Legit Reviews

Its sad I know, especially for a long time Legit guy like me but, since my son was born and I have moved 3 times I have not kept up with current tech. so I have no idea about a lot out there now. I need a little help on a few basics. In terms of real applications ( I play games..Neverwinter Nights etc.) how much actual difference would I see going from DDR 400 memory to DDR2 800? Also how much would I see in going from a ATA 133 HDD to a SATA 300 in actual visible difference? I know that I can measure benchmarks and see a lot of difference but when I sit down to play my favorite game of the day would I actually see a difference in these two areas?

Memory - I have no idea, since i do not have any boards that take DDR2 memory

hard drive - the only difference you will see is if you put 2 hard drives in the system, and move the page file to the opposite drive from windows. That speeds all access up, and then you will notice difference. I have seen no difference between ATA100/133 drives and the SATA drives I have in game performance increase. Access time is maybe SLIGHTLY better in SATA, and should be even a bit more in SATA2/300.

If you dont run windows, then yes you will notice a difference in the drive speeds, but game performance will be VERY slight unless you get tons of loading screens.

Mike

just my opinions

Your CPU can't run DDR2 800 unless you upgrade to AM2 or Intel
Also I doubt your motherboard can run SATA 300. It's might have SATA 150.

Going from IDE to SATA will give more performance, but not a lot.
The performance gains will not be due to the speed of SATA as such, but will be because todays HDD's have 8 or 16mb of cache and have larger capacity.
Larger drives give more speed due to "arial density" being higher.

Your best bet yould be to upgrade to something like and X2 3800+ or an E6300.

How do I move the page file to the opposite from windows? I have a primary boot drive and a secondary "slave" drive I use to store stuff I don't need often. Both are ATA 133 one is 120GB the other is 30GB

right click on my computer, performance section, click settings button Advanced tab, virtual memory section, click change. Highlight the drive you want the pagefile on, either set it to system managed or do custom size. Click set. Highlight the old drive, and select no paging file. Click set. Okay to clear all the windows and rest.

Abit AN7 has Satat150 ports so going to Sata300 you won't hit 300 speeds. But yes you will notice a difference in load times slightly with sata drives, but with that setup not worth it.

I am upgrading to a DFI- UT nF4 Ultra-D and an Athelon 64 3200 Venice does that change anything you said above?