milfbait wrote:You know, I don't think disabling all those background services makes a difference. I disable the task manager, firewall, that's about it. I think setting your performance priority for background services makes a difference, because it gives ASIO priority. That's about all I tweak on my new smokin' machine. Back in the Pentium I/II days I tweaked like crazy, but nowadays I don't mess with it that much and I get awesome performance and stability. I do however have a dedicated DAW, so I don't use the internet or have antivirus running, that will definitely mess with performance/stability. I would recommend to anyone working with alot of audio tracks to get a separate dedicated drive for your audio files. I have my swap file on my dedicated (SATA) audio drive.
I see in your sig you have an Athlon 1.3, I would check to see what the biggest CPU your mobo will support and put one of those in it. CPUs are so cheap these days there's no reason not to get the fastest your motherboard can support.
i think what alot of the background services take from a computer isn't necessarily cpu stealing, but mostly the ram required to run those background services. and none of us want services that we don't use occupying ram that we DO use. =)
i agree that a cpu upgrade is where to look first,
but i doubt his board could go any higher than a 1.4ghz, as thats where the non-"XP" Athlons stopped.
you can get relatively affordable cpu/motherboard/memory combo's today. Athlon XP 2400 with Syntax motherboard, and 256MB DDR ram for $130US
(LINK), often times this is just as cheap or even less expensive than a new processor. For instance, if your motherboard only supports 200mhz FSB, the highest you can go is a 1.4ghz AMD Athlon T-Bird and you won't find those at 200FSB for less than $149 because there are far fewer of them available than the huge amount of surplus Athlon XP's that are available.
