custom build upgrade

[alfio]

hello all

picked up a custom build recently and i'm looking to improve performance (if possible). right now the setup is as follows:

mobo: ECS C19-A SLI
CPU: pentium D 930 (pressler) (socket 775 LGA)

how does this CPU stack as far as what else would work with this motherboard (Pentium D / Pentium 4 HT / Celeron D), is there room for improvement? or am i better off going for a motherboard/RAM upgrade? i really can't afford to do both things right now but i am looking for more speed. i've been doing some video compression and editing and i am going to be doing more (which is why i am looking for more speed). thanks

alfio

[mediasponge]

According to the ECS web site, you could go a little higher on the CPU, but at 3.0, you're already pretty high on the scale for that mobo. You didn't specify how much RAM is in it. That mobo will go up to 16Gb, but the 4Gb sticks are bound to be expensive. The DDR2 533/667 is probably going to be the bottleneck for video work. Maybe leave it the way it is and save up for a mobo/cpu combo upgrade package. This is a 4 year old mobo, you know. A review here. I've been using ECS for years. Good bang for the buck, not real high end stuff.

[ZaZ]

If you're looking for a performance boost, probably your best option is a small SSD as a boot drive. Something like a 40/60 Vertex 2 or Agility 2 will speed up boot times and application launch time will be quicker. If you do want to replace the board on the cheap I'd suggest AMD. The boards and chips are cheaper. You can probably find a DDR2 board and reuse the memory.

[alfio]

thanks for the responses

i am running 4gb RAM on XP (which, of course, limits it to 3GB). i will probably save up for a mobo/cpu combo that can run the same RAM for now. i have no idea on which but i guess that's something else to read/research on.