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    Upgrade Ram or Hard Drive?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by lancer player, Feb 21, 2006.

  1. lancer player

    lancer player Notebook Enthusiast

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    What will make a bigger difference on my laptop. It is a Sony Vaio FS500 with a Pentium 1.6GHz processor. It currently has 256MB of ram installed and a 30GB 4200rpm hard drive. My question is which one would make a bigger difference? Should I upgrade to 1GB of ram or upgrade to a 60GB 5400rpm hard drive?

    Your answers are greatly appreciated.
     
    lancer player, Feb 21, 2006
    #1
  2. coriolis

    coriolis Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Ram would be the ideal choice, as 256 is barely enough to run Windows XP
     
    coriolis, Feb 21, 2006
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  3. miner

    miner Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Upgrade the RAM first, as 256MB is a bottleneck and is going to influence the performance more than the 4200rpm HDD. Windows requires a minimum of 512MB to run smoothly and 1GB is the norm these days. OR you can upgrade the RAM to 512MB and get a 5400rpm HDD(if it fits into your budget). This might give you a decent boost in performance allround.
     
    miner, Feb 21, 2006
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  4. flxrms

    flxrms Notebook Enthusiast

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    Both will have a very significant impact. Getting 1gig of ram your application would have a faster response time, OS would not have to use the pagefile more often. Getting a 5400rpm or 7200rpm HD your boot time would also be faster and the response time for accessing the files will also be faster.
     
    flxrms, Feb 21, 2006
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  5. qohelet

    qohelet Senior Member

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    Both! you cannot underestimate one with the other. HD and Ram including CPU are major hardwares that makes OS runs smoothely.

    If you have the money and not on budget, you can upgrade both your ram and HD. but if you are in budget, then choose to upgrade your ram first since after booting your OS, it's the ram that does the job most.
     
    qohelet, Feb 21, 2006
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  6. qohelet

    qohelet Senior Member

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    Miner is right. Better upgrade your ram to 512 and get a 5400 rpm HDD. That way you can have all around perfomance boost (i.e., faster boot time, multitasking work).

    The disadvantage, though, is that if you have two ram slots then buying another 256 will make you waste ram for future ram upgrades. but if you can, just buy another 512 ram. then you'll get a better 768 ram.
     
    qohelet, Feb 21, 2006
    #6
  7. drumfu

    drumfu super modfu

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    regardless of what you want to upgrade, 256 is not enough to give you a pleasureable xp experience. you really need to get up to 512 at a minimum; 1 GB preferred. in a sense, you're lucky as upgrading the ram will give you the biggest perceived boost in performance.

    so, in a nutshell, upgrade the ram to at least 512 at a minimum. after you've done that, then ask what to upgrade... ram up to 1GB or the HD to a faster RPM... but, again, get that RAM bumped up first.
     
    drumfu, Feb 21, 2006
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  8. Shampoo

    Shampoo Notebook Deity

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    Ram baby ram~!
     
    Shampoo, Feb 22, 2006
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