Faster Processor or Faster Hard Drive

are u trying to buy a computer with configurable option? y not upgrade both! the jump from 1.6 to 1.8 isn't that expensive anyway... but as for the HD or CPU, the Core duo is very fast processor, the 1.6 is quite fast, so the bottleneck usually the HD... but i heard the 5400 HD is quite fast too... hey i'm as confused as u r!!! lol...

good luck anyway

 

After reading so many responses, I have come to the conclusion that the 7200rpm HD upgrade is the better choice. Many of those who voted for the processor upgrade simply did not provide sufficient reasoning as to how they made their choice.

Here were the upgrade costs I had purposely left out:
1.66GHz to 1.83GHz Core Duo Processor - $100.00
80GB 5400RPM to 80GB 7200RPM Hard Drive - $130.00

Like I said before, I was on a tight budget and could only have chosen one of the two upgrades. I hope this thread could be of use to new buyers in helping them make an informed decision.

 

nice!!! suspence is the best XD

cheers

 

So how to improve this:
my laptop seem a little slowed down when I open a lot of apps and I saw the CPU only use 20% , so is it the HD or RAM?
when I transfer large amount of files while listening to mp3 the mp3 would sometimes "lag" for a while

my system is E1505 with T2500 ,1gb RAM,5400rpm HD

 

I'd have to say processor, HDD's are much cheaper, and you'd be able to spend much less to upgrade your HDD later

 

But if there's no performance increase by upgrading to that CPU, wouldn't the upgrade just be like throwing your money away?

 

There is a performance increase. The question is if it's where you *need* the performance increase. Just like if you go with the HD. That too improves performance. But might not be in the cases where you actually *want* extra performance.

I'd still say you should go by the following rule:
If you want Windows + applications to load faster: Buy the HD.
If you want everything in general to be faster, go with the CPU.

Basically, the HD upgrade only helps when the HD is actually in use. Which isn't actually very often. (But when it's in use, it quickly becomes a serious bottleneck for the rest of the system)

So when you say those suggesting the CPU didn't offer enough reasons, I'd counter by saying that the CPU doesn't need reasons. It just makes things faster across the board. It's the HD that needs reasons. It only makes sense if you're worried about loading times in particular.

Check the HD usage when it happens. If it's in use when you're not launching an application, you probably need more RAM. Of course, if one of your applications actually use the HD, this method doesn't work, since it'll be in use no matter what.
Another trick is to open the task manager (ctrl-alt-del), enable the "Page faults" column, and watch that. If it's steadily rising for the processes you're using, you need more RAM.

 

That is definitely the core issue that is being addressed... where do you want your performance.

This is where it's not quite the same... the hard drive IS actually often being used, and especially moreso on a laptop where 1. RAM is more expensive and 2. they come with less by default compared to a desktop. Performance limitations in a computer are defined by the slowest unit; if you take an engineering course in university they will tell you the same general principles. The hard drive is an order of magnitude slower than the RAM, which is yet another order of magnitude slower than the CPU and its cache. The CPU spends most of its time waiting for HD and RAM for data, except perhaps when in the middle of 3D game scenes or algorithms (that don't require large memory footprints). The rest of the time when you're playing games, including loading, saving, changing maps, changing scenes... requires the hard drive to do stuff. As I've mentioned before, in 3D gaming, usually the graphics chipset becomes the limiting factor in laptops, and not the CPU...

It would be great if it did improve performance across the board, but in fact, CPUs will help (in a noticeable fashion) in less instances than hard drives will. A 20% increase in hard drive speed is often noticeable... a 20% increase in CPU, often not. Plus, the 20% increase in CPU costs more.

Upgrade your HD... then your RAM... then your CPU. In an extreme desktop comparison, I would bet most 'non-hardcore' people could use a Pentium III @ 1GHz with 1GB of RAM and a 10K RPM hard drive and find it faster in more situations than a Core Duo @ 2.xx GHz with 1GB of RAM and a 5400K RPM HD. You've got to find the most CPU limiting applications possible to really make use of a faster CPU... and most apps aren't noticeably limited by the CPU these days.

 

True, but I choose not to count pagefile access because, well, if that's your problem, a faster HD might give you ~20% better performance, but an extra stick of RAM will give you closer to a 100x speed performance increase.
In other words, if you suffer from excessive swapping, *ditch both HD and CPU upgrades, and buy more RAM!!!!!*
HD upgrade is your first choice when you want to boost loading times.

Yep, and the fastest code is the code that is never called. Same goes for hardware. (Yes, I've taken those classes. I'm studying Comp. Science )
If your computer accesses the HD a lot, you have two options:
1: Upgrade your HD, which will *still* be horribly slow, or
2: Avoid using the HD, buy more RAM, which *isn't* horribly slow.

More like a 1,000,000 times slower than RAM. Give or take.
That is why upgrading your HD isn't a silver bullet. Going from, say, a x2 million slowdown to a "mere" x1 million just isn't worth it, when you can get rid of the slowdown entirely by using RAM.

Nah, it spends its time waiting for RAM, *until* you run out of RAM. Then it spends its time waiting for the HD.

Well, my point was that the CPU upgrade always helps *a bit*.
No matter what you're doing, the CPU will be involved, which means a faster CPU will shave *a bit* of time off. A HD upgrade will only help when the HD is being used.
I agree though, a 20% faster CPU certainly won't give you 20% better performance across the board.

I doubt it. 1GB is enough to avoid *most* swapping, which means the HD won't make such a big difference.
Meanwhile, there's a *huge* difference between those two CPU's.
We're not talking a 100% performance increase, but more likely 200% or more. A lot has happened since the P3, and not just with clock speed.
In any case, I'd prefer a machine with the P3, 5400RPM HD, and then 2GB RAM over either of those two alternatives.

 

Good point Mystic Image.

Jalf, I think you're missing the point here. Read the former posts - the performance increase of the 1.83GHz Core Duo is negligible compared to the performance of the 1.66GHz. Chances are you will not notice any difference. This is why I came to the conclusion that the 7200RPM HD is, without a doubt, the better upgrade.

Your comment would have made better sense if the processor was a 2.16GHz Core Duo instead of the 1.83GHz.

 

amazing how evenly distributed the votes are

 

Yes, ever since I started the thread it was relatively even.

 

Many people are still stuck in the old world that believes 200MHz makes a difference.

 

Agreed... RAM is first choice in such a case... but RAM isn't an option in this vote.

Again, agreed... but the question isn't about RAM.

Order of magnitude is the 'technical' way of saying 1 million times slower... though, in the real world, it is approximately that way even mathematically. Top end hard drives have well over 50MB/sec read speeds, which is between 10 to 100 times slower than RAM. Of course, access time is a different matter.

My statement wasn't exactly inaccurate there. It does wait for RAM and HD... if you want to break it down to that level, the CPU ends up waiting for the RAM... and then if it's not in RAM... the RAM waits for the HD... then it goes back... etc.

Yes, you are right, it will help *a bit*... but the real point was that you'd never notice that 'bit', especially compared to the hard drive. That was the issue in the first place... and that's why the CPU upgrade is less effective for the money compared to the HD.

Yes... I'd take the RAM, definitely.

In terms of pure CPU performance, yes... you would see 200% or greater increase. Not only has the integer and fpu arithmetic increased by 100% but you have two cores... in addition, memory bandwidth has increased by more than fourfold since that time.

Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and a whole pile of other apps, however, haven't changed much in several years. They really don't run that much faster with the new CPUs compared to the old... and you're likely to notice the load time, but not the running delays.

In any case, given the 200MHz difference... and no other choice (like 'saving' the other upgrades for later)... would you really pick the CPU over the 7200RPM hard drive? If you said you spent all your time running Mathematica, MatLab or Maple I might agree with you.

There seem to be a lot of people who'd take +2 HP engines rather than performance tires to replace their all-seasons here.

 

I have a 1.83 duo and it almost never totally being used (according to the win task manager).

I have a 7200 rpm drive and this does seem to speed things up when booting, opening programs, in comparison to other 5400 rpm computers. I never conducted a scientific comparison, though.

 

Nah, it's *usually* used for 10 times. 1 million would be 6 orders of magnitude. But doesn't matter, we agree on the million times slower, whatever it's called...

100 sounds about right. (RAM bandwidth tends to be 6-8GB/s, which is about 100 times more than a *fast* harddrive). But like you say, that's without taking access time into account, which brings us back down closer to the million times difference.

I know. My point was just that it only actually waits for the HD if it doesn't have enough RAM. But that goes back to your original point, that RAM isn't among the options here...

Nah, they have added a bunch of stuff, and pushed system requirements up quite a bit. True, it doesn't exactly run a CPU at 100% all the time, but there are occasional spikes where the usage jumps. I'm just saying, I've tried running modern versions of Windows with modern versions of Word, on a computer around those specs, and yes, you can feel a difference.

Heh, I'd probably whine until I got permission to upgrade the RAM instead...
Seriously though, I'd ask myself what I needed it for. That was really just my point. I can't justifiably say the HD is "the better" upgrade, because we don't really know anything about the system that's being upgraded, and we don't know what the system is being used for. I was just trying to say, it's not a clear win for the HD. It depends on a bunch of factors (such as, does the original poster use it for MatLab all day long? Does he already have 4GB RAM?

If it were me, with my usage patterns, and assuming I were happy with all other components (amount of RAM, in particular), I'd probably.... Oh, I dunno. First, I'd check how much more power a 7200RPM drive consumes, and if that's not a noticeable difference, I'd probably go with that (For the boot times and such). Otherwise, I'd take the CPU.

 

You have to,without a doubt, look at it this way. You cannot upgrade your processor, and will be stuck with a slower one for a long time, but if need be that your computer just can't get over that hump, with maxed ram and what not, you'll be dang happy you can replace that slower, 5400 rpm hard drive and not be stuck with a horrible processor speed.

I suggset the processor over the hard drive, when you intially buy your new laptop, however I actually believe that the hard drive, in the long run, will be better. But initally, always go for that which cannot be replaced...

 

5400 RPM will more likely become the #1 bottleneck of your system on most regular tasks than the processor will ever be.

 

Modern kernels will cache recently accessed files in otherwise unused RAM. A faster hard drive mainly only helps on startup.

 

I'd go with the processor in this case. And if Dell hadn't had a good deal on the 7200 RPM HD, I would have gone with a 200 MHz faster processor and 5400 RPM HD. But that's just because I tend to run processor-intensive applications.

I don't know which one actually saves me more time, but can guess. Windows might start up 8 seconds faster because of the HD, and programs 1/8 a second faster, or if they're large programs 2 seconds faster. But when I use processor-intensive applications, that 166 MHz can save me 30 seconds multiple times in an hour. Hence my decision.

The 53-53 split is rather remarkable, I must say.

 

upgrade to Core 2 Duo T7200 processor (64bit)