So you’ve decided to upgrade your PC, well luckily there should be several options for you if your computer is only a few years old. You should be able to upgrade your memory, your graphics card, even your processor if your motherboard was built for it. So what should you upgrade nowadays anyways? Well here’s a short list of what you should look into upgrading if you don’t already have these in your system.

When deciding on what to upgrade there are several factors you need to consider:

  • Amount of RAM you have - Ideally for Windows Vista you should have at least 2GBs of RAM, and for XP you can get by with 1GB. If you have less than this you should upgrade to speed up computer startup times, reduce application loading times, and increase multitasking capability.
  • Dual-Core Processor - Dual-Core processors have been all the rage for about 2 years now, they’ve started releasing Quad-Core processors last year, but due to their price it’s not advisable to buy them for a standard system unless you have to have the best of the best. By upgrading to a dual-core processor you’ll notice a huge difference in the multi-tasking area and application performance as well, because chances are if you’re upgrading from a single-core your new dual-core processor will be at a higher clock speed than what you have already, and since dual-core processors have become the new industry standard software developers have been writing programs to fully utilize both cores as much as possible.
  • Non-DX10 or DX9 compliant Video Card - If you’re a gamer and your video card is not atleast DX9 (Direct X) or DX10 compliant you’ll notice several benefits by upgrading, like a gigantic leap in frame rate and graphics quality. You should also make sure that your video card has atleast 256MB of video memory, even 512MB of video memory is starting to become more popular nowadays. The games are becoming more and more demanding on our systems as programmers and hardware developers are making fantastic leaps in technology. For those of you that aren’t gamers you can still benefit by upgrading to atleast a DX9 card, it’ll help with watching movies in HD and SD, and run the Windows Vista Aero theme without a hitch.