Should I upgrade to a faster Pentium M?

I was thinking about upgrading my notebook CPU since you can get pretty good deals on the Pentium Ms on eBay. I have a Pentium M 725 installed right now. The CPU is easily accessible. This notebook previously had a Celeron M 370 but I switched it with my 725 which was in my old dead notebook.

What performance boost will I get if I upgrade to a 770? Will it be noticeable? I have the 915 Intel graphics so I'm thinking that will remain the bottleneck in graphic intensive games. Are there drawbacks? I'm sure the battery life will be lower and possibly temperatures will be higher but will it be significant?

Thanks

 

Well first of all, make sure that the 770 is compatible with you laptop.

The GMA 915 might be a bottleneck depending on which games you play. Some older games such as WCIII and CS 1.6 are probably playable without any noticable slow downs. Newer games such as FEAR or HL2EP1 and above will definitely slow you laptop down.

Other than the intergrated graphics, the amount of RAM you have can be a bottleneck too. 1GB or above is advised these days, especially since you are using intergrated graphics.

Battery life will probably be lower unless you buy an ULV version of the Pentium M. Temperature will definitely increase, but not by much. Cleaning your fans and inlets before installing the new CPU will definitely prevent the temperature from soaring.

 

not worth it in my opinion

buy a faster hard drive or more ram

99.999% of users don't stress their cpus even though they think they do

or save your $ for a new notebook

 

Don't upgrade, it is not worth it in the least. As stated, people overestimate what sort of power they need. Even upgrading to the fastest Pentium M 780 2.26GHz will not help your gaming ability; that is permanently handicapped by the Intel graphics chip.

 

Yeah I agree, going for more ram is definatly the better path. Now if you already have your ram maxed and have the money to get a top shelf pentium M then by all means. But if you want to go from a 1.73 to a 1.86 then dont waste your money.

WHen I had my averatec I installed 2gb of ram vs. 512mb standard; and I went from a mt30 to mt40 1.6ghz vs. 2.2ghz. Both impacted gaming (I had a ati 200m), but the ram did by far the most to affect gaming. SO go that router first.

 

Before giving you a good answer, you shoudl provide a bit more details:
1.) What are your current system specs?
2.) What do you do with your notebook that stresses out your 725?
3.) How long do you plan on keeping the machine?

 

It sounds like I shouldn't upgrade but here's my specs:

Pentium M 725 (1.6 Ghz)
1 Gig ram
Chipset - i915GMS/i910GML
Southbridge - 82801FBM (ICH6-M)
Hard Drive 60Gigs 7200RPM

Right now, I don't do anything on my notebook that stresses it out too much since I know its limitations. For example, I run the game Counter-Strike: Source and Unreal Tournament 2004 (getting old but still good) on my desktop but I run Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and good ol' StarCraft and on my laptop. Photography is a hobby so I touch up photos on my desktop but haven't bothered to do so on my notebook.

I remember ripping a DVD once with this processor and it took quite long. But that's not really an issue since that was only done once so I could return the rental.

How long do I plan on keeping the notebook? Well, I tend to break my notebook pcs withing two years; otherwise, I would keep it longer.

 

I can see no reason you would upgrade your CPU, based on your needs/usage. If you begin to have troubles with games, a better CPU will not help (you'd need a better GPU).

If you are gonna bust the thing in the next year or so, just wait until then and get a new machine altogether.

I don't know your age, but I do know that "acidentally" busting a computer is a good way to get an upgrade past the wife.

 

That used to work, until I "acidentally" broke my desktop GPU. Then I "acidentally" broke my monitor. Then I "acidentally" broke our TV. Now, after a new GPU, new monitor, and a new LCD flat panel TV... I can't get away with that too much. Now, when I do "acidentally" break something, we go shopping, and she gets something too.