Looking to speed up the laptop

I own a T520 with i5-2520m cpu, 8gb ram, and 5400 rpm hard drive.
While I am satisfied with the system, I wish this was a bit faster.

For example, when I stream MLB tv, I don't stream it on the highest setting because firstly, I wouldn't exactly get a smooth picture all throughout, and secondly, if I try to do something else at the same time, such as surfing the web using google chrome, there will be a good amount lagging of the stream. Everything is okay when I stream it on next highest setting (fourth out of five settings), so I'm guessing I am not missing much (Internet speed is not the problem).
In all, I'm looking to speed up the laptop so that I can multitask flawlessly, including aforementioned problem as well as many others.

I don't know too much about computers, but I know CPU and hard drive can be determining factors on bringing the performance that I need. So which of the two will be more important in my case?
If a more powerful cpu is needed, I'm planning to jump on to the quad core CPUs, possibly the new line of thinkpad with haswell. Otherwise, I will just add on an SSD and keep this system.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

Honestly, the i5-2520M shouldn't be the problem since that's plenty powerful enough for just streaming and running several Internet tabs at once. I'm sure that it should be either your ISP connection is too slow (what's your advertised and real download rates?), or there might be something with the router (Is it set to Wireless-G only, or -N only, or mixed? What model router, just curious?), or there might be issues with your laptop's wireless card (What does it have, and is it running the latest stable firmware?).

SSDs will definitely be the biggest improvement your system will see, since it'll cut down your random access times to near zero (makes it feel much more "snappy") and read/write speeds will be much quicker, but that doesn't affect your ability to stream nor will it affect your ability to use multiple Internet tabs. And the CPU will do even less to improve this particular situation.

 

Well, I know my internet speed isn't an issue because on my desktop, none of the problems I listed are observed (connected wirelessly via usb). I just ran internet speed test and got a speed of 19 mbps, which is more than enough to handle the stream.

When I stream the video on highest setting, I can sense that the whole computer is affected. When I open a tab with a good amount of flash or run a youtube video, the system is visibly slower; both the stream and the new tab suffer the effect. I guess if I run a test with a more powerful CPU or with an SSD will tell what is the determining factor.

Thanks for the input though.

 

I've had a similar problem with my slightly older (2.5 years) desktop. Whenever I would stream more than two videos on Youtube the whole browser would become slower and the videos would skip and not play smoothly. I checked the RAM and CPU usage and they were fine, yet the problem persisted. I simply switched browsers and the problem went away. I was using Firefox with NoScript and now using a Chromium-based browser. I'm not sure what the problem was - maybe NoScript was causing it? I may disable it temporarily and see if it continues.

In the meantime, I can have 15+ or more various tabs open in the current browser and there is no slowdown. I have 4GB of RAM in my desktop so even that isn't an hindrance. The CPU is probably weaker than yours, especially in single threaded programs, and still functions well. I doubt you need to upgrade to a newer CPU. (I have an SSD in this desktop. If you can, get one too, though I doubt it would help with your internet issues slowing you down.)

Try switching browsers and see if you notice a difference. Or disable some of your add-ons (if you have any) and see if there is a difference. Also, see what programs are running in the background and what are allowed to start up. Disable the ones you don't need.

 

The only way to speed up your computer would be switching your HDD drive to an SSD drive. The CPU cannot be changed without buying a new laptop; and 8Gb is already plenty (feel free to bump to 12 or 16Gb, but you won't notice too much difference)

The cheap route would be to get an $200-$400 SSD drive THAT YOU CAN USE AGAIN when you upgrade a new laptop

The expensive route would be to get a new laptop with i7 quad core, and graphics card, and possibly an SSD drive (will cost >$1000)

Note that the new Haswell processors DO NOT give any performance boosts (boosts in graphics perfromance only)

 

Another thing to check would be the settings in Power Manager. If you're doing something CPU-intensive, you want them at "Maximum Performance". Personally, I view anything Flash-related as CPU-intensive.

With that said, your current CPU should be able to stream everything and anything without breaking a sweat.

I definitely agree that your ThinkPad would be well-served with an addition of a SSD.

Good luck.

 

You don't need a quad-core CPU. A CPU running at a faster clock rate, maybe, but the i5-2520M is no laggard.

Your video stream is definitely not written to the HDD (or SSD, for that matter) at every KB. It is buffered in RAM.

I would bump the RAM to 2 x 8GB to facilitate smooth multitasking in addition to video buffering. However, I would also suspect that the source of your video streams is not giving you its "full attention."

 

SSD is the only thing you need to greatly improve the performance of your machine.

 

First rather than guess you can actually see if your memory or CPU are the bottlenecks here. If you are using Windows, fire up Task Manager, start streaming your video and multitasking, when you notice the slow downs, check task manager. Do you see the CPU coming close to being 100% utilized? Do you see no "Available" memory? - Don't look at the "Free" memory number as that should be fairly low if superfetch is doing it's job, what matters is the "Available" memory number.

If your CPU is not close to 100% Utilized - check all cores, the applications may not be well optimized for multi threading and smashing a single core. Then the CPU is not the issue, same goes for Memory.

That then leaves your internet connection/wireless or HDD to look at. Also do you get the same issue with a different browser?

Regardless a SSD will make give you a large performance boost over a standard HDD.