CPU upgrade of HP Probook 4520s

Hello, I have an HP Probook 4520s with an i3-330m 2.13 ghz Arrandale socket 989 rPGA cpu according to CPU-Z. Motherboard also according to CPU-Z is: manufacturer hewlett packard, model 1411, kbc version 57.36, chipset Intel Havendale/Clarkdale Host Bridge Rev.12, Southbridge Intel HM57 Rev.06. I couldn't find more about motherboard.
I wonder if I can upgrade to any i7 quad core processor, or at least something better. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!!

 

Quad core; no. Better; yes ... probably.

Read Upgrading from i3 to i7 920xm in my toshiba a665-s5170; same rules apply to your system. And :thumbsup: for wanting to extend the life of a basic consumer model. Makes perfect sense too; hardware-improvements have grounded to a crawl and upgrade prices are negligible.

Don't expect gaming, of course, and switch to an SSD if you can find one cheap; maxes out the SATA 3GB/s port.

 

You mean SATA III (6 Gb/s), right?

 

Something better as noted, yes, but you won't be able to use an i7 quad-core. The notebook was not sold with a quad-core CPU and the motherboard likely doesn't support it. Beyond that you'd also need a cooling system capable of handling the extra heat. HP usually uses different heatsinks on its dual-core notebooks than quad-core notebooks (and different motherboards as well).

That said, you should be able to use just about any Core i3/i5/i7 dual-core of the same generation. I'd look for a Core i5-460M/480M/560M/580M. The i7-620M/640M are likely to be quite expensive by comparison and offer no noticeable performance gain (the dual-core i7's are and have always been slightly enhanced Core i5's ...Intel just uses the name for marketing purposes).

Make sure you have realistic expectations for the CPU upgrade. If the i3-330M is too slow for something, the i5 will be better but not that much better (think 20-25% faster for most processor-intensive tasks at the most). In most cases you're better off upgrading the RAM and adding a faster storage drive (SSD, these days) which will have a noticeable effect on general system performance.

 

As to begin with, THANK YOU for your help, it means a lot to me, as I was about to buy i7-740QM # of Cores: 4 # of Threads: 8 Clock Speed: 1.73 GHz Turbo: 2.93GHz L3 Cache: 6 MB Sockets Supported: PGA988(socket G1), at a reasonable price from the internet. I already had installed an Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB SATA-III 2.5 inch, and replaced dvd/rw with a 9.5mm SATA Serial ATA Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy where I had my HDD moved so I have enough storage space, (dvd/rw wasn't reading dvd's anymore), a month ago I replaced a faulty cpu fan with a new one. I paid 173 euro on purchasing this notebook, spent like 100 euro for upgrade and repairs so it is a good deal for me so far and it still works fine. (it even survived accidental spilling) So as @Clark says the best option of upgrade is i7-640m. I mostly use the notebook for ArcGIS and some low graphics games. I will search for some i7-640M as my best option.
Thank you guys.

 

The i7-640M is a great CPU provided you can get one at a reasonable price. Also look at the i7-620M and i5-580M; both will provide almost the same level of performance as the i7-640M and could be significantly cheaper.

 

Sadly; no. That's HP for you; they cheapened out with a SATA II controller, although III had been available for over two years. That, and mediocre lcd's, distinguishes entry-level systems. Fortunately it still sports a true socket and not a BGA-type.

Use ArcGIS as well; its main/bottle-necking duties are all 32-bit and single-threaded. That's also where the Cinebench R10 32Bit Single benchmark comes into play; the 640m is the best cpu for your system, bar none. Even the 'fastest' Clarksfields, with no embedded gpu to drag them down, all perform worse at this (quad-core is not your friend here). The only exception is the 920xm, which does marginally better, but at much higher temperatures.

OT: for a program that costs +$10,000/year it's not just a little disheartening to watch its performance on modern systems. Of course, it's a matter of time, but for that range of pricing ... Adobe's CS6 is miles and miles ahead, programming-wise. Larger clientele, sure, but a lot cheaper too. And CS6 uses the RAM available (managed 64GB+64GB pagefile once), but ArcGIS gives in at ~1GB ...

 

No laptop with a first gen core i CPU had SATA 6 Gbps IIRC, so it's not really HP that "cheaped out", more that it couldn't be done natively. 6 Gbps in laptops appeared with Sandy Bridge. Desktops at the time used third party controllers for their 6 Gbps ports if my memory serves me right.

 

That is exactly correct... First gen i7 didn't have SATA 3 support and that was one thing that really pissed me off as my C300 couldn't run at SATA 3 speeds although it was SATA 3.. It was in Sandy Bridge that 6Gbps appeared however even that didn't work in some cases like the Alienware 17x R3... I'd say it was with Ivy Bridge that SATA 3 really came to the fold..

 

You're right, I stand corrected; Ibex Peak. An Intel-only system wouldn't natively have supported this, even though its bandwidth would've been sufficient. My PM55's storage can run at ~6GBit, but that's only when using its controller set for RAID0.

 

Some did, in desktops, looking at asrock p67 transformer made for socket 1156 aka 1st gen core i