notebook upgrade mission

Greetings to all,

I'm contemplating doing some upgrades to my notebook, in hopes to increase overall performance of the machine. I use the laptop to make music mainly, as well as gaming. I'm considering these options:

1. add another 1G stick, maybe a 2G stick if the motherboard will support it (motherboard is made by clevo, but could not find specs of mboard on their site, going to call them and find out).--found 1 GB PC4200 modules @ 34$ samsung or corsair 30$

2. change the processor to a M Processor 780 2.26ghz--actually found one for 179$ + 20$ shipping, thought it was a typo cause some vendors are selling same chip 395$ to +600$

3.considering maybe changing hardrive to a Seagate Savvio 10K.2 73GB 2.5--a bit much @ 275$ but have not checked around so maybe some better deals out there, plus reading more about these types of HD to figure out if they are noticeably noisier than 7200 rpm hd's.

current notebook specs:
M570A mboard
M Processor 750 1.86 GHz
1x 1GB DDR2-533 PC4200
60GB 7200rpm
PCMCIA audigy
XP pro

My 1st inclination was to swap the processor, cause when I check task manager, cpu usage will continuously spike often sporadicly in the 60-75% range (I need to alleviate this or make more stable) when I start getting into the meat of creating a track, or when I add one of my Reason Pianos combi patch. PF usage is stable at 310MB during the cpu spikes, so I was not thinking of adding RAM since its not getting maxed out, but as I've read in other threads here, more RAM never hurts.

Any advice would be welcomed. as I would really like to add some more power to my machine, but the question I keep asking myself is will I see a noticeable performance? Will performance increase by like only 5% or 25% or x%?

Also would like to congratulate mods and admins on running a great site, I've found a wealth of knowledge here.

 

From the data given above, I'd go for the extra 1 GB of RAM. Generally, adding more RAM is the single best thing you can do to increase your compter's performance, and in this case, it is also by far the cheapest. Leave Task Manager running while you run programs, and see how much RAM you are using. If your page file occasionally goes over 1 GB, you would benefit from more RAM.

$200 for a 20% increase in processor performance seems a bit steep, especially considering it still won't be top-of-the-line by today's standards. It's certainly better than $400, but if you're operating on a limited budget, I wouldn't go for it.

I didn't even know they made 10k notebook hard drives (kind of want one now, even if it is 73 GB), but again I don't think it's very good value at $275. If hard drive is usually your bottleneck, it should give a nice boost in load and save times, but it's pricey. Given the price differences, I'd certainly go for RAM first in this case.

 

I tried leaving task manager open again to monitor and the PF usage is steady at 301MB, so according to what u said i guess getting RAM would be useless or could the extra RAM help the cpu load anyways (as it hovers around the 65-70 % range)?

I'm not aiming for a top of the line machine cause, I really don't think I have cash for that type of machine and even if i did it would not be top of the line for very long anyways, my budget is about 3500$ and I'd rather use most of that to getting a new powerful desktop (I find desktops to be able to offer alot more stability, my current desktop with athlon xp 2200 and 1gb ddr 333mhz stick is much more able to deal with workloads compared to my laptop, which i love for its portability aspect).

One thing that intrigued me though was that u mentionned bottlenecks, is there tests that I can run to figure out what "bottlenecks" my notebook?

It seems that adding a new cpu, HD and ram would mean I am better off saving up for a more powerful notebook. If so can anyone suggest a notebook that could maybe double or maybe triple my current laptop (I'm just curious now what price range i would be looking at)

Once again any other advice would be great, I will probably just upgrade hd, ram and processor instead of getting a new notebook right now.

 

Adding a gid of RAM will do a lot more for you than a 20% increase in processor clock speed. The faster chip will show a couple of percentage points on benchmarks and not be noticed in real apps. The RAM allows the CPU tp open up to it's max.

If you want more than that, get off the wallet. You're gonna need to get a fast dual core with a SATA 7200 HD and 2 gigs RAM and video card. Trying to upgrade what you have past adding memory is a waste of money and expectations.

And no laptop is going to come close to a $2000 desktop, at least not for less than $3000 and then the desktop will still be more powerful and expandable. I love my laptops, but they are portables. When I want power, that's why I have this machine. No it is not bleeding edge, but it hums pretty well.

64X2 5000+
2 X 250 RAID0
2 gig DDR2 6400
Radeon Pro 1300
XFi Platinum

This I can use for audio and video.

Laptop? For $650 it goes where I go and does what I need, just slowly. Did I mention SLOWLY? But that's what the desktop is for.

 

What is causing your cpu to be at 65-70% load all the time? It should be less than 5% if not doing anything.

Maybe you should scan your computer for viruses/spyware.

 

ok I'll just do the RAM upgrade for now, see how that goes, and thx for mentionning what your desktop is, it sounds very nice compared to mine, it gives me an idea on what to look for as I will be getting a new desktop early next year hopefully.

Thanks for the advice again

 

That happens when I am playing a .rns file in the Reason 3.0 application. If nothing is running cpu is between 0-1%

I think I'm just gonna contact the motherboard manufacturer and find out what the motherboard can support in terms of total RAM and RAM speeds and just RAM it up. If i do anything more than that I think I will be setting myself up for dissappointment. I still like my notebook, as it still can do alot for me even though it's old compared to today's standard.

Anyways I thank everyone that has contributed to this post, you've helped me reground myself, save some cash and avoid dissappointment.

Big thx to the mods and admins as well.

 

Ram.

In the age of dual cores, it does not make a lot of sense to upgrade to a slightly faster single core processor. Even the slower Core 2 Duos will humble a single core Pentium M.

Other option is to sell laptop for what you can, and get a new one with the combined money that you get from the sale and from not upgrading the CPU and hard drive.

The RAM is cheap though, so, if you wanted to add another GB, that would be a good move.

 

yea i guess I could sell it, but I'm probably not going to do that, not yet anyways. Just going to get the extra 1GB stick (probably pick it up tomorrow at local shop, no shipping fees), and spend cash on a strong decent desktop.

basically i can only do the light to mid-heavy audio stuff on my laptop, I do the mid to heavier stuff at home and hopefully soon I can do some really heavy stuff on my next desktop.

thx for the advice