As your computer ages you might find that your hardware can’t
keep up with the demands of modern software. If you use your computer for
gaming you’ll see this much more clearly because AAA games (i.e. the big-name
game releases, such as Fallout, Call of Duty, Bioshock, Battlefield, CS:GO
etc.) demand the capabilities of hardcore hardware. Other games may demand as
much hardware capability as the AAA games, but often they do not. You’ll find
yourself playing games at lower quality settings, at a smaller resolution, or
with a slower frame rate than when you were playing games and your computer was
new. Or perhaps if you’re not a gamer, you’ll just notice sluggish performance
from your computer. So what are you to do?
The obvious answer is to upgrade, but before you do that you
should do your due diligence and perform some PC maintenance. You should be
doing basic computer maintenance continuously, but just in case you haven’t you
should start with that before doing any upgrades to your computer. First I
recommend a virus and malware scan. There are many free anti-virus programs
available like AVG and Avast. Some of the better well-known anti-virus options
like Norton and McAfee can cause more harm than good as they take up a lot of
resources and will stop working after your subscription is up.
Historically a defragging your computer was recommended, but
modern operating systems tend to do this automatically, and in fact this is dangerous
for SSDs. Look through your installed software and delete anything you don’t
use. Take a look at your task manager and process list to see which
applications are taking up a lot of your memory and CPU. See if these are necessary
and delete them if not.
If that didn’t do the trick and you’re still getting poor
performance from your computer I’d say it’s time to upgrade. The obvious first
thing to upgrade is the RAM. As a general guide you should have about 4GB of
memory per processor core. This isn’t always possible. Check to see what the
maximum amount of RAM your system (motherboard and chipset) will allow. More is
always better.
If you’re serious about upgrading your computer and RAM didn’t
help much I recommend benchmarking your computer. 3DMark 11 is a free and
popular program that will run many separate 3D simulations. Running all of the
different simulations and you’ll get scores that will tell you if your system is
limited by the CPU or the graphics card.
Upgrading the graphics card is easy. Identify what your
budget for an upgrade is and buy one from the latest generation from either AMD
or Nvidia. I’m not going to get into which one is better (or if any of them are
better than the other). Just know that Nvidia has a nasty habit of limiting
performance on their older products and inhibiting performance on AMD cards on
games that use their software, such as HairWorks. Let’s just say there’s a lot
to be read up on the subject. If you are using a liquid cooling system in your
computer that includes the graphics card, upgrading this component may be
difficult.
Upgrading the CPU should be your last step. Some say it’s
not worth it and you should just consider a new computer at this point. Newer
chipsets may have significant advantages of the one you have. First, I would look
up the chipset to determine what CPU socket it has and which processors it supports.
For example let’s say you have a 4th generation Intel Core i3 in an
LGA 1150 socket. Luckily you can choose to upgrade to an i5 or i7 from the same
generation. Upgrading the CPU is tricky, as you’ll have to remove the CPU
cooler, remove the CPU from the motherboard, and install a new CPU.
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