I need to get more RAM and a much bigger hard drive, but I don't want to go through the trouble if I have other bottlenecks that will limit my success. My processor is Celeron 1.7 ghz, so that is probably reason enough just to ditch the whole motherboard, but I was also wondering about the BUS.

 

In the Ubuntu Device Manager, it doesn't have much to say about the BUS. It just says PCI/PNP, nothing to say about its capacity/capabilities. How can I find out what I am working with here? Is there supposed to be a little sticker on the BUS somewhere telling me its specs? Is there anything else I should look out for when taking all of this into consideration? This computer is something a computer repairman assembled from scratch.

Dual-core processors are turning out to be one of the greatest revelations in recent PC development. Especially when combined with front-side bus architectures operating at speeds approaching that of the processor itself. And on top of all that, we've got 64-bit computing essentially on our doorstep, with operating systems and hardware ready to go. Best of all, you can buy in to that environment on the cheap now. I'd say it's time to upgrade.