Faster Processor or Faster Hard Drive

Which do you think would be the better upgrade: the 1.83GHz Core Duo processor OR the 7200RPM hard drive?

Don't forget to vote!

 

The processor is not usually the bottleneck in systems. Beef everything else up first, then the processor as the T2300 is pretty fast. I'd go with the HD upgrade.

 

You can always upgrade your HD later. Your processor...you cannot. There is a near neglible difference between the two. If you jumped to 2 Ghz there would be some noticeable difference.

There is marginal improvement between 5400 and 7200 RPM unless you do HD intensive tasks. Search for posts on advantages between the two.

If you had to increase something, giving all things that are equal, spend more money on aftermarket RAM.

 

So far the poll seems to be evenly divided between the voters...useful comments made, though.

 

the T2400.

 

Like said before, your system is only as fast as its slowest component. Thats the hard drive. Yes you can upgrade to a new hard drive, but then you also have to get windows, tons of drivers, office software, lots of other software, and re-do all your settings and stuff in it. Go with the hard drive.

 

What is your reason?

 

yeah going from the 1.66 to the 1.83 isnt much of a difference I hear. youll see faster load and boot times with a 7200 rpm HDD. If you are going for a beter cpu get the 2.0 or 2.16. Im sure their prices will go down with the release of the 2.33ghz yonah. I heard toshiba or someone was releasing it...but I may be wrong about that.

edit I assume since your at the point of upgrading the cpu or HDD that youve maxed the ram. Because that is ALWAYS the first thing to upgrade

 

Dell released it already on the M1710.

 

I selected 1GB of RAM, which should be fine for almost any task.

 

Apparently this is one upgrade that NBR users cannot fully agree on...this poll is extremely close!

 

I prefer more processor because I can change the harddisk in the future easier, without losing warranty and because a laptop hardisk is so easy to sell or use as external drive but the T2300 is very difficult to sell (or you lost all the money) because is the lowest of the market.

Otherwise, 7200rpm in some laptops is too much hot.

 

I would prefer a faster hard disk. The most bottleneck within the system these days tend to be the hard drive.

If we could find a better solution, such as a flash based hard drive, it would be less of a bottleneck.

Due to this reasoning, I would say go for the hard drive boost.

The CPU you have currently is not that bad.

 

What are you gonna be using it for? Do you need a fast(er) hard drive? I'd personlaly go for the faster HD b/c of boot/load times.

 

I prefer more harddrive because I can change the CPU in the future to a memon, without losing to much money.

 

thats what im thinking too chooch...but im not sure!

 

cpu simply because the hard drive is a simple upgrade in the future. Heck with it splash out a little more and go for both

 

well, is there a noticable preformance increase by uping to a 1.83 Core Duo?

for Hp, its only $50 dollars more for the upgrade, were as a 100GB 7200 HD is $120 more i think

all of this is for the dv8000t, cuz its my future laptop....within 2 months!!!!

 

Hard drive. The people talking about more heat are crazy.

The CPU performance increase will only show up (slightly) on benchmarks. It's not worth it.

 

What is your reason for saying that they are crazy?

 

faster harddrive is just a waste of battery life.

 

Because it's just not true. Some will run hotter, by a few degrees, but not all of them. A faster hard drive certainly won't deliver any ill effects by some added heat.

Many people think 10,000 RPM Raptors run hot. They actually run cooler than the majority of 7,200 RPM drives.

 

What if the notebook is a small, thin and light such as the M1210? Would a 5400rpm hard drive be a better choice than the 7200rpm drive?

 

The faster drive is always the better choice. I'd go 7200 on anything.

 

Upgrade the hard drive of course, you won't notice any difference in performance if you upgrade the processor, but with the faster hard drive laptop will be noticeably faster. Hard drive is the major bottleneck in any system, period. In terms of upgrading priority it goes like this:

1-Optional) Video card, if you plan to play modern games this should be your first upgrade priority, otherwise disregard.

1) Hard drive (small and fast drive is better than big slow one)
2) Memory (no more than 2GB for a laptop, don't overpay for 667Mhz, get 553Mhz)
3) Processor (slower dual-core is better than faster single core)

Mainly amatures pay $400 extra for 2.16Mhz over 1.66Mhz processor, it's total waste of money, better upgrade hard drive, video card, memory or anything else. I'm a computer professional and worked with many PC and server systems, trust me.

 

Very informative post, MasterE1705. One question though, why not spend a little more for the 667MHz RAM?

 

667MHz RAM typically has a higher CAS Latency, which makes performance between the 2 just about identical.

 

anyone know how to overclock a T2300E in a Hp dv8000t!?!?

 

I wonder if a faster HDD is worth it.
My reasoning is this - fetching data from HDD is already extremey expensive. Making it twice as fast is STILL extremely expensive.
So unless you are accessing lots of data, faster HDD does not really matter.
EG, load times will be faster, but after things have been brought to RAM, HDD is not really the issue.
CPU speed also does not matter, unless doing some heavy CPU tasks like video encoding etc.

I dont know where gaming falls - high cpu high data ?

 

I Say Buy Both Of Them!!!

 

Yeah, I would if I wasn't on a tight budget.

 

may i ask what laptop you have in mind?

 

What type of budget are you on? If you can spare about $100-$130 after you buy the notebook, I'd go for the faster CPU and upgrade the HD later on - it is MUCH harder to upgrade a CPU than it is to upgrade a HD. If you can't, then go for the faster HD - it'll increase your overall performance more than bumping the CPU speed up a level.

 

But why would he upgrade the processor in the future? I doubt he would upgrade to a 1.83 if he ever upgraded at all. There will be no noticeable difference in performance by going from 1.66 to 1.83.

 

There is always a difference... What I mean is you can say the same thing for 1.83 and 2Ghz then we all be stuck back in the days of 100Mhz...

The future will always have something better around the corner and in a couple years time people will look at the core duo 1.66 maybe a little slow. The 1.86 would just last that little longer...

People said the same thing about the Pentium-m, whats the point of having an extra 133mhz... or 266mhz... It just last that little longer and does feel a tad quicker overall. If I was still on P-M 1.83 now I would want a faster notebook but I'm fine with 2.13 until a big jump happens such as core 2 duo and at least 2.2Ghz+.

 

I agree with huskyfan23:
Either he would ungrade from 1.66Ghz to something much better or he would not upgrade at all.
Look at it this way.
Say there is a 10% gain in each level up.
10% is not much.
But add it up over time (say 10 gains in 3 years), and you get a 160% gain (CPU that will be equivalent to 4.3ghz core duo).
Of course 10% is better, the question is whether its worth the $$$.
Note that if he waits 3 years, the 160% upgrade will cost the SAME as the current 10% one.

 

why dont you wait for the core 2 duo's then?

 

Well, this question is about one OR the other, right? In this case...

Which one will give you faster overall performance... my pick is on the hard drive, for sure. If you upgrade 1.66 to 1.83... you are really not likely to notice the difference. 5400 to 7200RPM shaves actual, countable seconds off of your boot time and other HD intensive tasks. Don't bring in arguments about going further than 1.83GHz unless you'd like to make a more general vote.

With respect to it being 'easy' to make an upgrade for a HD compared to a CPU; chances are, you won't be upgrading the CPU in the laptop anyways, because of the minimal performance gain. By the time a nice new laptop CPU is out, you usually want the new platform to go with it as well. And where's the logic in making the *harder* upgrade first when it's not even going to make a noticeable difference to your performance most of the time? Make it easy, make it effective and I think that's the choice you should make... This question isn't about 'saving' the hard drive upgrade for later.

 

I reckon a 5400rpm drive can really restrict the performance of quality RAM. It is also a valuable upgrade considering that the a better HD could be considerbly cheaper than a new CPU.

 

You guys that are saying that 7200rpm is a noticeable difference from a 5400rpm HD are kidding yourselves. It is faster but noticeablly...cmon

 

You've got to be kidding yourself if you can't tell the difference between 5400 and 7200. By even the most generalized comparison - pure spindle speed, the 7200 represents a 33% increase in transfer rate over a 5400. Most operations on computers (especially notebooks which often have less RAM) are limited by the hard drive.

Copying a 700MB CD-sized file might take a minute on a 5400... and 40 seconds on a 7200. Booting windows... try this... will be shaved by a huge amount, especially if there's a fair number of programs on bootup - which notebooks tend to have more of than desktops. You won't need a stopwatch to measure the difference... and if you do, well, then you probably need to get a new internal clock for yourself.

By comparison, if you changed the CPU... you wouldn't likely notice anything at all. It would barely affect bootup (even if you timed it with a stopwatch; at least relative to a hard drive change) and certainly not application or game load time.

Game performance would more likely than not be limited by the GPU and not the CPU in the notebook world... and that's about the only situation other than video encoding or math simulations where the faster CPU might have an advantage.

Someone else mentioned the extra power consumed as being a problem with the hard drive. Of course... a CPU upgrade also uses more power too...

 

No the Core duo's all use the same amount of power, period. There is no difference between a T2300 or a T2600 in power usage, only in performance, and heat. Now there is a difference between the T2600 and the T2300E, because the E does use less power.

Now for the 7200 RPM using more power than the 5400 is complete bull. First how much longer would it take to spin up to 7200 RPM than to 5400RPM? like a second at most. You could also look like it like this. Lets say it takes the 5400 9 seconds to access something. Then lets say it takes only 6 seconds (33% faster) for the 7200. Even if the 7200 did use more power, it wouldnt matter because it accessed for a shorter time then the 5400 did, thus making it use less if in fact they use the identical amount.

Basically the Hard drives and core duo's use the same amount of power, excpt for the E series core's, which are designed to use less power.

So like I said before, if I wa on a budget, I would go with the hard drive. Your system is only as fast as its slowest part. Or you can do what I did, save alot and then just top everything out

 

I dont think you would see as much of an increase with the extra 200MHz processor as you would with the hard drive.

 

While I agree with most of your comment, you were totally wrong when you said that the T2300E uses less power than the T2600. Allow me to correct you and the many others who have been mislead.

When Intel first released the secifications for the T2300E, they made a typographical mistake when they stated the power to be 15W!. A lot of websites saw this and believed it, thinking it was a miracle of engineering. Intel later corrected this as can be seen on the Specification Chart on this Intel page (click on View specification chart).

It can be clearly seen that the T2300E has the same power consumption as the T2300, T2400, T2500, T2600 and T2700, i.e. 31W. The only difference between the T2300E and T2300 is that the T2300E lacks the Virtualization Technology (this allows a platform to run multiple operating systems and applications in independent partitions). See here.

I hope this clears up the misconception that many of you share.

 

well for office and work applications the performance margin might be minimal, but if you run intensive 2D applications or indeed intensive gaming, the HDD really does hold back the rest of the ram. What's the whole point in getting a faster CPU when there is a bottleneck in accessing data quickly in the first place.

 

I say go with the processer for now a hd upgrade isnt as expensive and its easier to do in the future.

 

Now that you received so many responses, did you decide?

 

more heat results in loss of power i thought...

 

Let's address these issues... starting with the easy one first. The hard drive power consumption. Once the hard drive spins up, it continously spins until told to 'sleep' by the computer. To start and to maintain disc spinning at 7200RPM uses more power than at 5400RPM. Therefore, at 'idle' while spinning and not doing anything, the 7200 is going to use about 30% more power by default. This is really just physics at work here... If you need further proof, just compare IBM's 7K100 (1.1 watt idle) vs 5K100 (0.85 watt idle).
Travelstar 7K100
Travelstar 5K100
I might suggest you read up on how hard drives work, because from the statement you made it seems you have oversimplified it a little. Yes, a 7200RPM hard drive is going to spend less time 'reading' than a 5400, but even while it is doing the reading it is using more power. At best, during any single read, you *might* come up with equivalent power used. Most of the time, though, the hard drive is going to be idle...

As for the CPU power consumption, this is a little more difficult. First, as someone else has already pointed out - increased heat means more power consumption.

31W is, in fact, Intel's TDP rating, not the actual power consumption of each processor, though it is often misinterpreted as such. It is a number that guides the engineers to design the thermal management systems for the laptops. The actual theoretical maximum power consumption of the Core Duo series is around 44W. Processors are far more complex than they used to be, so it is no longer 100% true that power consumption scales linearly with clock speed... but it still has a fair effect. You can bet that running a processor at equivalent voltages but at a 50% higher clock speed is going to use more power. In addition, if you use lower clock speeds you have the option of reducing the voltage, further saving power.

I agree with you that the hard drive is the better choice, for sure.

There are *still* people here who don't get the 'one or the other' nature of this poll... it's like saying choosing the CPU means you get to have both upgrades.

 

Depends on what you want. They boost performance in different situations.
Do you want Windows to boot faster? Choose the Hd. Do you want apps to launch faster? Choose the app?
Do you suffer from HD thrashing when running games or other apps? Buy more RAM (Although the HD upgrade would help slightly here as well)

Or are you interested in everything running smoother *in general*? When you're using an already-started app, when Windows is already booted? If that's where you want more performance, go with the CPU.

And yes, a 7200 RPM HD is noticeable faster than a 5400 one. *If you use itm and if you needed the faster HD in the first place*
It won't make your games run at a higher framerate, like I said above, that's where the CPU (or RAM) comes in. But it will make transferring big files go a lot faster. And it will make Windows boot faster.