Lenovo T60 1953 Upgrades... Is It Worth It?

Hello all!

I received a Lenovo T60 1953 for free from a friend, and was also able to upgrade it from 512mb to 2gb RAM for free.

Now, I love to tinker with computers, having built several OCed machines and working in the industry. But, I'm also a cheap (i got robbed recently, and am trying to get back on my feet as cheaply as possible... and yes, the f@&kers stole my computer).

So, now that the free ride is over, I want to see about cost-effective upgrades. These are what I'm considering:

1) Add 1GB RAM
2) Upgrade Processor
3) Windows 7
4) Summary And Video Card


1) Add 1GB RAM
This can be easily done by replacing one of the 1Gb sticks with this:
Patriot 2GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)

Now, this will be a 50% increase in RAM, so I assume that this is a good idea for $29 (after rebate). I assume I will also see a benefit in Win7. Thoughts?


2) Upgrade Processor
Now, this is where it gets trickier. I have done my reading/research, and people say that my mobo will support up to a T7600. The T7600 is still pricey, but it seems like to ONLY difference between the this and a cheaper 7200 is 300MHz:

Core 2 Duo T7200 2000 4096 667
Core 2 Duo T7400 2166 4096 667
Core 2 Duo T7600 2333 4096 667

I think I can get a T7200 for cheap on eBay, so, do you think it is worth it to upgrade to any of these if I can get one for $100 or less? Seems like the upgrade would be significant.

The other question is, will my BIOS support it? I have looked at the release notes for the newest BIOS, and there is no mention of what processors it actually supports. Anyone know if the T60 1953 will actually support a T7x00 processor?

Also, I have read people suggestion that if you upgrade this processor, you should look into undervolting the processor to cut down on heat. I've done a lot of this in my OCing, but I don't see any kind of control for this in the BIOS. Am I missing something?


3) Windows 7
I love win7 over xp/vista. But, will the laptop handle it gracefully? Do I need to make any of the above upgrades to make it run smooth? Will the video card limit my ability to use Win7?


4) Summary And Video Card
I am all about upgrading this laptop if I can do it cheaply and i will see improvement. It seems like I can get more RAM and a better processor in fairly cheaply (depending on the answers to the above questions/sections). But, what about the video card? From what I can tell, the Intel GMA 950 is a pretty crappy video chipset. There seems to be no way to alter how much RAM is devoted to the video chip (its what, 64mb?). Will this end up being a bottleneck that makes any of the above upgrades pretty much useless? Is there any way to upgrade the video performance? I've used GMABooster to clock it up to 400MHz, but is there anything else I can do?


Thanks a lot to everyone who looks at this thread, and some special love to those who write!!! I'll be active in this thread, so please don't hesitate to write in.

 

1) Depending on what you do, you may or may not see a benefit with that extra 1GB.

2) Again, depending on what you're doing, you may not see a performance benefit... but if you're running a T2x00 processor, you'll at least see a small decrease in power consumption. All of those T7x00 processors should work... I'd actually sell you a T7200 cheap if you're interested.

3) It'll run 7 fine. GMA950 can't really game, but it'll do aero perfectly well.

4) Ultimately I think your best upgrades with be 7 and an SSD.

 

1)Agreed. I'll be using it as just a utility laptop until I can afford a gaming laptop (considering Asus G73JW... if you're interested, I've got a thread on the topic here). But I think for $29 its probably worth it.

2) Please see PM

3) Excellent

4) SSD would be great, but I'm not looking to spend $200+ on HD atm. If anything, I'll save that upgrade for the gaming laptop I buy. Maybe an xmas gift

 

Anyone else have some thoughts or suggestions?

 

I'd forget the cpu/memory upgrade. Get a 32/40gb ssd for like $60-80 bucks on Ebay. Throw in Win7 and call it a day. Sell whatever hdd it has.

Then when you get your gaming laptop, take the ssd from the Lenovo and switch it with the hdd from your new laptop. Then you have a decent old laptop with a bit of storage and a gaming laptop with an sdd. My two cents.

 

On the performance front Commander Wolf had all the aspects covered, SSD would be the most significant upgrade you can do with the T60 though it will only utilise SATA 1.5GB/s bandwidth because of the chipset limitation. Despite this it will still be considerably faster than the standard hard drives.

Though if you find the capacity a bit limited on the SSD, you can also plump for an additional hard drive using a PATA to SATA Ultrabay Slim caddy that sits in place of the optical drive. I'm using this setup myself on my T61 and generally works fine. I just use the SSD for the OS and apps while the bulk of my files such as music and images sits on my 5400RPM 500GB HDD which isn't that expensive nowadays.