How to Speed Up Computer - PC Hardware Questions & Answers

Sourav writes in with a hardware question

Question:I am using an AM2NF6G-VSTA motherboard with an AMD-ATHLON AM2 3200 Processor. I have FOXIN 512MB DDR2 533 RAM but am not satisfied with the output speed. How can I extract the maximum speed, out of this motherboard & CPU configuration, without harming my system? I've heard of CACHE MEMORIRS, CLOCKS & RAM FREEQUENCIES, but know nothing about putting all this together, to make my faster system. I want to keep my motherboard & processor. I need to know, what extra accessories I need to extract the maximum speed from this combination. Kindly notify me of the best on the market now and details of model numbers or product-IDs too.

Answer: There is not much you can do to extract more speed out of your motherboard and CPU without overclocking your CPU which can be dangerous if not done right and actually ruin the processor. If you want to get more speed out of your system you can add another 512 MB of RAM for a total of 1 GB. Windows XP runs nicely on 1 GB of RAM. Any more won't help too much. If you were running Vista then 1 GB is basically a minimum requirement.
 
If your video card is built into the motherboard then it is using RAM from your 512 MB of system RAM so it may be a good idea to get the extra RAM or get an actual video card that has its own RAM. It looks like your motherboard upports a PCI Express video card so that would be a good upgrade. Try and get one with 128 MB of RAM or more depending on if you are going to do anygaming or photo editing.
 
Another thing that will make a difference is what type of hard drive you are using. Nowadays computers are being made with SATA hard drives rather than IDE drives because they are faster.

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