Someone please help.  If you need more info just let me know.  I really want to upgrade this machine, if not the processor than give suggestioins on something else, and how i should go about doing it.

P4 1.5

384 MB PC133

20 GB HD 7200RPM

Geforce3 Ti200

The maximum processor sold with the 4300 was 2.0GHz. Tbe BIOS *might* prevent faster processors from being used. In addition, the 4300 uses PC133 SDRAM which 40% the speed of current systems, so would be a real bottleneck to using faster processors anyway. (Basically it won't be 33% faster if you upgrade to 2.0GHz.)

Your system should be fast enough for most tasks as is. Best speed improvement for the buck would probably be to add a second hard drive and a RAID 0 controller. This would double the disk performance, which is often the weakest link anyway.

Hi, talmy-

Would you mind explaining what a "RAID 0 controller" is?

Thanks!

Shadow_Zone5

PS

How does it make a system FASTER?

Id like to know what a RAID 0 is too.  Also, is it possible to buy a better motherboard from DELL that will support all the other stuff I have. 

A RAID controller is a PCI card that is a disk controller which can organize 2 or more hard drives to behave as a single drive of twice the transfer rate (RAID O) or as a mirror for redundant storage (RAID 1). There are other configurations as well, but the most common outside of server systems is RAID 0. Card costs under $100 and on systems with two hard drives it's the most cost effective upgrade for most application mixes.