Upgrade or buy a new laptop ?

Hello all, here is my story:

I've had a HP NC8430 for about a year and a half now and I am a bit disappointed by its overall performances. At first I wanted a well-rounded computer so I went for this one, with the x1600 graphic card allowing me to play games from time to time. But because of a heat problem on the NC8430, I can't play at all so I have no use of the graphic card. I have underclocked it through Powerplay.

Basically my computer is worth 700$ on French ebay and it would cost me about 1000$ to get a newer HP computer (love their mate screen and manufacturing quality) without a fancy graphic card so maybe also without heat issues (because I gave up on trying to play, I just want a very silent cold laptop now).

The thing is that right now I have a T2400 processor (1.83Ghz) so a core duo and not a C2D. I wonder if a T7250 Core 2 Duo would bring me a noticeable increase of the overall speed of my computer or not much. What can I expect from going from a 32-bits to a 64-bits computer ? Because if the difference is slight, I had better replace the harddrive and maybe put an additionnal 1Go ram while it's so cheap, that would cost me about 150$.

What do you think on that ?

 

The T7250 wouldn't even work if its the newer socket. You only real options are the T7200, T7400, and T7600. Nothing else.

But you are not going to see a difference for most applications because they don't use 100% of the processor. And gaming will not improve one bit as the GPU is the bottleneck.

32/64? - There really is no difference, except the risk that you'll have driver compatibility issues for some hardware. Oh, and most/all computers ship with 32bit still.

Changing the HDD will only get you a capacity increase, not really a speed increase.

Upgrading the RAM would help you more than anything, even more so than improving the CPU.

As for the nc8430 (I used to own one), it did get hot as stated in my review, but 80C isn't so hot you'd need to worry. 100C would be though. You can purchase a $10-50 notebook cooler for the laptop though that would really really help.

 

what laptop are you supposed to buy ?

concerning the processor, yes it will be faster if it does fit into your laptop, but it won´t be like twice the speed. it´s just a few percent. basicly you already have a good laptop there, and a ram upgrade would already giving you more performance.
if i understand you correctly , you have just 1 GB ram ? you should definitly upgrade. but 150$ for 1 GB seems a bit too expensive. i bought 4 GB OCZ memory for ~80 € ( bought in december). you should compare some prices. the ram upgrade you can do on your own. it´s actually pretty easy.

about the x64 - well thats a tough one, i recently installed xp64 and it was worth it. my laptop is running stable, i almost instantly got nearly all the drivers. for my work - 3d modeling / rendering it was the best choice i could make. i pretty much feel the difference compared to the x86 architecture.

 

update :

you should search for some better prices.

the cheapest price for a hp8510 p in europe i could find in 5 minutes was 1412,80 €.

the specs
Core 2 Duo T7500 2x 2.20GHz • 2048MB (2x 1024MB) • 160GB • DVD+/-RW DL • ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 256MB max.512MB shared memory • 4x USB 2.0/FireWire/Modem/Gb LAN/WLAN 802.11abg/Bluetooth • HDMI • PCMCIA Typ II Slot • SD-Card Slot • 15.4" WSXGA+ non-glare TFT (1680x1050) • Windows Vista Business • Li-Ionen-Akku (8 Zellen) • 2.80kg • 36 Monate Herstellergarantie


and the ram sodimm ddr2 200 pin

ocz 2GB ddr667 40€

150$ for 1 GB seems a little bit too much.

 

I will be very honest with you: given my trouble with the nc8430 and persistent failures at the end of its life, I would have to say either consider getting a 17" HP Compaq machine or a 15" machine from another company.

The 17" 8710 was very well designed, and I can definitely say HP did good with both the 8710p and 8710w (both reviewed @ NBR). But I personally feel that HP dropped the ball with their 15" designs. I turned down a 15.4" 8510p replacement when my nc8430 died because I was not extremely impressed with the 15.4" design with HP's older a newer laptops at the time, and heat is STILL an issue with them.

Allow me to borrow a little of my own content from my review of the 8510w (almost identical to the 8510p):

 

Is the heat problem all the time, or only when gaming? Did you try undervolting the CPU (with RMClock or NHC)? You might be able to take about 10C off the full-load CPU temperature.

I would try undervolting + adding a 2GB RAM module. A bigger HDD would also give a small performance boost, but do you need more space? Think about a new model later in the year when the next Intel chipset is widespread and the GPUs should have moved on another generation.

John

 

You know...here is something else you can try...check out the Cooling Guide and clean your fan. It isn't hard to get to (just need to remove the keyboard to get full access).

 

yep, cleaning might help a bit with the cooling. if you need to know how to remove the keyboard maybe the service and maintenance manual provided by HP will be helpful.

in there you will also find replacement procedures for ram,hdd,processor.....

http://bizsupport.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00762017/c00762017.pdf

 

Wow thanks for the input guys ! Okay, first, the 150€ upgrade was considering upgrading the harddrive + 2 gigs of ram. I wouldn't put that much money in just ram

The HDD I have now is the HDD that comes with the NC8430 i.e. a Fujitsu 5400 80Go. I don't need an extra storage capacity, Im just trying to get the heat and noise down by buying a Seagate (5400 or 7200, haven't decided) . . . Without having to open the beast. I kinda suck at computers and everytime I tried to do something on my own, I ended up messing everything up and the machine wouldn't even run afterwards. I'm not sure it's worth wrecking the whole thing to get a couple °C reduction.

So as of today, I have only undervolted my cpu from 0.95V (multiplier 6) to 1.05V (multiplier 11) which seems to run smoothly and underclocked gpu through powerplay (so it's not really underclocked it's optimizing battery life). I am looking for ways to truly underclock the gpu but I can't get ati tray tools to work.

The idea being : I am like you Greg, I have had it for only a year and half and I had countless problems on the machine. When I reported the heat issue to HP, they took it back off warranty for a HDD replacement which didn't solve the problem (but means that they are aware of it and are willing to make efforts even though it was off warranty). It seems like it's more of an architecture of the laptop problem.

When I was talking about the CPU it was in the idea of getting a brand new laptop with another cpu in it. It seems like it's not really worth it though. The only model I would be interested in now is an IBM since for me mate screens really are an important thing but then it would be a couple more hundred bucks and I can't really afford that right now. So I guess I'll just go for a ram upgrade now, and try to make geek friends so they can help me clean my computer I'm still considering a HDD upgrade, from this Fujitsu 5400 to a Seagate 5400 or 7200 and then using the Fujitsu as an external HDD, but do you think that it would help or just that the way the NC8430 is built won't make any big difference (and I'm only talking in terms of heat and noise here, not performance) ?