SSD vs upgraded processor - np8150

Hey guys, quick question.

I ordered the np8150 last week with the i7-2670 QM and the 6990M. I was curious to see what you thought was the better option. Adding a SSD to this build or upgrading the processor to an i7-2760 without the SSD. Money being the factor. Will the upgraded processor make a noticeable difference in gaming on this laptop?

 

No, not at all.

SSD all the way for a choice like this.

 

The upgraded processor won't make a huge difference in gaming, but it will be more noticeable than the SSD. The SSD is great for everyday performance improvements and boot time.

I'd recommend getting the 2760qm now if you're considering the two upgrades, specifically because it's harder and more expensive to replace down the line. An SSD is a simple five minute upgrade you can do yourself at any point in the future AND you'll get to keep the HDD if you wanted to (in the optical bay).

 

Another vote for SSD too. SSD will provide a far more significant boost to performance than a processor upgrade in these circumstances.

 

The bottleneck will be the GPU most likely, and thus a change in CPU would hardly improve any gaming experience..

The overall snappiness of the machine will be evident in any situation so I will recommend a SSD.

 

SSD hands down. CPU's are too powerful nowadays, get the basic quad and be happy

 

Since so many are voting I will too.

In these machines an SSD is the best upgrade going! You will notice the performance difference over a standard hard drive right away.

With a CPU upgrade you may not notice a bit of difference for most apps.

_

 

Thank you for all your reply's and opinions. Very appreciated!

 

Buy a small SSD (should not be so expensive) use it for HDD bay for OS. So you will have your system to boot fast and have extra space.
Buy any zise (7200rpm) HDD sata2 for ODD bay and enjoy it. The price will be the same or even cheaper as spending money for one big SSD.

With this one you maybe will save enough for 2760QM.

 

+1 for SSD. You have to see it to believe it. Like i've said before SSD's are the greatest "innovation" to hit the PC world in a long time. You'll be very impressed. Power off to fully booted into windows in 10 seconds? That's pretty impressive, quick load times on everything.

 

i was gonna get an ssd myself for gaming but becasue of the numerous comparisons ive seen in the gaming thread saying there is zero to minimal increase in load times with an ssd in games i decided not to.

because of this id tend to agree with malibals assessment. an ssd is great for overall perforamce such as boot times, etc. both cpus and ssds will have minimal effect on gaming but id say a cpu might have a more noticeable impact especially for poorly optimized console ports which are like half the games coming out now adays.

 

Ssd .

 

Which SSD is it and how much is the upgrade cost?

If it's the 80GB Intel 320, for $125 more; it's not worth it to get the SSD upgrade.

Ideally, you could get the laptop without the upgrades, then buy the SSD separately for $15 more than the upgrade price. Then, you'd have 80GB Intel 320 and the default 500GB for $140 extra, instead of just the 80GB Intel 320 for $125 extra.

Newegg.com - Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CW080G310 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Internal SSD

If I had to get one or the other, I'd go for the CPU upgrade; since the 2760QM supports more RAM, higher RAM speeds, and has more virtualization features than the 2670QM.

 

If you get it from eBay, the 80GB Intel 320 will actually be cheaper than the upgrade cost; literally giving you more for less.

 

Why not grab the hybrid Seagate Momentus XT HDD? I have one and it works great. It may not be as good as an actual SSD, but it's a good compromise between a HDD and SSD without paying too much extra or losing too much space. Then you could possibly upgrade the CPU while at it.

I use my laptop for work and gaming. When using it work for, it'd be mainly used for Excel, word, quicken, etc. To me, I might not have benefit a lot from buying an SSD, so the Hybrid drive was a better alternative. Only thing I really notice about my hybrid drive, is that it boots up windows faster, but I rarely do that anyways. Though, I'm sure it loads up the Office programs faster too, but I have nothing to compare it to actually notice that.

 

+1 on the SSD.

Since a laptop is mobile you want that thing to boot fast, there is NO better way than an SSD to do that.

Check out this article to help you decide:

Best SSDs For The Money: January 2012 : Best SSDs For The Money: January Updates

 

It actually depends on how you'll use your machine.

ex. if you do a lot of virtualization then the 2760 would help more than the ssd (since once loaded in memory it's all cpu and ram).

for other uses like office apps, browsing then an SSD would be more beneficial since you'd rarely hit the cpu bottle neck with these tasks.

gaming on the other hand would depend on the game. shogun 2 total war for example has annoyingly long load times so for me an SSD helps this more (yep about 3 minutes loading every time you go into battle without an ssd), some games like what trvelbug said would benefit more on the cpu.

to make a long story short, SSD in general and CPU if you have certain uses that would specifically require it

 

Upgrade the CPU now as you can always buy SSDs for cheaper and by yourself in the future.

Upgrading the CPU in the future will be a huge pain in the .

 

The upgrade convenience angle doesn't sidestep the issue of the 2760QM being a waste of money in the first place.

 

HDD - The real bottleneck on your computer

 

well I bought a ssd because of this thread. ssd are overrated.

games did not load super quick maybe like 2 sec faster
boot time increased like 5 sec
hard drive space was low

in the end ssd are not worth it

IMHO dont upgrade your cpu but instead get a 1tb internal harddrive.

edit.

If ssd are so good why didnt I notice the speed increase. only thing i noticed was boot times...whoop de woo

 

Which SSD did you buy and what did you upgrade from?

 

Since your question about gaming performance I would strongly recommend SSD; Samsung 830 or Crucial M4 considered to be fast, reliable and reasonably priced.

I am not sure what SSD you are taking about, but I would suggest you do a benchmark for your reading/writing speed to measure the performance of your SSD (Sequential access with a fast SSD should be around 450+ MB/s reading and 200+ MB/s writing)


I had fresh Windows 7 installation on the HDD (7200 RPM) and the SSD, the speed difference is really huge, applications load significantly faster and overall the system is more responsive. Go you youtube and see videos that compare SSD/HHD side to side.

 

Personally Id bypass the cpu and the ssd and install a floppy disc drive.........

Floppy Disk Drive Musical Medley - YouTube

 

This actually sounds like the SSD is doing what it should. It only will speed up read/write times. Things like boot times and game/program start times are faster. It will not increase speed while in applications. Thats when the CPU, GPU, and RAM come into play.

As mentioned get a hard drive benchmark program to make sure you're getting the proper speeds from your SSD. I personally like ATTO Disk Benchmark.

In the end SSD are not for everyone. But if you want the best technology available for your computer SSD are the way to go.

Edit: Somtimes you dont really notice the speed increase until you've gone back to an HDD. Just for some fun put it back in and see if it feels way slower.

 

Yeah I was in the same position thinking about either the 920XM or the Vertex 2 I ended up getting. It makes things a LOT easier to deal with. Boot times are awesome now.

And there's nothing more satisfying than knowing you can boot, play, shutdown all withing two seconds of each other at any given time. ^_^

 

im back to the 500gb hd. boottime is alot slower but responsiveness is the same. does anyone have a link showing apps running faster with a ssd

 

Nothing "runs" faster. It just speeds up reads/writes, as said before, whenever they occur. For typical programs and games, the most expensive such operation occurs at the start-up of the program. Therefore, things "start" and "load" faster. Any situation where you find those two words don't apply will usually not be impacted by the SSD.

 

I asked you which model SSD it was,

I'm thinking you had like a small SATA II SSD, right?

 

Going by the other thread he started, I think he's referring to his 40GB Intel 320.

 

It might be the X25-V, I don't know,

but generally 40GB SSDs are slow, I wouldn't be quick to judge it against SSDs, the one thing you can't ignore is the overall snappiness of the machine when you make the transition from a HDD to SSD.

 

Don't upgrade to a 40GB SSD SATA II for sure. Upgrade to SATA III Crucial M4 or Samsung 830. 64GB is a little bit limiting, 128GB is perfect imho. I can't imagine working with 40GB SSDs, that's 36GB of usable space. It wouldn't leave enough room for me after OS installation.

Also I don't think that installing a 40GB SSD as the ONLY drive like funny1984ca did is ever a good idea. On 15 inch Clevo models, it makes much more sense to have dual hard drives and external Optical Drive. Yeah we have external hard drives available, but I believe USB 2.0 speed would be slower in comparison to internal HDD. After all, it's the 21st century and using a laptop with a total of 40GB storage space is a little too retro for me.

SSD significantly decrease loading times for any application that reads information from the hard drive. For example on my Y470 my 60GB mSata SSD has 15 second boot times and loads software/games significantly faster. In game speeds would obviously not be affected at all.

 

Or you could get this 80GB Intel 320, for $70 after MIR:
Newegg.com - Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CW080G3K5 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

That's around $0.88 per GB.