XPS M1710 Hard Drive Upgrade - 320GB WD Scorpio

Hi everyone, 1st post

Well I currently own a Dell XPS M1710
First revision, T2 500, 7900GTX, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7,200RPM and XP SP2 Home Edition.

Well I am thinking of purchasing the Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache to replace the 100GB HD and I am thinking of installing Vista on it as I have a copy of it [Premium 32bit].

Do you think it's alright to purchase it and is there any other upgrades available for the M1710 that will increase performance or any other factor?

Thanks a bunch!
temur.

 

3GB ram..(4GB if you can upgrade to 64-bit using the same vista key)

T2600--> to any Merom Socket M Core 2 Duo..T5xxx, T7xxx
[if so would advise you to go for the T5500 to check if the BIOS is capable of supporting meroms]

Chances of upgrading the GPU would be slim to none....depending upon, if the laptop comes with a higher gpu and the upgrade is not very costly....

The HDD is fine, it ll work if the notebook has a SATA port....but will operate at SATA-150....!!

Check this thread....it is basically about the cpu upgrades regarding Acer notebooks with the i945GM/PM chipsets..!!
If you ever start off with the upgrade, it may help you in getting the basic idea of what to do and what not to do..

 

Either the WD you mentioned or a Hitachi 7K320 would probably be compelling upgrades. Unfortunately there have not been any non-synthetic benchmarks published yet. We do have some HDtune en Xbench results here on the forum.

If you could wait for a week or two I would do so, and wait for more extensive benchmarks to show up at Anandtech, Tomshardware or Storagereview.

An alternative might be the new OCZ SSD drives that are quite affordable for SSD.

Upgrading your RAM only makes sense if you max out your 2GB at the moment.

Upgrading your CPU only makes sense if you max out your CPU at the moment.

 

You can check the HDD interface by looking up the HDD model in Device Manager and then checking the specs. If it is PATA then your choices are the WD2500BEVE (good speed and high capacity) or the Samsung HM160JC (only 160GB but on one platter).

John

 

Yeah....or just take out the HDD and read whats written on the label....

or compare the sockets on the HDD itself....if it has loads and loads of pins, then it is IDE and if it has a socket kind of weird layout, then it is SATA..

 

Hi, it's SATA so I will get the Scorpio 320GB.

 

does it really make sense to upgrade to 4GB RAM?

 

A matter of day-to-day usage and personal choice....!!
And if got the green to burn....go for 4GB or stick to 2GB.. :twitcy:

 

Go for it mate....:smile:

 

The M1710 was only availabe with sata harddrive
The M1710 is capable of handling up to the T7600 processor, so you dont have to worry about the processor being recognized.
My friend had a T5300 and we upgraded it to a T7600, so it is a very easy ugrade.
Install i8kfangui and keep the fans running cause the T7200, T7400 and T7600 do use more power and do get hotter.

I also recommend undervolting your cpu after upgrading so that it runs cooler.
Check out teh undervolting guide here on nbr.

If your 100gb 7200rpm drive is based off of the hitachi 7k200 series drive you will not notice much of a performance gain from 52mb/sec to the 64mb/sec of the 7k320/WD black edition.
If your drive is a 7k100 or seagate generation 1 7200rpm drive than you will notice an upgrade in speed since those drives were 34mb/sec or slower, and an upgrade to the black edition at 64mb/sec will be a nice upgrade.

4gb of memory will also work, however a bios update is needed, and it only recognizes 3072mb of memory max, so its not really worth upgrading to any more than 3gb of memory.

K-TRON

 

dude, you're like everywhere and always so helpful lol. thanks.

 

yeah i missed that....it wont show the full 4GB on installing 4Gb ram because it has something to do with the locked BIOS provided by Dell....which only reserves ~3GB(3.3) ram for the OS and rest for some services....
almost everything depends upon the BIOS....my acer has got a custom BIOS and I am running 4GB ram on an i943....

 

Yeah, it's all dependent on the chipset and other things to address the full 4GB of RAM. I'm not going to bother going with another GB of RAM - no point, and besides if I do I'm going to have to buy from Corsair, and I will have 2 different RAM Modules from two different manufacturers - no point tbh.

And 320GB HD, I don't really care about the write speeds. Currently I have a Seagate btw. I will get an increase definitely but I am buying it for the size, I'd rather have 320GB HD than a 100GB HD which when formatted is 4GB less and it runs out very quick...

Do you think it's worth putting Vista on it or no point? It's capable though isn't it? I just want to play some degree of games - CS: S, GRID and BF2 - and some photo editing.

I could go for 64bit but I heard the T2 500's are EMT64 (not 64bit architecture).

 

All Intel core and core 2 processors are EMT64. To get true 64 bit, you will have to get a AMD processor. You cant put an AMD in your laptop

Your harddrive upgrade will be very nice then. 320gb will format to 298Gb, just so you know (If possible, wait a few weeks, the prices will fall a few $$$ so it will be less of a burden on your wallet, if thats an issue)

Your laptop is more than capable of handling Vista, so you can install it if you like.
My friend has the T7600 and 2gb of memory, and 200gb 7200rpm drive, 7950GTX and he plays wow and counterstrike without any slowdowns. FPS in both is around the upper 60's in both. The M1710 is a very powerful laptop, and it will have more than enough power for years to come.

K-TRON

 

T2500 is Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo). It says here: http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL8VT

 

Thanks for your help; and everyone else's as well
Vista Premium 32bit, then I will install SP1.

 

There's also the Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320GB 7200rpm drive to consider. Has the fastest access time of all three (11ms):

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...f64f9110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD&locale=en-US

Anyone seen any benchies of these yet?

EDIT: Yep - http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=26900

Need the same for the Hitachi Travelstar 7k320 and WD Scorpio Black Edition now.

 

I am pretty sure someone posted HD Tune results of the WD Black scorpio. I'll try to find it.





More benchmarks here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=268772&page=2

 

Thanks Phil. I wonder why the Seagate has all those random high access times which are obviously pushing the average up. The Hitachi 7k320 is pretty neck and neck with the WD Scorpio Black in the OP with the Hitachi being slightly faster in sequentials but the WD being slightly faster in randoms.

 

Some early 1710's had PATA drives. When I bought mine off of Dells refurb site there where several listed with PATA drives. These were all Core Duos

 

Yes me too. I wonder how the rest of the system influences the results. And I wonder how much influence processes running in the background have.

I just looked at 2 WD 320GB 5400rpm results:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=20619&d=1215351189
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=20601&d=1215313127

The differences between them are quite big. I think HD Tune has serious limitations as a benchmark.

 

You think those results are very different? They look very similar to me?

 

Lol you're right. Must have lost track with 20 tabs open.

 

I have the same laptop

Dell xps 1710
T6000 2.33ghz
2Gb RAM
100Gb 7200 rpm HDD
Vista ultimate 32bit

I was also considering buying the 320gb WD HDD (because the current 100Gb HDD makes an annoying click when processing) but at the same time i am wanting to upgrade to vista 64 bit version of ultimate. I want to do this because i have heard rumors that 32bit does not read all of the 4gb RAM that i plan on upgrading to. But in this post ppl are saying that its my BIOS that is going to limit the RAM and not the 32bit.

My question then, are these;
What is my best route for copying my current HDD over to the new?
a) Method above needs to keep all installs intact.
b) If reinstalling to 64bit then disregard a).
Is Vista 64bit faster for gaming and image editing than 32bit?
Is it worth the hassle for 4GB of Ram and 64bit and all that reloading?
I am a noob, whats the diff between 64bit and 32bit. (i only heard rumors that u need 64bit for 4gb of RAM.)

 

Getting a 320gb 5400rpm or 7200rpm drive will increase system speed and performance and yet decrease the noise, since the new drives are more power efficient and quieter.
any 32 bit operating system will limit memory usage to around 3-3.5Gb of memory. This is because the operating system cannot allocate 4 full gb of memory. You will need a 64 bit operating system to be able to allocate the entire 4gb of memory.

loading times will be exactly the same whether using a 32 bit or a 64 bit operating system, unless you are running 64 bit applications. If you are running 64 bit apps than it will run faster with a 64 bit operating system.

You will need to use software like norton ghost, or acronis true image in order to copy/mirror your files onto the new harddrive.

K-TRON