Maximum upgrades/performance for new laptop?

hi

just got given a pretty cheap laptop for christmas. I was wondering how much scope there is for upgrading it, and squeezing gaming performance out of it?

the spec is as follows

HP 6735s Laptop, AMD AthlonTM X2 Dual Core QL-60 1.9GHz,
4GB 800DDR2, Onboard ATI Radeon HD3200, vista
chipset ( i think) AMD M780G

3.7 windows experience index.

so my question is, what can i do to make this quicker.

firstly would i be right to go with xp 64 instead, and tweak it with something like tunexp for best OS performance? HP provide drivers so this shouldnt be a problem.

secondly, can i replace the cpu? if so what can i replace it up to?

finally, graphics. ive read about ati crossfire, and some articles seem to suggest i can add another gpu to the 3200. is this true? whats the best i can do this with, and ive also read people talking about changing the bios to allocate more dedicated memory to the gpu. is this possible/benificial?

i think my memory is the least of my worries, as its got by far the highest score on windows. what do you think?

And finally whats the best place to buy all the possible upgrades. seems hard to find laptop components sold seperately.

thanks for all your time and effort.

any other suggestions would be great, but please dont suggest i buy another computer! thanks

jonny


edit-just read this, http://tinyurl.com/73q2ag

suggests windows xp no longer much better really. thoughts?

 

Unfortunately there is nothing much you can do to that notebook to improve gaming performance. ATi HD3200 is an integrated card, meaning the Graphics Processing Unit is built in to the chipset of the motherboard. Therefore you cannot upgrade or replace it. Adding another graphics card is also not an option. Remember, notebooks are very different to desktops in terms of upgrades, there are no PCIexpress slots or free spaces inside it to add new graphics cards n stuff.

As for the CPU upgrade, I suppose you could upgrade it (assuming it is not soldered on to the motherboard, most notebooks have removable CPUs… . But a CPU upgrade can do very little for gaming performance when you have a crippled integrated gfx card. Because gaming performance almost entirely depends on GPU. Besides, upgrading the CPU is not very easy nor cheap, and it will mopst probably void your warranty too.

You have plenty of RAM so I’d say just use it as it is and save your money and effort.

 

There probably isn't anything you'll be able to do to that laptop to make it significantly faster. You can't add a second graphics card for Crossfire. Switching to a 64 bit version of Vista or back to XP wouldn't make any visible speed difference either. Very unlikely that you would be able to swap the CPU for a faster one.

You could attempt to overclock the CPU. That would get you maybe another 5-10% more performance but the machine could become unstable.

One thing that might help us is to tell us what particular area is actually getting the lowest WEI score. If it is the hard drive, that's easily upgraded to something faster. If it is anything else, you probably don't have much more speed you can squeeze out of it.

 

XP 64 has compatibility issues,
Don't think you can upgrade a AMD cpu in a laptop(unless hp do it for you)
You can't upgrade\add another graphics card to you system,
And your card will "borrow" system ram as needed.

If you want better gaming performance update your drivers and look up mods and tweaks for each game to get the best performance out of your system.

Any games in particular that your having trouble with?

 

buy xbox 360. that's the cheapest way to get any sort of recent gaming

 

save money and buy other laptop later

 

Processor AMD Athlon(tm)X2 DualCore QL-60 4.7
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB 5.4
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics 3.8
Gaming graphics 1405 MB Total available graphics memory 3.7
Primary hard disk 71GB Free (223GB Total) 5.3
Windows Vista (TM) Home Premium


so yeah, graphics is the biggest problem.

so crossfires a desktop only thing? shame, it sounded like a pretty good option.

i already have a 360 for cheap up to date gaming, but im currently touring italy as an actor for 6 months so needed more portable gaming!

thanks for all the help i guess ill have to learn to love what ive got!

happy christmas all!

 

AMD cpu's are just like intels. They are both in sockets and both upgradeable.

 

Crossfire is not a desktop only thing, very recently few notebooks stared coming out with crossfire (dual graphics cards). But you can’t just add a new card to any ATI based notebook and run it in crossfire mode. You have to BUY a crossfire notebook. Upgradable graphics is a very rare thing in notebooks, mostly because there is no industry wide standardized form factor / interface. There is however a standard called MXM but very few companies stick to the specification. Then there are cooling problems, space problems and various other issues. Completely different to desktops.

 

Not much you can do ... Maybe get a faster hard drive (7,200 RPM or 10,000 RPM), faster RAM (if your mobo supports it) and get a better processor (if your motherboard supports such an upgrade). Other than that, not much, unless you want to get a new motherboard or entire new laptop (both quite expensive).

 

the processor can be upgraded, but doing so is pretty expensive.
Upgrading the memory is also a waste. Your system already has the maximum amount of memory the system supports.
The harddrive can be upgraded to a higher capacity 5400rpm or 7200rpm drive.
There are no 10,000 rpm laptop drives.

If you are running Vista or XP, and your system feels slow chances are your system has a ton of background processes running.
If you go to task manager, how many processes are running?
If there are more than 35 than I suggest cleaning the registry.
To do this you can go to the run command and type in "msconfig" than a window will open. In there go to the startup and services tab and shut off anything you do not use.
Shutting off background processes helps free up system resources so that it runs faster.

K-TRON

 

hi checked task manager, runnning 90! processes. how do i know which i should turn off? they all have very strange names.

 

What operating system are you using?

With XP you should have no more than 30 running at idle
with vista you should have no more than 40 running at idle.

Please post the screenshots of the MSCONFIG "startup" and "services" tabs here and everyone can tell you which to disable.

Disabling background processes will terminate the process from loading with the operating system, thus decreasing the number of processes running in task manager.
We can help you cut your services in half, which would make your system much faster.

K-TRON

 

running vista

sorry to be stupid but how do i get a screenshot of the services startup tabs?

 

Open up the services tab.
than press the "print scrn" button on your keyboard. Than open microsoft paint or photoshop and press "paste" than you can upload the image to photobucket, or any other free online image service.

You may have to take a few screenshots to get all of the services and such in

Make sure that before you take a screenshot we can read the whole service name.

K-TRON

 

You may be able to improve your graphics score/performance by upgrading your video drivers.

 

im running vista premium, and im looking to run games, use wifi, and unless theres a much better option, keep using windows firewall/defender.

other than that im open to suggestions. thanks for the help.

 

What I marked with a red dot can be shut off.



The ATi control center is rarely ever used. The graphics card runs the same regardless of the control center being enabled or not.
The Microsoft windows vista one is Aero. If you want you can disable aero. WIndows vista will still look mostly the same, you will just loose the scroll through tab feature. This will free up cpu, gpu and memory.
If you do not like it when disabled for whatever reason, simply recheck the box.

In the services you can shut off what is in red:




You may find this site very helpful:
http://www.speedyvista.com/services.php

Probably the best thing to do is either clean up the resgistry or reinstall the operating system without all of the crap software some of the retailers love to throw in to slow your system down.

K-TRON

 

thanks k-tron.

down to 44 processes now, and idle cpu of 2 or 3 percent.

speedyvista does look a great site. one quick question, i tried to use one of the batch files of registery settings, and through the blur of white text on black window, saw access denied alot. is there anyway to stop this happening?

thanks for all your help, very useful, helpful person!

 

Intel X-25M SSD. That will make your laptop screaaam in everyday tasks and will improve load and rendering times for gaming.

 

Yes a SSD will make his system faster but I dont think jonnysanger34 is going to want to spend $500 or whatever to make his laptop faster.
Cleaning the registry is free and I am sure dropping from 90 processes to 44 has made a big performance increase already.

The access denied thing, the only reason I can think of that appearing is if you are not the system administrator. You should be able to set yourself as the system administrator through "user accounts" in the control panel

K-TRON