Whats better for performance- CPU or HD speed (SZ6XX)

Im trying to allocate my money correctly to get the most performance for the buck.

What's better for overall performance, going from 2.2 to 2.4ghz, or upgrading to the 7200rpm 200GB hard drive?

-Im aware that I can upgrade the HD later on, but please assume that I wont do so.

 

For overall performance you will definitely get the most out of a fast hard drive than getting a CPU bump of 200 MHz.

It of course always depends on the specific task, but in general the hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in modern systems, by far.

 

just stick to the 7200rpm drive, u already have a fine cpu to start with

 

I agree, but get the hybrid 5400 drive

 

Tom's Hardware actually showed the hybrid drive to be worse than a regular drive in certain benchmarks. The 7200rpm 200GB hard drive is the best for performance in a 2.5" form factor right now.

 

yah i would def get the 7200rpm over the hybrid.

 

I have a similar question.

I've got an SZ45SN running the T5600 1.83GHz, which is based on the Napa platform, so not compatible with Santa Rosa, and the Toshiba MK1034GSX 5400RPM 100GB HD.

I’m wondering which will give me the biggest bang for my buck:

1) Upgrade the CPU to the T7600 2.33GHz, which appears to be the fastest for Napa; or
2) Upgrade the HD to the Hitachi 200GB 7200RPM.

I've maxed out my RAM at 2GB so that's not an issue.

The HD would be about half the cost and certainly at least half the effort.

Any opinions?

 

I would definitely upgrade to the Hitachi 7K200 drive. For most tasks I think you will enjoy and notice the extra performance, such as boot, shutdown, file transfer, application load, etc. Plus you get twice the amount of space.

I don't know what you usually use your system for, but the CPU bump will mostly really be worth it when running very demanding tasks like video coding, 3D gaming (but GPU is more important) and maybe heavy image editing.

If the HD upgrade is only half the cost, that would eliminate any doubt in my mind.

 

Thanks.

No real heavily lifting. Mostly word processing, surfing, and other business type functions.

The kind of performance boost I'm looking for is exactly what you've said, boot up, file transfer, etc.

 

And the Hitachi 7K200 200GB drive is the fastest 7200RPM notebook drive out there at the moment. It's very speedy. But I assume you know that.

I am thinking of getting it myself and I have seen it perform on another ThinkPad. The performance is great. Go get it already

 

I will, I will, as soon as I get back to North America for the xmas holidays. I'm not buying it in Africa, 'cause it'll cost me twice the price and could be a knock-off.