Improving my laptop performance

What would be the purpose of increasing memory? I am new to the laptop world. I have a hp pavillion zv5000 that I will be keeping for awhile. right now I am school finishing my Master's and will soon be going for my PhD, so I want to try to get the most out of my laptop. I have a desktop, but I take my laptop everywhere in order to studt and write papers. So advise that some could give as far as what I do to increase my laptop performance. I know I need to get a new battery, how long does a 12 cell run? Thank you in advance for your help.

 

12cell should give u about 50% more life...& to further increase that, u can use Crystal CPUID to undervolt & use only a low processing speed (rather than Cool 'n Quiet toggling between low speed & high speed that it does by default)

Adding memory past 512mb DDR SDRAM will only increase performance depending on what you're doing.

You'll need to elaborate a bit on what you plan on utilizing the memory for?
(i.e.- word processing, etc. will not require a whole lot, same applies to web browsing, email)

 

I also own an HP zv5000. I get about 4 hours of battery life on my zv5000 with the 12-cell battery.

Increasing RAM allows you to run more programs at once, and they can be accessed faster, so it is definatley worth it. I upgraded mine from 512MB to 1GB and I saw a big difference: faster program access times, better gaming, etc.

RAM is the cheapest way to increase performance, remember that!

 

Thank you all for your help...let me ask one more question...how much would it cost to go to 1gig? How much would a 12 cell battery cost?

 

A 1gb memory upgrade would cost about $100. A 12-cell battery normally goes for $150, but for some reason Bestbuy have them on closeout sale for as little as $15!!! Check out this thread:

http://www.zv6000forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=274

I've read in these forums that you should stick with Kingston and Crucial brands for RAM upgrades for better reliability. The HP 12-cell battery part number you're looking for is DP390A. Good luck. :hp:

 

thanks!!!!!!!

 

Here are a bunch of PC2700 DDR333 1GB laptop memory sticks at newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...29:7864,523:7858,524:7860&bop=and&Order=price

I dont know if your notebook uses PC2700 or PC3200, ask HP. The link shows all PC2700 memory sticks.

 

Of those, I'd go with these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820172105

HP uses PC2700. PC3200 may or may not work (I wish HP would fix that, at least have the BIOS force PC2700 mode).

 

Brianstretch, I'm also thinking about adding RAM to my zv5220us. I'm planning on replacing the 256mb at the bottom of the lappy with a 1gb stick and leaving the 256mb one under the keyboard (I'd rather avoid having to remove the keyboard) for a total of 1256mb RAM.

My main goal is to improve the slowed performance of whatever it is I'm doing while I'm encoding videos (like web surfing). Would this also enable me to do things like burn a music cd while I'm encoding? Something like this would be unthinkable right now.

I just pop the 1gb stick right in, fire up the lappy and update it in BIOS, right?
Or would the lappy automatically detect the new RAM module? Thanks.

 

Long Rifle,

From looking at your specs, I would say that upgrading your processor if possible is best way to get more performance out of your system. Video encoding is one of the few tasks that still use all of the CPU, so a faster processor would help in this case.

 

Long Rifle: you're definitely short on RAM, so replacing one of your 256MB sticks with a 1GB would help. A faster CPU wouldn't hurt, of course, but until someone figures out whether the zv6000 BIOS will accept an Athlon 64 X2 dualcore I don't think it's worth cracking open the case. (Same Socket 939 so hardware-wise it ought to work...)

 

Thanks. I'm too chicken-sh!t to remove the keyboard, so there's no chance I'm "cracking open" my laptop to get to the CPU....LOL

 

Yeah, I agree that you are short on RAM. I ordered my HP with 1 stick of 512, and I added another 512 about a month later and I saw a big performance increase, especially in games like far cry.

Replace one of the 256 sticks with a 1GB stick, and then you will have 1280MB RAM, that will be plenty, even for photoshop.

It is not worth cracking open the case, as posted by brainstretch. Not until dual core BIOS upgrades. Dual core in a laptop...insane.

I have investigated my zv5000z, opened up the case, and the CPU is easily accessable, I could upgrade it NP. It is in the upper right corner of the laptop. I just unscrewed the area where the vents are, unscrewed the heatsink, and there it was, the AMD64 processor....pretty cool stuff. I could replace it in....say 10 minutes if I wanted to. But, its a 3400+, so there's no reason to upgrade.

BTW, besides a RAM upgrade, you could also put in a 7200RPM Hard drive, that would speed up things quite a bit. I upgraded from a 4200RPM to a 5400RPM western digital (I didnt go 7200 because I wanted to save my battery life), and I saw a 30% performance increase. The biggest difference in hard drives is going from a 4200 to a 5400, about a 33% increase in most situations. I'd say a 7200 would increase about 40%, but considering that the hard drive interface is ATA100, there is no point going any higher than a 5400, because the interface is already transferring data as fast as it can go at 5400, and 7200 is redundant, plus it kills battery life, might take off 45 minutes or an hour: a 5400 takes off about 20 min, depends on the laptop. I get 4 hours, so 20 mins is nothing. An hour is.

So, I increased my performance by 50%, by doubling the ram and upgrading the Hard drive to 5400.

Hope I helped you.

 

ChazMan, thanks. I'm definitely gonna get that 1 gig stick soon. From what I've seen in these forums Kingston or Crucial are the ones to get. I've seen a couple of posts about Crucial being rejected though. I was thinking of upgrading to a 80gb 7200 rpm HD, but I've never even heard of the HD interface I have now won't go much faster than the data transfer rate of a 5400 rpm HD. I have no reason to doubt you, so I guess I'll put that off for now. I already have a 300gb 7200 rpm external HD. I know I'm always talking about my video encoding hobby, but a HD that big is a must for that.

 

Actually, speaking of big hard drives, the largest one you can get for a laptop is 120GB.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822146231
it will cost a bit, considering that it is at the top of the tech scale, and it was just released.

But, 120GB is pathetic compared to what you can get in a desktop. Stick with the externals HDD's if you plan to go bigger than, say 80GB or 100GB. It is much more cost effective.