Laptop is too slow for my needs. What hardware should I upgrade?

[Glockye]

I am a photographer and in post processing I always switch between 3-4 programs like Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. I often have to wait for the program to become responsive again after switching back to it and it really slows me down. My specs:
HP 620
Celeron (R) Dual-Core CPU T3100 1.90GHz
2 GB RAM

Mobile Intel (R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family Graphics Card.

So, what do I need to upgrade to be able to switch between programs and start working right away? Also, when there is high pixel density (DPI) or many layers photoshop really lags. Is it the graphics card?
Ps: I don't want a blazing fast pc, I just want to be able to work fast on it

 

[Emerald]

what OS are you using? 32-bit or 64-bit?

 

[Glockye]

what OS are you using? 32-bit or 64-bit?

I am using a 64-bit with windows 8.1 pro

 

[synphul]

It's a bit at odds not wanting a fast pc but wanting to be able to work fast on it. That's what a fast pc enables, the ability to work faster. The type of work you're trying to do might be a bit tough for many laptops compared to a desktop though if you absolutely need it to be a laptop for mobility reasons (desktops aren't very portable) it can be done. Not with your current laptop though.

You're currently using an 8yr old cpu and it was low end back then (the celerons were low budget chips). 2gb of ram isn't enough for those tasks. I'd recommend at least 8gb and preferably 16gb of ram, an ssd and a modern quad core cpu or fast i3 which is dual core but at least has hyper threading. Newer cpu's have much higher performance in the core i series compared to old pentiums and celerons.

The many layers in photoshop are slowing you down not because of gpu, but because of ram. Photoshop alone will happily eat 8gb of ram, it should have 4gb available to it at minimum and the more layers the more ram. I don't know where you're located in the world, what your budget is or what laptop models are readily available to you. Unless you can find something refurbished you're probably looking at something in the $650-750 usd range for a laptop like that.

 

[Glockye]

It's a bit at odds not wanting a fast pc but wanting to be able to work fast on it. That's what a fast pc enables, the ability to work faster. The type of work you're trying to do might be a bit tough for many laptops compared to a desktop though if you absolutely need it to be a laptop for mobility reasons (desktops aren't very portable) it can be done. Not with your current laptop though.

You're currently using an 8yr old cpu and it was low end back then (the celerons were low budget chips). 2gb of ram isn't enough for those tasks. I'd recommend at least 8gb and preferably 16gb of ram, an ssd and a modern quad core cpu or fast i3 which is dual core but at least has hyper threading. Newer cpu's have much higher performance in the core i series compared to old pentiums and celerons.

The many layers in photoshop are slowing you down not because of gpu, but because of ram. Photoshop alone will happily eat 8gb of ram, it should have 4gb available to it at minimum and the more layers the more ram. I don't know where you're located in the world, what your budget is or what laptop models are readily available to you. Unless you can find something refurbished you're probably looking at something in the $650-750 usd range for a laptop like that.

Thanks for the reply, it helps. I didn't know I needed that much more computing power, so that is why I said that I do not want a fast speed. With my current laptop, programs run pretty good, but when it comes to exporting from Lightroom to Photoshop, for example, the laptop often becomes unresponsive. Anyways, thanks for the reply.

 

[synphul]

Not to say your current hardware won't do it but it will be slow as you've noticed. 2gb of ram just isn't enough, I wouldn't suggest 2gb of ram simply to run windows and browse the web. The hard drive is likely a standard 2.5" mechanical drive often used in laptops which is 5400rpm and much slower performance than even a 7200rpm drive. When a laptop runs out of ram (as it does quickly with only 2gb) it resorts to space on the hard drive called a swap file. It dumps info from memory to the hard drive and has to retrieve it again which only makes everything that much slower.

That's without even considering the much older dual core cpu which lacks instructions per clock performance due to age/technology coupled with low speed. The cheapest fix you can probably make is to an ssd which in this case will act like a bandaid for your low ram situation. If the system has no choice but to frequently dump ram to the storage drive and retrieve it again, an ssd is the fastest type of drive to do this. It's also a low power device so it won't kill your battery life either.

It won't be a magic fix but it's the one component you can upgrade for fairly little cost that will probably give you the most improvement.

Update: Here is a rough comparison, synthetic scores don't tell the whole picture however it does compare the cpu's directly. The current cpu you have vs a dual core hyper threaded i5 5200u often found in newer laptops. Double the per core performance and over 3x the overall score vs the celeron.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=513&cmp%5B%5D=2440