Upgrading an old laptop

MouthBoy

MouthBoy

MouthBoy

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Joined
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Cambridgeshire
Howdy All,

I currently have a HP Compaq 8510p laptop. Its a dual-core T7500 2.2Ghz CPU and has 2gb RAM. It does struggle a lot since I installed Windows 7 so I have hardly used it. I really want to use it more for coding on when I am downstairs on the sofa and for Netflix in bed. Currently it struggles with Netflix (silverlight just kills the laptop) but coding its ok, just cant do anything else at the same time.

I have sourced the T7800 2.6Ghz CPU online as well as 4gb RAM. I know they will go into the laptop fine as others have, but does you think it will be worth it? I would add a 60gb SSD too for good measure.

Am I wasting money on upgrades that will not be worthwhile?
 
My previous post was a little short. A core 2 duo should still run windows 7 without issue and I believe that 2gb of ram is the absolute minimum required by win7 so any more has got to be a good thing.

I would install an extra 2gb, bringing you up to 4gb, before trying anything else like the cpu or ssd upgrade as you may be surprised by the preformance.
 
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Yea I may try that. It is really annoying having this laptop where when I had XP on it, it was fine, but now with Win7 it's failing. I have done everything I can to speed it up, but just not working very well. :(
 
Not worth upgrading the CPU. It is worth upgrading the memory to 4GB, but you will only be able to make full use of it with 64 bit Windows 7. Incidentally, without any upgrades you'll probably find 32 bit version of Windows 7 will run better on your current hardware.

Upgrading to an SSD will also help, however if you do that you may as well also upgrade the memory to 4GB and install 64 bit Windows.
 
That spec of laptop shouldn't be slow.

I have a laptop C2D 1.5Ghz with 2GB of ram Intel graphics and windows 7 and it runs fine. For general use it works fine. No slow downs at all. Only if I do something intensive does it bog down.

My main laptop is a T7200 (2Ghz) with 3GB of ram. I've put a 128GB SSD in this and that has made it much nicer to use. However the big thing about this laptop is that it has a Nvidia 7900 GPU and that makes an enormous difference to browsing complex sites and and video. This laptop can play 1080 streams perfectly where as the other laptop can only do 480p smoothly and just about 720p. The GPU also helps with rending complex webpages as most browsers use hardware acceleration.

if I were you I'd get the 4GB of ram and a SSD. I don't think upgrading the CPU is going to make much of a difference. I'd only upgrade the CPU if it was cheap, and it was easy to access. Its probably going to run hotter, and use more battery life.

An SSD will make the biggest noticeable difference to the machine.
 
I think Windows 8 runs a little better on old hardware than Windows 7. But not enough of a different to make it worth switching from Windows 7. With low RAM I use 32bit versions.
 
The memory upgrade will make a healthy difference, I can't say I found Windows 7 all that amazing to run on 2gb memory. Not unbearable, but not great...

Get a fresh install on there also. :)
 
That laptop CPU is more than enough to run what you want smoothly. Put the RAM up to 4GB, pop in a 60GB SSD. Install Win7 x64, turn off indexing and system protection and disable unnecessary services (See BlackViper). I have around 34 services after startup. I have a laptop with same CPU and it runs buttery smooth, play 1080p (average Ref frames) video just fine.
 
OspreyO said:
Whats the GPU in the that Wam7?
Click to expand...
GPU-Z gives it as Intel Series 4 - GM45.

The OP should also rule out his internet speed for slow Netflix performance. Run some kind of CPU meter to see if it is this that is slowing things down when attempting to stream etc.
 
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