by R. Drum

Created on: January 11, 2010

For many computer owners, upgrading makes more sense than buying a new machine. Which upgrades will deliver the most value for your hard-earned dollar?  Well, it depends. The most important question to ask yourself is, what do I want to be able to do as a result of the upgrade?  Would you like to be able to play the newest PC games,  such as “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” or “The Sims 3”?   Or is your computer’s memory struggling to cope when running Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop?   Do you need more hard drive space to store favorite photos or home videos?  If you’ve decided to take the plunge, here are some tips to make the upgrade process easier.  

Know Your Current System Details

By knowing what kinds of hardware upgrades you need to shop for, you’ll save time and avoid frustration.  You can check your systems current specifications with Everest Free Edition, a popular utility program.  The Everest program will tell you important technical details about your current computer, such as the size of memory modules installed, and whether you need DDR, DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules.  It will show you the free space available on your hard drive, and whether you computer has an AGP, PCI, or PCI-Express video card installed.   

Consider Adding More Memory to Boost Performance

As Microsoft’s Windows operating system has transformed from XP to Vista to 7 over the years, the minimum and recommended Random Access Memory (RAM) requirements have increased.  If your computer currently has 512 megabytes (MB) of RAM installed, Windows XP will run most applications adequately.  Windows Vista and Windows 7 are more memory-hungry, and need at least 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM to run programs smoothly.  When your computer has 1 or 2 GBs of RAM installed, large programs, documents and photos can be stored in memory, rather than continually being written to the memory swap-file on your hard drive, a process which slows down your computer.  Adding RAM is the best bang-for-the-buck performance upgrade if your computer has 512 MB (or less) of RAM installed.  You can purchase a name-brand 1 gigabyte memory upgrade kit for less than $50, and many name-brand 2 gigabyte memory kits cost less than $100. The performance increase between 2 to 4 gigabytes of RAM is smaller. 

Upgrade Your Video Card for Today’s Games 

Windows 7 ushered

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