Difference in specs for HP, 3rd gen Intel

Hi,

I'm spec'ing out an HP dv7, and wanted to know differences in what I can purchase as it relates to best choice:

16GB RAM and 7200 rpm Hybrid Hard Drive
vs.
8GB RAM and 5400 rpm with 32GB mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache

(16GB RAM or 7200 rpm Hybrid Hard Drive are mutually exclusive to 32GB mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache when selecting specs).

So, my thought was to get more RAM at the outset, but what do I trade off when I get 16MB RAM as opposed to getting the Hard Drive Acceleration Cache (do these do, in essence, the same thing)?

Along that thought line, the faster rpm Hard drive (7200) should get me quicker access to my files. Throw in the Hybrid Hard Drive (which I am guessing includes a SSD component), and I have even quicker access, right? Or will the 5400 rpm w/ 32GB mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache be better or just as good.

Or is it the proverbial "6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other"? For price, it is much more expensive to bump the RAM from 8 to 16GB (by about $400), so going with the second solution would be preferred if the difference between performance is close or negligible.

Thanks for any insight!

 

First off, you don't really need anything more than 8GB of RAM in the first place, unless you're doing a LOT of stuff at once (really large Photoshop job, CAD design, etc). If it's possible to bump it down to 8GB throughout the board, I'd do that (and save a nice chunk of change, too). Even if you're hell-bent on 16GB of RAM, it's much cheaper to buy the 2x8GB sticks yourself; Newegg sells the kits for $100 or so.

Basically, RAM and this "Cache" do the same thing, but again you don't need more than 8GB. On top of that, HP charges too much for the mSATA (OEMs tend to do that ), and you'd be better off buying it aftermarket, installing it yourself, and moving Windows/programs to that and using the HDD as storage.

It depends on which drive we're taking about. RPM is only one aspect of speed in HDDs, with another being the density of the drive; for example: a modern 750GB, 5400RPM drive should be as fast or faster than a 500GB, 7200RPM drive. A hybrid drive (like the Seagate Momentus XT) has the regular platters inside for storage, plus a 4GB or 8GB cache inside that does the same job as the mSATA HP is trying to sell. From what I hear about hybrid drives, the SSD cache only helps when you do the same thing often, for example if you open Word a lot the cache will try to speed that up. If your computing habits are somewhat random, the cache won't help much at all.

 

Thanks for the reply,

Duly noted on the RAM and upgrading later. I did that on other machines, and I guess in this case I was wondering whether to do it up front for this new one. It seems like smart money is still on upgrading later, if the need arises. An additional question might also be - "does Windows 7 64 bit utilize the full 16GB of RAM anyway?" That I don't know either, but will probably spec it out with 8GB RAM at this point, anyway.

As to the HD - the current configuration of the dv7, 3rd gen has a free Upgrade to 1TB 5400 rpm Hard Drive, but after that no mention of the specifics of it. They also have a HHD 7200rpm (which excludes the 32GB mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache from the specs). My thought now is to go with the 1TB 5400 with the 32GB mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache, which I assume would just be an add-on SSD, anyway, kind of making this drive into a HHD.

If there is something I'm not getting from your post, please feel free to correct me. Thanks for the advice!

 

Sure it will, but most of that extra RAM will be sitting idle and not do anything. Kind of like free space on a hard drive. For example, I have 12GB installed (I have no good reason other than to burn money, honestly) and I'm currently using 3.4GB of memory, and I have another 9GB of RAM free, doing nothing (tells me I have 6.4GB on "standby" and 2.6GB free, but they're basically the same thing as far as a user is concerned). This is with Firefox 12 open (with a few tabs), iTunes, MSE, and whatever background processes are running at the moment. The only time I've ever used anything more than 6GB was when I forced Mincraft to take up 4GB of RAM on its own (though this is with 64-bit Java and a .BAT file; however, 64-bit Java is buggy for websites I tend to visit so I have that uninstalled and I'm back to 32-bit).

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of hybrid drives (for the reasons mentioned in my previous post), and I think it'd be more effective to buy the laptop with whatever mechanical drive you want, and then buy a mSATA later, transferring Windows and your programs to that. Install your most-used apps on the SSD, and anything else on the HDD. So, even if you only use Office a few times (for example), it'll still open in a couple of seconds regardless. Boot time will also be consistently faster as well.

 

"mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache"

That doesn't sound like something you could move files on yourself. Didn't Intel introduce that caching system for traditional drives not so long ago. Sounds like one to me.

 

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I think that HP/Intel is using a BIOS feature to use the mSATA as a cache area. There might be a setting where a user could toggle this on/off, and if it's possible to disable it the user could use it as a traditional drive.

Anyway, if someone wanted a caching feature, I'd imagine it'd be simpler to get a hybrid drive like the Momentus XT, since it's plug-and-play as opposed to (how I think) this mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache works.

 

windows will use whatever/how much ram is available to it. It will use it to prefecth files and so forth, windows 8 builds on this as well.

the msata cache is going to work as a cache for the drive, and its going to be faster than the hybrid drives due to the amount of cache. The higher the cache size the faster it is. 60gb is the best compromise, never saw the point of the small ssds anyway.

and I find both upgrades not useful btw. Get the base ram, which should be around 6-8gb, get the 1tb HDD, and afterwards buy a msata SSD and install it yourself.