P-173x Upgrades

I have had my p-173x for a lil while now and it's time to upgrade it. I went into Best Buy and saw that the new Gateways have a performance index of at least 5.2 where as my lappy has one of 4.8. Since I can't recall off hand what areas of the index were in the sub 5 range I decided to pose this upgrade question to you guys and gals.

Money is an object here in this economy, but I am a lil flexible. I have already added a second drive in the free bay (500 gb WD Scorpio). That addition was merely for capacity sake since I have a lot of movies. The first upgrade would be the processor, but which one? I have searched and saw that the T9XXX series are popular, but all the threads seem to only refer to the p-6XXX or p-7XXX laptops using them. Is the p-173x a different animal? Is the ram worth upgrading? I swear that my 4gb laptop runs no faster than my 1gb Acer Aspire One. I know that a part of that is Vista Ultimate hogging up resources. Any help would be appreciated. Last, I am just curious as to what the highest index could possibly be and how close can I come to that?

 

The 17x series and the 68xx series are identical and any upgrades one can use the others can as well.

As far as your WEI score goes... ignore it. Mines a 9.9 just because i want it to be. It is about the most retarded benchmark on the planet so anything you derive from it is basically wrong. Two computers with identical hardware can have entierly different scores based on what vista was feeling like that day.

About the only things you will be able to upgrade will be CPU. I'm i'm not mistaken you already have a t8300 and 1920x1200 screen with 4gb or RAM correct?

If so you really dont need anything. As you have a pretty solid system

 

You should have the T7500 which could be faster, best bet would be to upgrade to a x7800 or x7900. You could also run a raid 0 for better preformance. Also the P-173x comes with the 1440x900 resolution.

 

Whats the best ram then? Whats the mhz for the ram that comes standard? I will be Ebay shopping in a few minutes. I here that extremeprocessor is the go to person for the best prices on the cpus.

 

you are correct... gods there were too many 17x editions.

So yeah you can upgrade a good bit then.
t8300/t9300/x7800/x9000 cpus
large capacity high RPM hard drive (WD 500gb 5400rpm or Seagate 500gb 7200rpm)
1650x1080 or 1920x1200 screen

Good drivers for your GPU (not really an upgrade but can sometimes make all of the difference)

Dont upgrade to the 800mHz RAM i will tell you with first hand knowledge its a complete waste of money. All i got was 4-4-4-12 timings at 667mHz and 106 dollars down the drain (its cheaper now, but still a waste of money)

You should have a free mPCI slot inside that you can put turbo memory or a small SSD in... neither are really that great, but its nice to have the option.

 

Yeah I was thinking he had the 7xxx series forget the ram. Just do the cpu upgrade and maybe a raid0

 

I feel you, OP. Seeing all these new machines pop up with all this fantastic new technology makes my laptop seem kinda... not so fantastic. Fortunately, our machines really aren't out of date at all, and they wont be for at least another year.

 

bah...

Not much gateway has out right now can touch my 6860, its got everything i need currently.

The only notebook thats even intresting to me right now is the Asus w90 with the 4870's in Xfire and the Qx9300... that is a VERY impressive. But as much as i want that i buy in cycles. My next purchase will be a nehelam based notebook. Though i'll have to wait a bit (the refresh) because the 2.0gHz top of the line Capella CPU just kind of makes me cry from its saddness and lack of speed

 

I'd worry a bit about posting my phone number on an online forum... not the safest thing to do.

Though technically it gives me another number to scrawl on mens room stalls

 

Ok, I was just looking at the processors from the seller "extremeprocessor" and now I am a little lost. I thought that the model numbers were pretty cut and dry...t9300, t9400, etc. However, the pricing is not. Can someone please explain why there would be fluctuations in the price for the chips that I think are a lessor variant?

Intel Core2Duo Mobile T9300 2.50GHz/6MB/FS $199.88
Intel Core2Duo T9400 2.53GHz 6M True Intel PGA $148.00
Intel Core2Duo T9500 2.6GHz 6M L2 True PGA Best $258.88

 

Thats because Intel is retarded when it comes to naming products so as to make them confusing.

The t9400 is a different generation of CPU than the t8300/t9300/t9500/etc.

It is for the newer 1066fsb motivena chipsets and wont work on your Computer. I dont know why they kept the names so close but yeah its a bit confusing

 

Great, so now I have to be extra, extra careful when making this choice. I might get the x9000 from another forum member. That might be a lil overkill though.

 

I've never thought so... but i have an x9000 and i LOVE it.

But most people are more than satisfied with the t9300 with is probably still the best bang for your buck CPU for this series of notebooks.