V6V Modifications/Upgrades

Hi all,

This is my first post and although I'm ok at doing most stuff on my laptop I don't understand the details of the components and spec etc in detail so sorry if there are some silly statements

Anyhow, I have had my V6V for over 3 years now and love it. I feel that it is now quite outdated however and I wanted to update it. I am aware I can easily change the RAM and hard disk. I am going to get the RAM upgraded, but the hard disk isn't that full so thought I'd leave that. I am curious about the CPU however as I am told this is quite old, even taking into account the age of the laptop? I gather that changing the CPU is possibly cost prohibitive and not something routinely done - most places I've spoken with have just said get a new laptop. I would do this if there were anything that looked as amazing as the V6 - but I cannot find anything thats a patch on it aesthetically!

ASUS say I can change the CPU (and it is seperate to the motherboard) but cannot say what CPU's will be supported by the BIOS and I gather this is the crucial factor!? I have the latest BIOS issue from Asus on it atm. These are the model details:

Intel Pentium M 750 (1.86GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)
60GB, 5400RPM Hard Drive
512MB DDR2 400MHz RAM (max 2GB)
ATI X600 Graphics Card with 64MB RAM

So basically, how can I boost the performance of the laptop whilst keeping the V6V casing and also what sort of costs am I looking at? It's in good nick opposite defrag/spyware etc and those sort of cleaning up functions and I don't use any demanding programs.

I know this isn't the most logical request but please humour me and help out! Do I need to supply more info on the spec?

Many thanks in advance,

James

 

I should add that I have tried to sort this out with Asus and the dealer but they haven't been a great help!

 

I would definitely upgrade the RAM to 2GB if I were you. It may even work with 3 or 4, but there you may hit upon limitations of the chipset and BIOS, you need to check for that.

I think Pentium Ms are not pin-compatible with the successors, which were the Yonah Core Duos (V6J, which I have). Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Edit: I'm right:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core


So, you can only upgrade to the max-speed Pentium M, which was around 2GHz if I remember correctly. As to the price, usually retail CPUs keep close to their original price which is high, so that's why it's not cost-effective. I looked it up for my Yonah-based V6J and for several hundred Euros at least, I would have gotten a 30% improvement in speed -- which was not so hot.

In your case the speed improvement would be even less than that, because you can't switch generations (i.e., move up to Yonah) so you're basically improving only clock speed, not architecture. I don't know about the prices.

The largest and fastest HDD for the PATA-based V6V is I think the same thing I have -- the WD2500BEVE, 250GB Western Digital Scorpio.

Besides that, you can upgrade the WiFi card, but I'm not sure it's needed.

You cannot really upgrade the GPU. See the Info BoothFAQ as to reasons why.

You could in theory upgrade the screen to the IPS of the V6Va.

However:
If you do want to spice up the hardware as much as possible, you're easily going to get to half the price of a new notebook -- without necessarily getting half the performance. So even though the V6 is the most beautiful laptop ever built, in my opinion as well, I do not know whether it's worth it to pour a lot of money into upgrades when for a little extra money (perhaps not even double) you can get a reasonable-looking, good quality, last-generation laptop with all the new components...

 

Whoa, thanks for that E.B.E. I get most of what you're saying but not the bit about clock speed vs architecture!

I was told by a techy guy we know that there's only any point going to 2GB ram or higher if I want to run vista, and seeing as I can't with this cpu apparently, then there is no point in upping it by alot? This is not the case then? Also, do you reckon a simple RAM upgrade will boost the performance noticably?

The only poss replacment I've seen would be the Vaio FW series (I've been researching laptops for my sister) as this looks amazing too!

I can see a Intel Pentium M 765 Processor - 2.1GHz (2048KB L2 Cache) 400MHz FSB (in theory a poss) but it is nearly £300 whcih reinforces the cost prohibitive aspect!

 

Nice writeup E.B.E. But it's lacking some content that directly relates to the Dothan/Sonoma chipset.

2GB is the maximum supported amount of memory on the Sonoma 910GM/PM chipset Which OP has (Pentium M 750 gave it away).

You can always extend the longevity of upgrading the CPU to a 760 or 770, but the costs outweighs the benefits. If your challenging enough, you may want to look into pin modding your laptop with a Pentium M 725 or 735 and running it at 2.16+. This would be an overclock, and might be a little complicated for you, unless you're willing to learn .

Here is the Pin Modding Guide for Pentium M. Personally I have already done it to my W3V since I got it 3 years ago, and it's still running fine. Best mod ever, and I still use it today.

Personally I think the CPU is far overrated, you may want to look into upgrading the hard drive to the 250GB Scorpio instead as it will increase overall boot time and performance. Using something like eBoostr which is ReadyBoost for XP also improved application and boot up performance for my W3V.

 

Yeah sorry for missing the details, I'm not familiar too much with the Pentium M & related chipsets, that's around the time I came into this laptop business. I did caution to check for RAM limitations of the chipset before trying > 2GB, though.

To answer a question, I definitely think that a RAM upgrade will boost up the performance noticeably, and I also believe it's the first thing you should do. In 2008, if you have up to date applications (even just a browser, a mailing client, and a few other essentials such as this) 512 is not going to do too well...

And I also agree with D3X's statements that the CPU upgrade is not going to deliver too much improvement for the cost; I should have made that explicit in my first post.

What I meant with frequency versus architecture is as follows:

You can upgrade to Pentium M only, so you are not changing the architecture (type) of the CPU. You can only change the clock speed. (Note that I'm no longer sure this is correct, because as I noted in the first para I'm missing a few details about the Pentium M CPUs and chipset(s))

If I were to upgrade my V6J from Yonah (Core Duo) to Merom (Core 2 Duo), which is the next generation of CPU, and which is supported by my chipset/BIOS, then I would gain not only a frequency boost, but also architecture improvements which in themselves are worth 10 to 20% performance gains at the same clock.

Hope that clarifies.

 

Ok, thanks guys. I have upped the RAM to 1.5GB and is running much quicker so great!

Cheers for the CPU info too, I won't bother about upgrading that then, it jutsn't make financial sense.

I've read around a bit on overclocking which I reckon I can cope with, but not so sure about physical changes such as the pin modding! Will overclocking it slightly give much of a performance boost i.e. as it is running ok atm, is it worth the risk of even upping it slightly? The CPU details state the max supported speed is 2.3GHz, but I assume this will also depend on all the other components?

I also cannot find the detailed CPU info in the BIOS though!?

Cheers again and apologies for my ignorance,

James

 

What you read about the maximum frequency being 2.3 GHz is what is the fastest CPU that the chipset supports or was tested with; and NOT what your particular type of CPU can be overclocked to. The limit will also depend on the actual, particular CPU that you have in your notebook (each has its own limit), but I doubt your 1.86GHz would go near 2.3GHz overclocked. If you overclock by FSB you also increase the frequency of the RAM which can cause trouble in itself.

If you just do desktop work (browsing, mailing, MS office sort of things) then your CPU probably spends most of its time idle, so there is little benefit from overclocking.

If you do also CPU intensive work, then overclocking the CPU may get you a bit of performance boost; but given your level of knowledge I would suggest you refrain from it at the moment. Do a bit of reading first.

 

buy a 1.6 dothan (725) and pinmod it to a 2.13

very simple and quick upgrade, chip is about 25 bucks on ebay

I'd go for a full 2 gigs of ram, just because its so cheap.

And either a faster (7200 rpm) or larger HD with higher density will speed things up. The WD 250 gig that was mentioned should be significantly faster than whatever is in your computer now

I had a V6Va with the 1.6 pinmod, 2 gigs of ram and 120 gig HD and it was pretty zippy