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    Extensa 5620-4020: upgrade or replace?

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by Shemmy, Jul 25, 2011.

  1. Shemmy

    Shemmy Notebook Evangelist

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    I have an Extensa 5620-4020 with the following specs:
    3GB RAM (2GB+1GB), T2370 @ 1.73GHz, 250GB 5400RPM HD

    I'm setting up Cisco and forensics/security labs for school, and I may need to use VMWare to work with Linux, Windows 7, and Windows 2008/R2.

    I can upgrade my current laptop to a T7700 (2.4GHz, 800MHz FSB), 4GB of RAM, and a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB for about $350. Alternatively, I could build a whitebox notebook with an i3 or an i5 for $750-$850.

    Which option would be better? I'd prefer not to spend the extra money if it's not neccessary, but I also don't want to spend $350 on upgrades that will only give me another year out of my laptop (it's currently three years old).
     
    Shemmy, Jul 25, 2011
    #1
  2. downloads

    downloads No, Dee Dee, no! Super Moderator

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    I would probably go for a new one. I suspect you could do pretty well within $750 budged and that would be a lot more future proof.
    Sandy Bridge has some speed advantage over Arrandale and Arrandale had a pretty big one over Core 2 Duo series. Compare the benchmarks for T7700 against the slowest SB CPU or even decent Arrandale.
     
    downloads, Jul 26, 2011
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  3. oldcartfan

    oldcartfan Notebook Guru

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    Depends on what you're doing with the laptop. If you need a gaming rig, or doing heavy number crunching, faster processor and better graphics are worth the upgrade.

    But my nearly three-year-old 5620 (T2370) always surprises me when I ask to do something heavy and rarely chokes. Upgrading to 2GB RAM and deleted Vista (in favor of Win7) made into a new machine years ago. :)

    The scenario you laid out mentions VMware. From my experienceVMware is more of a memory-hog than a CPU-hog. It seems to me that 4GB is almost minimum for serious VMware use and 6-8GB is really nice to have.

    Unfortunately, that's where the 5620 falls down. 4GB Max. and that's only if you're running a 64bit OS. If you're using 32-bit, 3GB is all you can run in a stable configuration. That's a chipset limitation, unfortunately. :{

    While I sing the praise of the 5620 for "basic" stuff, it's probably time to upgrade if you really need that VMware. And I would budget 6-8GB RAM before a super fast CPU.

    Just my $.02
     
    oldcartfan, Jul 29, 2011
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  4. ToxicDog

    ToxicDog Newbie

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    ToxicDog, Aug 10, 2011
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