CPU and RAM upgrade worth it?

Is it worth upgrading an i5-430m to an i5-520m and 4 GB of RAM into 6 GB of RAM for a total of $200 extra dollars on a notebook? Just in general would you do it, regardless of what notebook it is.

 

I would do the processor not the ram.

 

Already at 4 Gb ram? Unless you have a specific program that can use >4Gb ram, I'd not bother with either upgrade.

You rarely see a machine that is actually starving for CPU resources.

To get the best out of a CPU, you need to feed it with a load of ram and a really fast hard drive or (if you have the $$ and risk tolerance) an SSD.

Usually (not always, but usually) what you get when you spend a lot of $$ on faster CPUs without also upgrading the ram and disk drive is more heat and more wait/idle states. Hardly a useful spend of $$$.

 

Just save the money and invest into a SSD.

 

What exactly are you using it for?

Chances are, though, that you will not notice a difference with either the upgraded cpu or memory. If you buy the laptop without those upgrades, open the task manager and see how often you fill up over 4GB of ram and how often your processor is pegged at 100% load. Probably not very often, and those would be the only times that the upgrade would have any effect, and even then the difference couldn't be felt in some of those scenarios.

I would never upgrade anything unless I would feel the difference and there was a decent return on performance I could feel for the money I spent.

 

and forget about things like 'future proof' and resale value.

neither one exist for computers, espec. laptop computers.

you buy what you need when you need it.

computers aren't an investment, they are an expense to be managed.

 

save for a SSD.. unless you really need the more cpu power which I dont think the i5-520M will give you much of a performance gain.

 

Depends on what would a person be using the laptop for.
Price-wise, changing the cpu from 430m into 520m is not justifiable considering the differences between the two come down to clock speed alone (which is 140 Mhz higher per core on 520m).
Even in a multi-threaded program like 3d Studio Max which I personally use and heavily relies on computational power of the cpu for rendering images, this 'speed differential' would be essentially by a couple of seconds at best ... if that (translation - it would be practically negligible even in that).

For a $200 price tag, I'd go for the 6GB of RAM and possibly an SSD drive (say 50-60GB one to contain the OS + all my programs, and I'd use the caddy drive as an option to keep using my standard HDD for storage and games - and easily swap it out with the DVD drive that came with the laptop should I need it).

 

No, it's not worth it. Spend the extra 200 on an SSD and also a

Cheap Network HDD casing from China
HDD caddy for your DVD drive from China

 

The five people who said you're better of investing in a SSD we're right, unless you run some very CPU/memory intensive applications.

 

The difference between the i5-430M and i5-520M is very slight (133MHz on 2 cores, 400MHz on 1, and AES-NI) - I'd say it's not worth more than $50, honestly.

 

No, they ain't worth the price, however investing in a SSD will make you FEEL a REAL boost up, neither i-520M nor 6G RAM will.

 

if you run virtual machines like I do then I'd do the memory upgrade... and I did

 

But for $200 to get that extra 2GB, it would be cheaper to just DIY.

 

Just to clarify, it's an extra $100 to upgrade to the i5-520, and $100 to upgrade to 6gb RAM. And the 6gb RAM is 4gbx2gb. I've decided not to go with the processor, but for $100 I get a 4gb, which looks like it's worth around $170 right now. Will it get under $100 within a year or two maybe?

 

The price of memory will most likely drop yes. The question is whether or not you need it at all. I've played with a 48GB RAM server before and tbh, I never knew the difference so overkill memory will still be overkill no matter how cheap you got it for.

Oh and to answer the initial question I said no, I'd have bought an SSD as well.

 

I upgraded my 6860 from a T5500 to a T9300 CPU for around 200 bucks (+50% speed, 6meg cache, etc). It was definitely a good buy for gaming and I did see some improvement on regular use.

Then I upgraded the HD to an OCZ Vertex 60gb SSD. It was an OMGWTHLOOKHOWFASTTHISISNOW improvement for all uses, both with XP and Windows 7 on it. The thing just works so much faster and better, there's no way to describe it, except perhaps like this.

"My computer doesn't make me wait anymore".

 

Ok, a SSD definitely seems like the right thing to buy, but the laptop only has room for 1 HDD. Or should I put the SSD in the optical drive? Or just deal with the smaller capacity? The one I'm going to get is 500gb and 7200 RPM's, what capacity SSD should I get and where should I put it?

 

SSDs, due to their size limitations, should only be used as the operating system drive. Just purchase a $10 external HDD box, put your current traditional hard-drive in it and connect it to your laptop via USB/e-sata. That's it...


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Well if you need that much size(or have a tight budget), you should get an SSD+HDD combo; use the SSD for your Operating System and a few select program and use the HDD for your data.

As ramgen said, you can sue an external just fine for data

 

+1! I couldn't agree more, unless you use tons of memory-hogging applications.(For normal power user(game+ms office+browser+fraps running, you get the point, 4 GB is more than enough)