There are four components that affect a PC’s
performance that you can change: RAM, hard disk, display card, and
processor. Changing any of these can alter the performance of your
machine, and each change comes at a different price. Some of the changes
may come at a prohibitively high cost and may not give you a significant
improvement in performance. Some changes, on the other hand, can bring
substantial improvements at a very low cost. And if you are not careful
enough, you may even end up paying more for less performance increase.
In these pages we will guide you through
the changes that you can make to get the best performance, in the
different brands we have tested. Based on the results, we have also drawn
up some important guidelines for you while purchasing any PC, not just the
brands tested here.
Is 32 MB RAM enough? You will not be able to squeeze every ounce of performance from MB RAM. With better processors and heavier apps today, you need 64 MB. We received some PCs with 32 MB RAM. When we upgraded them to Increasing RAM to 128 MB did not give any improvement in
Business Winstone results for RAM tests
Note: Higher value is better.
Bottom line: You need 64 MB RAM. 32 MB doesn’t give full |
Performance improvement
For each machine tested, we
identified the slowest part. Here we recommend what changes can be made to
that part to get a performance boost, how much is the performance boost,
and how much does it cost.
For each PC, we located the bottlenecks by
analyzing the scores they got in the component-level benchmark, WinBench.
After identifying the slower components, we replaced them with faster
ones. As stated earlier, we looked at the processor, hard disk, RAM, and
video card only. We didn’t consider the impact of a change of the
motherboard, as that’s something very difficult to accomplish when
buying a branded machine.
Win NT or 95?
Most PCs ship with Win 95 or 98. But it is Win
Win NT also has a higher degree of CPU
Business Winstone results for performance test
Note: Higher value is better.
Bottom line: Win NT gives better |
||||||
Which hard disk? The latest technology in IDE hard drives is the UltraATA/66
And of course, a faster rpm drive also gives better |
||||||
AcerPower 4100 PIII 500 MHz Bottleneck :4.3 GB Seagate hard disk Replacement: 10 GB Western Digital Caviar 310000 Performance boost: 6% Difference in cost: Rs 5,100 When we replaced the hard disk of the AcerPower, its |
||||||
Cerebra Pentium II 350 MHz For the Cerebra, we were able to identify two bottlenecks: the
Bottleneck 1 :Pentium II 350 MHz processor Replacement: Pentium II 400 MHz Performance boost: 6.5% Difference in cost: Rs 700
Thus, by paying just Rs 700 more, you get a significant
Bottleneck 2 :Intel i740 display card with 8 MB VRAM Replacement: Matrox MGA G200A with 8 MB VRAM Boost in performance: 1.6% Difference in cost: Rs 3,600
A very high price to pay for negligible performance boost. Not |
||||||
Compaq
We tried to boost the Deskpro’s performance by trying out In short, we loved the machine and, but for the steep price, |
||||||
HP Brio BAx PII 400 MHz Bottleneck :Pentium II 400 MHz processor Replacement: Pentium III 500 MHz Boost in performance: 12% Difference in cost: Rs 17,500
This is a very significant improvement indeed. However, the The BAx uses a Seagate hard disk that seems to be a special OEM We replaced it with a Western Digital Caviar 310000. However, |
||||||
VAT 2000 Celeron 366 MHz The VAT also gives two avenues for improvement: the RAM and the
Bottleneck 1 :32 MB RAM Replacement: 64 MB Performance boost: 10% Difference in cost: Rs 2,700
By now we have said enough about the need to have 64 MB RAM–a
Bottleneck 2 :4.3 GB Seagate Medalist 4310 hard disk Replacement: 10 GB Western Digital 310000 Performance boost: 7.8% Difference in cost: Rs 5,100
The cost is worth the performance boost. And you get an |
||||||
Vintron
One area of performance improvement would be the CPU. But as
|
||||||
Wipro Super Genius 9000 PIII 450 MHz The Genius 9000 performed almost as well as the Compaq EP. So
Bottleneck 1 :Pentium III 450 MHz processor Replacement: Pentium III 500 MHz Performance boost: 4% Difference in cost: Rs 12,500
The 450 MHz processor, which is just a step behind 500 MHz, was
Bottleneck 2 :Cirrus Logic 5465 display card with 4 MB VRAM Replacement: Matrox MGA G200A with 8 MB VRAM Performance Boost: 1.3% Difference in cost: Rs 4,700
Unless you plan to purchase a machine for graphics work, a |
||||||
Zenith PC PIII 450 MHz The Zenith presented us with two potential areas for
Bottleneck 1 :32 MB RAM Replacement: 64 MB Performance boost: 15% Difference in cost: Rs 2,700
This was the most significant improvement we could obtain in a Pentium III 450 MHz processor Replacement: Pentium III 500 MHz Performance boost: 4.8% Difference in cost: Rs 12,500
This is similar to that obtained in the Wipro PC. It’s not |
||||||
Did you know...
95, even for common business applications? anything more or anything less. common business apps? A high-end card is very expensive unless you want to use it for high-end graphics apps. Again, at the higher end, gaming cards are different from the application cards. price-performance ratio, while for high-end graphics work like CAD, a Pentium II/III is a good buy? performance boost over the older UltraATA/33 ones? But your BIOS should have support for UltraATA/66. anywhere?
|
||||||
Market prices Hard disks
| ||||||
Western Digital Caviar 310000 | 10,000 | |||||
Display cards |
||||||
Intel i740 Power 3D AGP (8 MB VRAM |
2,400 | |||||
Matrox MGA G200A AGP (8 MB VRAM) |
6,000 | |||||
SiS 6326 AGP (4 MB VRAM) | 1,300 | |||||
Cirrus Logic GD5465 AGP (4 MB VRAM) |
1,300 | |||||
Processors | ||||||
Intel Pentium II 350 MHz | 9,800 | |||||
Intel Pentium II 400 MHz | 10,500 | |||||
Intel Pentium III 450 MHz | 15,500 | |||||
Intel Pentium III 500 MHz | 28,000 | |||||
Intel Celeron 366 MHz (Socket 370) |
4,000 | |||||
RAM | ||||||
32 MB 100 MHz SDRAM | 2,700 | |||||
64 MB 100 MHz SDRAM | 4,500 | |||||
128 MB 100 MHz SDRAM | 10,500 |
The prices for the components used in the analysis have been
provided by:
Classic Network and Computers O-41 West Patel Nagar,
New Delhi 110008. Tel: 11- 574760
Fortune Marketing 500 204 Eros Appartments, 56 Nehru Place,
New Delhi 110019.
Tel: 11-6427627, 6472492