is it worth it to do these upgrades?

i have a g73jh bst7,
it has a 5400 rpm drive and 6gb of ram (i dont know what speed), is it worth it to upgrade to a 7200rpm drive and to 8gb of ram? Also is 8gb the max for this model? im pretty sure it is but some people claim that it can use 16gb, I use this laptop for mainly gaming, World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Crysis, etc. any recommendations would be great.

 

You can upgrade RAM up to 16gb (4gb sticks each), but why would you want to? Especially for gaming only, 6gb of RAM is more than enough.

7200rpm upgrade is worth it from a 5400, but i would just save that cash and upgrade to an SSD.

 

Mines came with 6gb ram, 500gb 7200rpm HD.

I added one stick of corsair 4gb, and a 750gb 7200rpm HD. Seagate momentus same brand as the one that came with it. Havnt regretted it! Nice sporting 10gb of ram and having 1.25tb of space

 

im in the same situation, Im thinking off adding another HDD and adding ram atm.

 

If you render video or work with gigantic images in photoshop then you could use more ram. Otherwise, more than 6gb will not add any performance at all, save your money. Get a SSD if you really for the best noticeable performance upgrade or a second 500+ hdd for the added storage.

 

Like seabass said, there is no noticable difference between 6gb & 8gb, at least according to benchmarks and the other users here who have upgraded.

The best thing you can do to improve your laptop is add an SSD, it is a huge improvement. Here is cheap way to get into SSDs...

Micro Center - Micro Center 64GB SATA II 3.0Gb/s 2.5" G2 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) With SandForce 1222 Controller 122663

It got good reviews on techbargains.com (which is the plac e to find anything).

If you do need RAM and your laptop has Kingston 1333, you can get it here...
Newegg.com - Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model KVR1333D3S9/2G

The RAM is a cheap upgrade, but it won't really do anything for you. A SSD on the other hand will spead up windows and any games you have on it.

 

I know SSD are prob one of the best purchases, but the storage is so small, Do people buy SSD just to load the os on it?

 

a 80GB SSD can probably take OS+ quite a few big programs.. i've got a 128GB SSD and its got 70GB free! SSD's aren't so expensive now... but i would wait a while... in 2-3 weeks or so , new SSD's should come out and drop the prices of old ones.. you probably don't want to buy the micro cente SSD.. its very crap.. look for crucial OCZ or Intel SSD.

Panther214

 

Ditto on ValerieFire's recommendations. There's no reason why in this day and age that given a laptop with two hard drive bays, that you wouldn't be running an SSD for the boot drive. Install your games and non-critical apps on the mechanical drive. Go with any SandForce 1222 based SSD; the specs are real. It will max out the SATA 2 bandwidth, so essentially, it's going to be the fastest you'll be able to achieve with this laptop and any single drive.

Just relieving the system from the burden of operating system alone is a help.

 

hmm, well I was going to purchase a 750gb hdd because I have a lot of media and games. I know a SSD is faster, but for the price? They are VERY expensive and LITTLE if no storage? I guess I cant imagine the speed making up for the storage when 64gb ssd=750gb hdd

 

Thats why i got a extra 750gb hd, cost me 109$ at newegg and i have plrenty of room for my movies and games legal ones of course

 

yeah, I think im just gonna go with the 750gb over the SSD. while SSD will be fast, I much rather have the storage, my speed is fine, so now I will have a 750GB 7200rpm and a 640gb 5400. Now I wonder how I should run my games for steam, with all on the 750 and media on the 750..hmmm.

also xdrekx and anyone else, What did you use to mount your extra HDD if it didnt come with a caddy. Mines the best buy version and the extra slot doesnt have one

 

The speed is night and day difference. But if you need the space then that's up to you. I'd get an external hd before I'd give up my SSD. Windows boots in 30 seconds. Game levels load on in 1/4 the time of my old drive. I keep windows, all my programs, and all my games on my ssd. All my documents, mp3s, videos, and photos are on my HDD. This combination is exceptional. With a 120gb drive I have Crysis, crysis wars, fallout 3 GOTY, borderlands GOTY, TF2, Civ5, COD: black ops, Windows 7, Office 2007, and all my other programs and I still have 30gb of SSD space left (with a 120gb ssd). You can easily get by with a 64gb ssd if you are short on $$$. You can upgrade your other internal drive to a 750gb and use the 640 as an external.

 

well my 500gb came stock with a partition, i have windows on the first partition, steam and other applications on the second partition, storage on my 750gb. Seems to be working out great.

 

well if anything, later in the future, after I purchase a blu ray drive for my laptop I might go to a SSD. But between games and movies and music etc... I easily go through over 600GB. on games alone im at almost 100. For music around 50, for movies thats prob atleast 500. Maybe after I get all that setup.

 

Ive read so many reviews about SSD dying or coming DOA. I was looking into one myself but i think ill wait until the technology gets a little better, 400$ for a HD that might work? Ill pass for now!

 

The only problem I see with upgrading to an SSD is that the SSD's have a limited write, meaning they can only write so many files before it dies out. If you are always using your laptop (like I"m sure most of us do) I would just try to find a fast HDD, as for the RAM like many others have said unless you do anything that involves alot of multitasking then the 6gb you have now will be more than enough for the games out there.
Goodluck in your findings =)

 

I just used double sided tape to mount it, the back panel keeps it in check and it doesnt seem to move around at all. Since the only place i found to buy a bracket it somewhere overseas, forget what site but with shipping it was like 35-40 bucks lol. Double sided tape works fine

 

yeah saw that site, it was like 45$ after shipping. hmm double sided tape is prob one of the better ideas ive heard. So yo just stick a piece on the bottom that rests on the laptop? I also heard you have to stick something on the side from i popping out and keeping itpressed in?

 

yea i just put some cardboard in the gap

 

thanks for the suggestion, will a ssd improve gaming fps or just loading times?

 

It will not do anything for FPS (that is GPU and CPU related), but it will reduce load times. Anything hard drive related will be greatly improved. Saving games/loading games etc. Primarily everything will just feel snappier. Do some googling on SSDs, don't just take my word for it.

 

can someone post a pic of them using velcro? I like this idea but im kind of confused as were you are placing it, because im getting my new drive in the mail tomm and looking for the best solution

 

stick it on the bottom of it lol

 

just a piece on the bottom of the laptop and drive? I am just wondering about it sliding out and was trying to avoid using cardboard and stuff. wanted it to be clean as possible, kinda ocd

 

lol then buy a mount, I didnt see the point of wasting 35+ dollars on a piece of thin metal or whatever it is lol....cut a nice neat piece of cardboard and it fit just right.

 

The slow load times are caused by outdated video card drivers / vBIOS. This has little to do with having an SSD, although it would help.

 

I understand what you are saying but I disagree with the implication that a SSD is not a big factor. The Gpu is limited in how fast the HDD can send it the textures. If it is loading 1gb worth of textures, then a SSD at up to 285mbps would be 4x faster than a HDD going at 70mbps.

I've always been on the beta vbios and when I upgraded to a SSD I wa using 10.8 (which was the latest most stable at he time). My load times reduced to 1/4 their original time.

I should note that this on Crysis single player which has huge levels. Other games may show less of an impact.

 

Expect sometime during Q1 for SSD's to hit $1/GB, so I'd wait for a SSD upgrade.