New life for my P7805-u

Hi,
I have decided to keep my trusty P7805-u but am planing to max it out.

1.) 2x Raid0 Seagate Momentus XT 500GB's (the new hybrid drive)
2.) a T9900
3.) a USB 3.0 express card
4.) 8GB ram

Not all in that order, other than the first item, and one at a time. I just can't find a 1920x1200 laptop out there I like.

 

G73?????

OTH
I have decided I will not buy another gaming laptop. The game performance to price ratio is not good enough for me.

 

The g73 isn't 1920x1200, 1920x1080 is the highest res you can get with a g73 .

 

It's damn close... I don't know if you need the 1200 res for a specific reason though.

 

I like the extra height for photo work.. 1080 is close but no cigar.........

 

I saw the story on the Seagates Hybrid drives yesterday. I was intrigued, but I didn't see any specs and tests as of yesterday when I read the story. What is the read/write rate? Since I had just gotten a 128gb SSD for mine and was going to use my 320gb HD as a secondary drive until I saw the hybrid. I still have 2 other lappys and eventually will brings them all up to speed.

 

Here's a few reviews of it:

Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News
Seagate Momentus XT Review | StorageReview.com

 

After reading this all I can say is hhmmm....

Seagate Momentus XT Review | StorageReview.com

 

If you do decide to keep your laptop, I advise that you don't do all of the following upgrades.

Unfortunately, the 2 things that these laptops lack the most can't be upgraded: the graphics card and the processor, which although can be upgraded, you still pay more for a CPU that is inferior to an i5/i7.

 

I know what you mean. I saw this this morning:

Alienware M17x Laptop: Core 2 Quad Q9000 2GHz, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, 2x 1GB GeForce 260M SLI, 17" 1440x900 LCD, 9-Cell Battery, Win 7 Premium - Slickdeals.net

I was half tempted but I would be buying old tech.
Even at $1200, you can get better with an i5 or i7 lappy.
Even upgrading that to a Q9100($1000) in it wouldn't equal the new I7 lappys. I mean for $1500 you can get i7-720qm in an lappy and do circles around what I got now.
I just can't believe Intel decided to leapfrog the Core duos and Quad cores they way they did. The T9900 hadn't even been out a year much less the Quad cores. Oh well, technology forges ahead.

 

SOunds good, but i would recommend an actually SSD over the hybrid drive. You cant beat the preformance a SSD gives and even those (if they work exactly as promised) RAIDed together will still pale in comparison.

Plus with Intels G3 drives coming out prices should take another crash and capacities will come up alot. Intel is saying they are putting out a 300GB and 600GB drive so capacity differences will be a thing of the past by the end of this year / beginning of the next.

As to the rest of your upgrades. Sound good. The t9900 is a great CPU and still very usable for 95% of everything available (as true multicore support is only just now starting to pick up everywhere)

I'm still using my 6860FX and i still havent found anything that it wont still run well enough for me to enjoy. I encode video, i game, i render my game world and everything just as well as i always have. I cant play some of the newest games at 300FPS but i've never found any that are unplayable

 

All that and this is announced today:

"Today NVIDIA launched their newest and fastest gaming GPU, the GTX 480M. This chip has a lot to offer for notebooks, including a dedicated Tesselation engine for up to 5x more performance than any other GPU. NVIDIA claims it currently beats anything else currently on the market, and all notebook manufacturers have to do to set new performance records is to build a system around this GPU."

So I probably won't upgrade or buy another laptop till I see what monster lappys are going to be produced with this.

 

The technology NEVER stops

3d Vision

 

The biggest thing here for me is the screen. I really love the 1920x1200 realestate. I wouls truely mis that about this laptop. I am not a gamer in any sence of the word so other than video the GPU is a wasite on me.

My P9600 now is more tham ample but I figure T9900 just for insurance. I am of m quadcore kick as nothing I do really needs a quad core.

The Drives I am cooling off on, but am thinking of a SSD for primary (80GB X25) and 7K500 for data. I think the single Intel would still wipe the floor of a raided XT. Decisions, decisions.

The 8GB ram is probably the last upgrade as 4GB's never really gets pushed as it is.

 

I'd nix the USB 3.0 card. There really isn't any devices to take advantage of that have it that are out, and of the storage devices, I'm willing to bet eSATA will be on the device as well.

If you were going to do one upgrade today, I'd recommend the memory before all else. Here's why.

You mentioned that you do photo editing on the laptop. By chance, so do I. I use a combination of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 to manage my photos and to do my photo editing. Although CS3 doesn't take advantage of more than 4GB of RAM, having the extra ram available is a Godsend when you're running multiple applications at once. I noticed a huge difference going from 4GB to 8GB when running Lightroom & Photoshop simultaniously. Photoshop load times dropped by more than half, since the system wasn't paging to the hard drive to make room for the application and the photo I was editing.

If anything, I noticed a greater speed increase from the extra RAM than I did from going to a T9900 CPU.

I was able to buy my DDR3 modules from Newegg when the price had dropped to $309 (w/free shipping) for a few days, making them only $50 more than DDR2 modules of the same capacity.

Eventually down the road I'll be swapping out my 2X320 WD Black HD's with SSD's; just waiting for the price to come down a little more before I bite.

Like you though, the only reason why I have maxed out my system is because I can't find any 1920x1200 laptops out there anymore (aside from 17" Macbook Pro's and Lenovo W series of systems) that are reasonably priced. My ultimate dream system would be a Thinkpad W701ds, but for the features and options I'd want in it, I'm looking at $6000+ !

If you plan on keeping your system for a while, besides the RAM (and CPU if you can find a deal on one), I suggest you also get a secondary USB monitor ( www.minomonitors.com), forego the USB3.0 card, get a colorimeter (Pantone, colorvision spyder, Colormunky, etc), and get the hard drives afterwards.

 

I use DPP for my RAW files and video conversions where required from Xilisoft. I have come no where near stressing out my 4GB.

I am retiring in 2/2011 and want t get into digital photography more as a hobby. This and dev was the reason for even getting the P7805 in the first place. For the price at the time the screen was the selling point for me. Right now I have the 320 Black and a 500 Blue.

I also dabble in Visual Studio and Web Expessions. There the screen is another selling point. My only thing I didn't count on is these things are HUGE.

Not a true portable and a real battery eater. Also a bit bulky t be using on your lap especially with a cooler under it. So I purchased a U81-a for that though.

Now a G73 is like 1700 or so. I am thinking;
1.) $300.00 2x Raid TX's or 80GB x25 and 500GB 7K500
2.) $400.00 T9900
3.) $300.00 8GB

So my options are to upgrade or G73 and try and get about 700 for my system as it is now.

I have it as;
P9600 ES
320 Back & 500 Blue
1920x1200
Targus 180w Brick (2.5 years solid service and like new)
Zalman NC 2000 cooler
Win7 HP Upgrade Disk & factory restores (3 disk) all burnt

Most importantly it is one of the 100% Rock Solid and cool running units but I am not sure what I'd get for it. Also do I want to trade for bleeding edge tech and possible GSOD's and or other issues............

 

I agree, I see a lot of powerful laptops out there but none SO much better that I am willing to give up my awesome p7805u with 1920x1200 over.

 

The T9900 is more than enough to handle anything out there right? That's what I'm working with under my hood. How is the i3/i5/i7 so mind blowing over the T9900? Yes, more cores but really besides photoshop what else sucks so much power, not gaming....?!?

 

I'd agree, I have the P9600 ES in here now and rarely ever have it pegged. The only reason to T9900 is just to have the extra punch down the line. I was hot and bothered over the i7's for a bit but am starting to realize there really is nothing I am looking at doing now or in the short term future that will require it.

8GB though it looking better and better. If I start getting over the 4GB I'm way better off with 8GB and my P9600 then the 4GB and a T9900 is my reasoning.

I could even live with the drives I have too. It boots to desktop in 45 seconds with 8 of them being the bios.

 

For me im going a different route for now, trying to sell my 7811 for about 6 weeks now in another site and use the money towards a g73. Since i heard news of the nvidia 480 going mobile im wondering if they will release a g73 version with the nvidia 480 mobile.

But for the last few days i've been thinking if I should I just upgrade my cpu instead.

 

Some games will love more cores.

 

Some will indeed, but few to none require or even need them right now. A t9600/t9900 is more than enough to play just about any game out right now.

 

I'm not a gamer but 3x runs of 3DMark 06 1280x1024 10,350 Powermizer off with the card at 700,900,1750 and below.......

 

Have you found a good place to upgrade from 4Gigs to 8 for a good price?

 

I bought this memory kit about three weeks ago for $309. I just checked and not only is it back in stock, but the price dropped again; this time to $299 with free shipping:

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Laptop Memory Model F3-8500CL7D-8GBSQ

 

If you get the combo with the 250 GB Segate 5400 it is 289.99, crazy deal.....

And a reason for loving the photography hobby, a candid pic I took at my daughters recent graduation, got her turning her head just before she found me and realized what she was focusing on....

http://www.pcambrosia.com/img/GCU_Small_046.JPG

 

Nice upgrade, and even for gaming it should suffice for most stuff. I mean my M11x gets ~6200 3DMark06 and plays pretty much anything out there, so your setup should do fine on that front should you decide to. I sold my 7811fx for my Sager NP8662, and never looked back. The 7811fx had too many quirks for me, but maybe everything was fixed with the 7805u.

 

My only quirk, that I know of, is like others and I have to run the legacy firewire driver in Windows 7. I know others have had GPU heat issues but mine is cool and quite. With the Zalman 2000 and normal usage my internal fans really never kick in.

 

I don't even use 4gigs of memory lol... Kinda a waste to upgrade 4 me right now. I want a new car....

 

What? My T9300 is now obsolete!?! Whatever, I'm still happy with old paint but trying to order two Momentus XT's.

Amazon and the Egg are still waiting for stock so I'll keep checking..

 

NewEgg shows 6/1 for the expected date, we shall see. I just put the swap file and user files on the 500GB blue with the 320 GB black still for primary boot. Time went from 39 seconds using boottimer to 36 seconds.

Utilizing the pipe from both drives helps out a bit.........

 

I had to order 2x drives from Tiger Direct. New Egg, when the got them in 6/1 and 6/10, only alows for ordering 1 drive. With TD I was able t order the two drives.

I was going to get the Ram 1st but the RAM is easy to find and get. These Momentus XT drives right now are the hard to purchase items. I also want to get a USB 3.0 express34 addapter and then one of the USB 3.0 powered 2.5/3.5 docks for the drives

Worst case, if I don't like the RAID0, I'll use one as a primary drive for the U81a and a data drive for the P7805 and go SSD for the primary drive there.

 

That didn't last long, I had to cancel the order as they no only didn't have them in staock they have no idea when they will get them. I will never order from TD again.....................

 

why not get a X9100 instead of the T9900 especially given the recent unlocked OC capability for the 78xx series?

 

I don't think the stock PSUs can handle a Core 2 Extreme, especially an overclocked one. I'm surprised they can even handle a T-series with an overclocked GPU.

 

I have got up to 3.6 GHz @ 1.350V on the stock PSU and my GPU is OC'ed aswell.

 

I now am thinking x9100 instead of T9900 because we can OC. While I'd probably run most of the time at stock clock it is nice to have the option for video encoding and the like.

I really want to try out the XT's here in Raid0 but I may go Intel SSD for the OS drive and us an XT for all my personal and storage folders as a second drive.

 

I was looking forward to seeing your results with those drives in RAID 0. I for one would like to try some of them myself, but it will have to wait for sometime in the future.

 

I was thinking, I have available to test and compare;

1.) 320 Black
2.) 500 GB 7200.4
3.) 7K500
4.) 500 GB Blue

if I can get a hold of the drives also;

5.) Momentus XT
6.) Momentus XT Raid0

I just don't know if I want to invest that much time and effort..........

 

I just had newegg auto notify so ordered same day as e-mail sent.

Running QuietHDD says both functions are compatble but ATM I have no time to check it out; bugs or other.

 

yeah i'm stable at 3.6GHz on 1.288v (E0 X9100) with my 9800m GTS OCed @ 700/900/1700 on stock PSU.

 

The P-171XL came with a Core 2 Extreme and had an 8800m GTS. But still, if you add it all up, a 120W PSU shouldn't work. Graphics card (75W)+ Processor (44W)+ everything else (at least 10W)= 129W. Now I understand that a PSU can go above its wattage rating for a short amount of time, but when gaming you could easily be using over 120W with a Core 2 Extreme. Does anyone know if the 44W TDP is for stock voltages and clocks, meaning if you overclock with same voltages you are over 44W?

 

According to Intel TDP is not power draw... we don't know the wattage for components.

 

Gaming with my GPU and CPU OC'ed is 100% stable but when I tried to bring my CPU up to 3.8 GHz and 1.450v the battery light turned red. So I am sure the PSU is going to hold you back at some point. Some guy got his X9000 up to 3.6 GHz on a 90w PSU but it only had a 8600m GT.

 

I have the Targus 180w Brick, so no worries there at all...............

 

Wow careful there man... targus isn't bad for bags but they've had some safety issues lately...

 

Not with these, they are monsters and well built for the task.............

 

So what was the verdict on memory? Found this memory on Newegg, higher clock speed and $279.

Newegg.com - Mushkin Enhanced 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit Laptop Memory Model 996647

 

Will 1333MHz memory work in our system at 1333MHz?

 

No it will downclock to 1066 in all likelihood. But that will trim the latency a bit, so your timings will be better.