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Sluggish performance: CPU or RAM? or both?

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  • Laptops
  • Performance
  • RAM
  • Components
Last response: in Components
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a b D Laptop
August 19, 2014 11:48:57 PM

Okay folks, so my sister got a laptop through our school for free, and its old.
http://www.cnet.com/products/acer-aspire-5315-2826-15-4...

It has an intel celeron processor...and 1GB of RAM.
It came pre installed with Vista, and was too slow to use (in the real world). I removed all the malware and bloatware and optimized the best i could and it still sucked. So i installed Lubuntu, and its better but still pretty (unbearably/unusable)slow.

If i can make some use of this laptop i wouldnt mind investing a little money. So do you think adding 1GB of RAM will help enough? or is the processor just too weak, making the RAM moot essentially.

inputs?

More about : sluggish performance cpu ram

August 19, 2014 11:55:32 PM

If you can find a 1GB SODIMM that works with the existing one or a 2x1GB kit, go for it, it'll probably help some, but DDR2 can be scarce to find these days.
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a b D Laptop
August 20, 2014 12:41:20 AM

from my old experience with my old lappy (already sold), it does help to some degree..
since i'm unable to find the matching/same speed with the one (1gb) exiting...

i just buy the higher tier/speed that available (2gb) and slap it in..
making total 3gb ram (no use going to 4gb since the laptop cannot handle 64bit os well)

as viewtyjoe said DDR2 is rare and sometimes priced higher than the DDR3 counterpart

edit: on caution don't expect much,
as i remember it's works good/fine for some office work, listen music, browsing and (very) light game only
(emulator on old ps game)
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a b D Laptop
August 20, 2014 5:19:12 AM

Currently it takes ages to launch a program yet alone two side by side. Once a word doc (abiword) finally opens typing into tye document has a slow response as well. Is this behavior indicative of not enough RAM or just the weak processor? Or both. My fear is both
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a b D Laptop
August 21, 2014 10:21:11 PM

could u open task manager before running program.. we can check proc usage, ram, disk from there..

not familiar with vista but in win7 and 8 the resource manager can tell the one that bottle neck...

the most common bottle neck in laptop is hard disk (wait for access), memory, and last proc/gpu...

my note book with amd apu clearly show sign of hdd bottleneck, disk access time always 90-100%..
meanwhile ram still avail and proc not even go to 80% (using ssd solve it)

the old one i told before (DDR2) is runs out of avail memory so adding mem helps.. using around 600-800mb of 1gb ram
(not exactly runs out but it need constant dump/refresh data in mem to be available again)

if it proc, than cannot do much, :D 
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a b D Laptop
August 22, 2014 5:12:56 AM

I have since installed lubuntu and wiped windows off. I had no intentions of dual booting. Whenever I open an application (especially while Another one is already open) processor is stuck at 100% and RAM if I remember right also stayed around 100%. Its such a bad computer especially once you start building high end PCs and can feel the difference
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