Should I upgrade to SSD or buy new laptop - already have i7-2620M and 8 GB ram...

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J

Jungstar

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So, my laptop was pretty fast when I bought it. About $2300. My company bought it back then.
I have a Core i7-2620M processor, 8GB ram, 700 GB of standard speed harddisk (I use only 200GB) and a Radeon HD 6470M with 1GB of graphics RAM, 64 bit Win pro. Bought in 2011! I recently added a USB 802.11ac USB internet router to get faster wifi. I don't play any games, most for work and movies. I like to have a PC that is super responding and work fast.

Now, I'm looking at laptops around $1000 today. When I look at most laptops (example ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultrabook) they have 8 GB. (Tjeck, I already have that) They have a Core i5 maybe the Intel Core i5-5200U Processor. Now, I looked at cpubenchmark.net too see how fast my new PC would be. Check here . And the answer is that my old is even slightly faster! Did moore's law stop?

So my question is - I'm having a 2011 PC and I'm looking at getting a new, but will it be faster? Or should I just get a 256 GB SSD, a new battery and Win 10 ? Price max 300 USD. OR are there things (components etc) I'm missing and would a new one be better after all...

Love to hear thoughts.
Jungstar
 
Solution
Solandri

Moore's Law didn't stop. What happened was around 2010, CPUs became "fast enough" for most people's needs, and there was no reason to get anything faster. Consequently, Intel began directing gains due to Moore's Law into reducing power consumption (actually they began doing this around the time Sandy Bridge came out). So your old CPU may be slightly faster, but the modern CPU will use a lot less power (and consequently get longer battery life).

So my question is - I'm having a 2011 PC and I'm looking at getting a new, but will it be faster? Or should I just...
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Solandri

Solandri

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Moore's Law didn't stop. What happened was around 2010, CPUs became "fast enough" for most people's needs, and there was no reason to get anything faster. Consequently, Intel began directing gains due to Moore's Law into reducing power consumption (actually they began doing this around the time Sandy Bridge came out). So your old CPU may be slightly faster, but the modern CPU will use a lot less power (and consequently get longer battery life).

So my question is - I'm having a 2011 PC and I'm looking at getting a new, but will it be faster? Or should I just get a 256 GB SSD, a new battery and Win 10 ? Price max 300 USD. OR are there things (components etc) I'm missing and would a new one be better after all...
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The SSD is the biggest performance enhancement you can add to a laptop. If you don't yet have one, I'd recommend getting it first, especially for something as recent as a Sandy Bridge CPU. Even if your motherboard only supports SATA2, it's worth it (in terms of real world tasks it'll give you 65%-85% of the speedup of SATA3). When you do upgrade laptops, you can transfer it to the new laptop. Just be forewarned that for optimal SSD performance, you should aim to keep 15%-25% of the drive space free.

The primary reason I can see upgrading from a Sandy Bridge era laptop is if you want better battery life.
 
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MrMeth

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I really don't think it would be worth it to get an i5 laptop. An ssd will provide you with a better bang for your buck upgrade then spending $1000 on a new laptop that will need an ssd anyways. Intel has had very little increase in raw performance between I5 2500k sandy bridge and I5 4690k devils canyon generation. Here is a bench mark to support my argument.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2014/07/03/intel-core-i5-4690k-review/3
The only place where there is a sizeable difference in performance is in the Image Editing and Video Encoding benchmark , and this is probably due to the updated instruction set in the i5 4690k.Intel has focused mainly on lowering the TDP and power draw of their mobile cpu with every new generation, so where you would see a huge increase is probably in battery life. I Personally think every pc user should have a ssd for their boot drive , it really is night and day compared to a reg HD. So to wrap it up , get an ssd and stretch the life of your investment , either way when you do decide to get a new laptop you can switch out the ssd to the new machine.
PS it just dawned on me that your machine probably is sata 2 and will probably not be able to benefit 100% from the new ssd. Even with this in mind I still think the ssd would be the best upgrade. spinning HD are really the weak link in today's pc.

Best bang for your buck ssd upgrade (prices are Canadian so do the conversion for your country)

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148946


Best performance ssd upgrade

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147373

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147361
 
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digitaldoc

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I agree that your laptop is worth keeping, and to upgrade the HDD to an SSD.

All the current SSD's are SATA 3, and are backwards compatible to SATA 2.

I have the Crucial MX100 250 GB drive and it is excellent. It was replaced by the MX200 that is a little faster, so at those prices I would go with that one.
 
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MrMeth

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Like digitaldoc said sata 3 is backwards compatible with Sata 2 , you won't be able to get the max performance of the your Sata 3 drive but even at sata 2 speeds , you will get the maximum the sata 2 bus can transfer for read and writes which is 300mbs and this is way faster than any hd can do on a consistent basis. If I can make one last suggestion , it would be if your budget can handle it go for a 500 gig drive write away. 256 is the minimum and you can get by with 128 but i personally just got tired of consistently having to maintain my desktop ( deleting and moving files that I would normally leave on my desktop ) There are ways to save space on the windows install by transferring your " my documents folders " to another HD with windows built in tools. This is assuming your laptop permits you to keep your mechanical HD installed at the same time as the ssd. If it doesn't you could always remove the Dvd burner and get a bracket to install the mechanical hd in it and replace your DVD rom drive and get an external dvd drive off of newegg for cheap. If your budget is tight I suggest the cruical mx or bx series of ssd , they are the best bang for your buck ssd on the market from a reliable manufacture. If you have a little more leeway budget wise I would look at the 850 evo or 850 pro from Samsung. They are consistently one of the top performers in all the benchmarks and have an excellent software bundle that lets you migrate old hd to ssd , benchmark your ssd , performance optimization settings , firmware updates and much more. In my opinion the Samsung software is worth the extra cost to get a Samsung but that is for you to decided based on how much you want to invest. I have both an 500 gig 850 evo as my boot drive and 256 mx 100 as my scratch disk for Photoshop and A.E in my system and I am satisfied with both. Stay away from the 840 evo seeing as how it has a "old data " bug that may or may not have been fixed yet. Hope this helps and you enjoy the new drive , I am 100% confident that you will be blown away and want to put an ssd in every person you knows pc based on your experience because that's what happens to everyone who gets one.
 
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MrMeth

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well said :D
 
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J

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Thanks everyone - MrMeth and Solandri! I ordered the Crucial BX100 500GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive - CT500BX100SSD1 - it seemed to be almost on par with the BX200 and the Scandisk and Samsung. I dont really care about 5% more.. I think it will be super already! Btw, I also got my 802.11AC router today and get 92mbps downloads - and connect at 500-800 mbps. FAB! Thanks !#upgradelife!
 
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MrMeth

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That seems about right for sata 2 , best part is when you upgrade to a newer machine , you will be able to migrate the ssd over and get another speed increase on sata 3 , enjoy your new almost 2015 laptop !!!
 
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J

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It all worked out perfectly - but I eventually got a quad-core ThinkPad T440P and migrated over my SSD :) - I learned a lot since and might will get a 8 gen quad core in a new laptop - it looks like the U processors are making a lot of progress in 8 gen, so we don't have to choose between "rugged" or speed :)
 
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