Windows 7 Upgrade Questions Help Please

[Daniel Miller]

Hi,

I will list the specs from my computer at the bottom of this post. What I am wanting to do is see what options would be best for upgrading, and what I can upgrade that would be the most beneficial to me. I like to do a lot of video editing and I just got the sony nex-5n camera that shoots 1080P at 60 frames per sec. My computer used to do the video editing perfectly with my old camera at 720, but not now. I wouldn't say it's horribly slow, because it does get the job done, but previewing everything is a huge pain, the video skips a lot and it's very annoying. However, if I do wait about 10 seconds before I press play, the lag is usually much less. Most likely caused by the program rendering beforehand.

Anyways, my main question is what component should I upgrade to get the most benefit? And what should I upgrade to? I am not able to spend tons of money but I would like to know what's out there. If any of you can point me in the right direction either with links/direct answers that would be so awesome!

Here are my current specs from windows expirence index:

*As you can see most of the scores are decently high except the graphics score.*

Component	Details	Subscore	Base score
Processor	AMD Phenom(tm) 9750 Quad-Core Processor	7.0	5.5 Determined by lowest subscore
Memory (RAM)	8.00 GB	7.2
Graphics	ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series	5.5
Gaming graphics	4735 MB Total available graphics memory	6.5
Primary hard disk	101GB Free (917GB Total)	5.9
Windows 7 Home Premium

System
Manufacturer Gateway Model DX4300 Total amount of system memory 8.00 GB RAM System type 64-bit operating system Number of processor cores 4

Storage
Total size of hard disk(s) 3246 GB Disk partition (C 101 GB Free (917 GB Total) Media drive (D CD/DVD Media drive (E CD/DVD Disk partition (F 115 GB Free (932 GB Total) Disk partition (G 852 GB Free (932 GB Total) Disk partition (H 20 GB Free (466 GB Total)

Graphics
Display adapter type ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series Total available graphics memory 4735 MB Dedicated graphics memory 1024 MB Dedicated system memory 0 MB Shared system memory 3711 MB Display adapter driver version 8.881.0.0 Primary monitor resolution 1920x1080 DirectX version DirectX 10

 

[Drew]

@ a glance, the box looks fairly robust still, here are a couple suggestions...
Graphics card to GeForce GTX 295

The HDD does not have enough free space. Either, time for bigger or an additional or some means & form of storage, off that drive. Should have, @ least, 15%. Then, too, maybe there is stuff on it you don't need, use or care about much or anymore that can be turfed.

In your case, you'd want security that is not a resource hog, too.

8Gs is lots & the CPU needs no concern. So, guess the above is my 2 cents.

Cheers,
Drew

 

[Daniel Miller]

Thanks for the response! I actually have 4 hard drives in the computer, so I assume you were talking about the C drive which contains the OS. I guess I could move some stuff from there to the 1TB drive I just bought a couple weeks ago.

As far as the GPU I'll definitely look at your recommendation, thank you so much! I have just been searching everywhere on the net for comparisons on new GPU's and I haven't found much.

And would you or anyone know if I can stick more RAM in my computer? I was at best buy and the most ram on a stick is 2 GB, which filling up my mother board would be 8 which is what I'm at now...however I've heard reports of people with 16 GB of ram, would this require a new motherboard or are there sticks that have more than 2GB on them?

 

[Drew]

Here, go nuts, mate

Link Removed - Invalid URL

Cheers,
Drew

PS: &, yeah, bet you could move some stuff to that, yeeesh,

 

[Daniel Miller]

haha that's awesome! Thanks! lol

 

[Saltgrass]

Check your motherboard specs, it might be limited as to how much RAM it will take. Also, different versions of Windows 7 will restrict memory. For example, Home Basic is limited to 8 G, but everything above that is 16G or greater.