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Help Rock out My System!

Posted 08/31/2010 at 10:50am | by The Maximum PC Staff

Ask the Doctor LogoMy current rig is an HP Pavilion M8530F with a Viola-GL8E motherboard. The CPU is a 2.2GHz Phenom X4 9550. The board is AM2+. I asked HP for a copy of the mainboard’s user manual hoping it could tell me what AM2+ chip I could drop in. However, I find myself even more confused. I think a 2.6GHz Phenom 9950 X4 will work even though it is a 125-watt chip and my current 9550 is a 95-watt chip.

I’d rather not spend the money only to be proven dead wrong and be stuck having to borrow my fiancée’s Vaio laptop. It may be nice, but it’s not my desktop. So far, the only change made to my rig in the two years I’ve had it was the addition of a graphics card cooler, of the intake variety. I’ve done research and the more questions I have answered, the more confused I get. If I could, I’d just buy/build a new rig, but that’s not an option. Some newer games, like BioShock 2, require AMD core speed in excess of 2.2 GHz, and mine barely meets the requirements. Even the budget upgrade article in the July 2010 issue is vague on whether I can upgrade. Doc, please steer me in the right direction, lest I crash on the rocks of inaction.

—Lucas Allain

Read the Doctor's advice for Lucas after the jump.

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Upgrading Advice

Posted 04/23/2010 at 10:13am | by The Maximum PC Staff

Ask the Doctor LogoI’m trying to decide whether to upgrade from Windows XP Professional to Windows 7 Professional. While I’m no hardcore techie, I can follow directions well and I built my own system a couple of years ago with the thought of having a system ready for a future OS upgrade. My system is an Asus P5E Deluxe, an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 at 2.66GHz, and 4GB of DDR3. I have Windows XP installed on a 150GB Western Digital Raptor, as well as a 500GB secondary drive.

Although I have some programs installed on the C: drive (ones I can reinstall), most of my programs have been installed on the secondary drive.

I have plenty of room on the C: drive to partition and install Win7, but I’m thinking about buying an SSD to install Windows 7 on. I use Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Painter 11, as well as Adobe Premiere Elements 8, and I think I would benefit from installing 64-bit Windows 7 and adding 4GB to 8GB more RAM.

I’m really unsure as to how to go about this and not sure I really want to—I’ve read a number of posts on different forums and it seems to me there are mixed feelings about the upgrade.

Also, since my programs are installed on a drive other than my OS drive, if I make a change by partitioning or installing Win7 on a new separate OS drive, would I be able to use the programs already installed on the D: drive without reinstalling them?

—Tom Helinski

Read the Doctor's advice for Tom after the jump.

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