Suffering from slow laptop. Which SSD to choose... and will it help ?

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D987

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Nov 17, 2013
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Hi, pls help me with the following !

Given:
HP Compaq 610 Laptop (3 years old):
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1.
Motherboard: Intel Crestline GME 965
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5870 2GHz
RAM: 4 GB DDR2-800 (400MHz)
HDD: Western Digital 640GB 5400rpm.

System is regularly cleaned and auto-defragmented. But performance is still, well, not that I want it to be. 3-5 Chrome tabs, couple of pdfs, couple of word files and winamp with 256kbt music may affect the performance noticeably - system is slow in switching between apps, opening system volume, opening start-menu. If you open a folder with 500-800 photos - you can go and make yourself some coffee while system reads thumbnails and the blue bar in the address panel meets the right corner..
I'm not going to play games or work with video processors. But as an amateur photographer I do work with photos and usually need 4-5 different applications working at the same time.

I've been told that adding more RAM will not increase the performance in my case.
So I, being inspired by numerous articles on SSDs, wonder what if I replace the HDD with a modern SSD (instead of buying modern laptop for not less than USD2000) ?!
Will the difference in performance be noticeable ?
Will it be a wise purchase (USD 400-500) in this case (given that I bought the laptop for USD400) ?

If so, would you advise on the key features an SSD should have (say, speed, frequencies, and so on, cos I'm a lamer at this..) in order to fit the CPU and RAM speeds ? (and to avoid spending on an SSD which won't work at its best on my machine anyway)..

What do you think guys ?
Your comments are very much appreciated !
Thank you
 
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Blaise170

Blaise170

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Sep 12, 2013
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I think a lot of your problem is that you are suffering from old components. The Core 2 Duo you are using is almost six years old now. You will see slightly zippier boot times and application startups, but an SSD will not help much with slowdown. You'd see more improvement from an upgrade in RAM.

By the way, you shouldn't need to spend more than $100-$200 on an SSD, not $400+. Laptops also don't run $2000 unless you are buying a workstation with a dedicated GPU.
 
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D987

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Nov 17, 2013
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Thank you, Blaise170 !

Well, I was thinking about an SSD of the same capacity - not less than 500GB. And they indeed cost around 350-450.. like, Crucial m500 480GB..

If I add more RAM - wouldn't slow HDD I have now create a bottleneck for CPU and RAM ?
If not, how much RAM would you recommend to have ?
I currently have 4GB, the limit for WIN7Ultimate is 192GB :)..
Now, with 6 browser tabs, and 2 PDFs, AIDA64 says RAM is loaded for 65%..
Thanks.
 
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Brookcie

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Your CPU is pretty old for today's standards. I would suggest purchasing a better CPU, maybe a quad core with 3GHz or more. The increased computing power should decrease the time sifting through the 100s of files and photos, it takes a decent amount of processing power to display 100s of pictures in a folder. Upgrading RAM doesn't seems needed, 4Gb should be enough for word processing and displaying pictures. The SSD may help, but the problem is most likely CPU related rather than hard drive.

Advice:
1) Upgrade CPU to a quad core with 3GHz or greater power. Making sure the CPU fits into the motherboard before purchase.

Cost: about $100 for a decent processor, maybe A8-3870k quad core for AMD
 
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Blaise170

Blaise170

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Didn't know you wanted an SSD quite that large. :)

The issue with upgrading parts in a laptop is that whenever you add new, the other older parts will inevitably bottleneck no matter which way you go. An SSD probably is the most noticeable boost, but it's much better for startup times than for actually speeding the system up (SSDs increase read/write speeds, not memory allocation speeds).

8GB would be something of an increase for RAM, but it is also limited by your motherboard. You would need to check that before you buy it. Likewise, you may not see that much of an improvement with RAM since you will be limited by the CPU.
 
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CTurbo

CTurbo

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I think a ssd is just what an old and slow laptop needs. A ssd will speed up the entire system.

I bought my wife a 11" netbook with 2GB RAM and an AMD C60 processor. That's 1.0ghz x2 = sloooooooooow

First I upgraded the RAM to 4GB and it made a HUGE difference in speed. Then I took out the 320GB 7200rpm HDD and put in a 180GB OCZ Agility ssd and it also made a HUGE difference in speed. Her little laptop is pretty damn quick now.

I'm sure doing a clean install of windows helped a lot too, but there's no denying the difference the ssd made. Any opening, closing, loading, saving, or installing of any and all programs will be almost instant. Any searching or scanning of the laptop will be a lot faster too.

Battery life also improved almost 50% as well. She used to get 6 hours on full charge, now she gets 9 hours.
 
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giantbucket

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an SSD might help, but see if you can find out what read/write speeds your current HDD is able to do, and find out which SATA rev the laptop's motherboard has. the mobo might limit you to 300MB/s so a new SSD that's spec'd for 550MB/s will still get choked.
 
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D987

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Thank you, guys, very valuable comments !

Done the benchmark tests, would you comment somehow cos I have no clue if these figures are good or bad ? And which SSD to buy in this case, if at all..

HDD:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 39.785 MB/s
Sequential Write : 42.172 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 12.700 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 6.021 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.229 MB/s [ 55.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.080 MB/s [ 19.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.470 MB/s [ 114.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.078 MB/s [ 19.1 IOPS]

OS : Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)


AIDA Memory and Cache Testing:

MEMORY: Read: 5745 MB/s Write: 3631 MB/s Copy: 3960 MB/s Latency: 119.3 ns

L1Cache: Read: 63776 MB/s Write: 63649 MB/s Copy: 124.07 GB/s Latency: 1.6 ns

L2 Cache: Read: 27873 MB/s Write: 17346 MB/s Copy: 25579 MB/s Latency: 26.7 ns

CPU Type: Mobile DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo T5870 (Merom – 2M, Socket 479)

CPU Clock: 1995.0 MHz (original: 2000 MHz)
CPU FSB: 199.5 MHz (original: 200 MHz)

CPU Multiplier: 10x
CPU Stepping: M0

Memory Bus: 332.5 MHz
Dram FSB Ratio: 10.6

Memory type: Dual Channel DDR2-667 SDRAM (5-5-515)
Chipset: Intel Crestline GME 965
Motherboard: Hewlett-Packard Compaq 610

Thank you
 
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D987

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Thank you, giantbucket !
Just done the benchmark tests (see above).
You're right, my Motherboard is definatelly not SATA3, but Sata2 (and that probably means it works at 300Mb/s). Am i right in saying that a modern SSD (with Sata3 compatibility and 6Gb/s and other stuff) won't work at its full speed with my Motherboard ?
Thanks
 
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CTurbo

CTurbo

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Yes if your sata ports are only sata II, then a new sata III ssd will only work at sata II speeds, but even sata II speeds(300mbs) would be a tremendous upgrade to any hard drive.

Your current hard drive-
Sequential Read : 39.785 MB/s
Sequential Write : 42.172 MB/s

A new ssd-
Sequential Read : 300 MB/s
Sequential Write : 300 MB/s
 
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D987

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Nov 17, 2013
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Thanks, CTurbo !
It I guess means that in my case no need to buy the fastest SSD as it won't work faster than SATAII bus anyaway :)
 
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D987

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Nov 17, 2013
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Hey Guys !
Thank you for your responses.

I have just installed new Samsung 512GB SSD - all figures in CrystalDisk are at least 10 times better !!
The increase in performance is astonishing...
The choice was between Crucial 480 and this one Samsung.. Samsung is just better value for money.

The outcome: Reboot in about 30 secs, running 5 heavy applications at the same time is no longer a problem, starting huge excell/word files - 1-2 seconds ! So, $350 invested successfully.
No way I will ever switch back to an HDD, although I miss the time I enjoyed my coffee while the laptop was loading.. :)






 
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D987

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the only setback is that this bloody Samsung Magician doesn't recognize it's own SSD. Maybe because I haven't reinstalled the W7, but simply cloned the old HDD to new SSD. I don't really care though. Updated the Intel MoBo's driver and happy so far.
 
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