are the external sources? And have you checked the bottlenecks?
Try firing up the Task Manager before you run one of your slow jobs. Check to see if the CPU or the RAM are maxing out. If not, the issue may be more network-related.
Also, take alook at how many processes are running. Shut down anything that you don't need, and try the process again.
Windows has a habit of gumming up over time, for reasons that have more to do with the operating system than the hardware.

If you *do* go for a processor upgrade, my understanding is that i7 is quite a jump from i5. Some of the PC mags run performance benchmarks; take a look at those.

Denis

 

[Fazza]

I'd be checking those calculations first. If they are slow, I'd target them.