Upgrading the Acer 5920g

Shikyo · 25 Jul 2011 at 12:14

Hello forum, I have this laptop for nearly 4 years now, and I'd like to make it a bit faster if possible, to keep it for a couple of years or more, without spending a lot on a new laptop.

Specs:
Mobo/Chipset: PM965
CPU: T5550
RAM: 3GB 667MHz DDR2

I've done some initial research and found out that it's worth upgrading the following bits:

T5550 @1.8Ghz (667FSB) ----> T9500 @2.6Ghz(800FSB) for about 90£. (Specs)
WD2500BEVS (1.5Gb/s, 5400RPM, 8MB) ----> OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD for about 90£.

I think that the SSD will make some difference in loading windows, programs, etc.. but will the CPU be considerably faster at the end of the day?

I play a bit of WoW, maybe some older games, watching 720p movies, browsing the net a lot.

Thanks for any piece of advice in advance

Wiry · 26 Jul 2011 at 15:58

The processor will be faster, Yes, but for £90, you've got to decide whether your willing to purchase one at that extreme price, hey ho! mobile processors where always overly expensive anyway. But if your playing WoW, it will benefit you in a lot more ways etc... Although the SSD would be a good upgrade. Are you running windows 7? and i'm guessing it's 16gb-32 bit version with only 3gb of ram. If so, you'll have to watch what your putting on those SSD's because the lower size ones fill up pretty quick

Scrutinize · 26 Jul 2011 at 18:48

will be quicker but not massively, what graphics does it have a gma intel integrated?

i suspect this would be a false economy, you may get £100-£150 sh for this + value of upgrades and a few more quid and you will get something nice off the dell outlet which would be much better for £300-400. Infact you could probably get something way better with an i3 / i5 e.g InspironR N5010 or N7010

Inspiron 17R- N7010 Laptop
•Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
•Intel Pentium Dual Core P6200 (2.13GHz, 3M)
•500 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
•4 GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz (2 DIMMs)
•Optical Drive : 8X DVD+/-RW Drive
•1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
•6 Cell Primary Battery, 48W
•LCD Back Cover : Mars Black
•Back Up Media Not Included

comes in at £260 + Vat

or

Inspiron 17R- N7010 Laptop
•Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
•Intel i3-380M(2.53GHz)
•500 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
•4 GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz (2 DIMMs)
•Optical Drive : 8X DVD+/-RW Drive
•1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
•6 Cell Primary Battery, 48W
•LCD Back Cover : Mars Black
•Back Up Media Not Included

comes in at £290 + vat

those ati 5470 arn't brill but not too bad and will easily play wow at medium detail and older games. Just make sure the one you pick has a 5470 or 5650 or better and you will be fine

Shikyo · 26 Jul 2011 at 20:00

The laptop runs on a nvidia 8600m GS running at 675/525/1350. It performs nearly like the 8600m GT does.

Graphics are decent considering that it's a 4 years old laptop and the games I play, but I think it's the CPU that it's holding performance back.

And it runs on Windows 7 Home Premium x64.

Still not sure if it's worth upgrading though..

Scrutinize · 26 Jul 2011 at 21:16

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8600M-GT.3986.0.html

pretty much the same performance as the ati 5470 then so probably not worth it with the dells. well down the performance charts these days and you need a Gt525m min really now for latest games.

depends how much money you want to put into it really as if it runs what you need now ok, there is no point in changing.

the upgrades won’t let you play more modern games at increased detail or fps, or in real terms perform tasks much quicker esp with the DDR2 memory limiting performance.

the SSD may make it boot a bit quicker and open an application 1or 2 seconds quicker plus improve read and write times, assuming office apps don’t open almost instantly anyway.

dazzday · 15 Aug 2011 at 09:45

Shikyo said:
Hello forum, I have this laptop for nearly 4 years now, and I'd like to make it a bit faster if possible, to keep it for a couple of years or more, without spending a lot on a new laptop.

Specs:
Mobo/Chipset: PM965
CPU: T5550
RAM: 3GB 667MHz DDR2

I've done some initial research and found out that it's worth upgrading the following bits:

T5550 @1.8Ghz (667FSB) ----> T9500 @2.6Ghz(800FSB) for about 90£. (Specs)
WD2500BEVS (1.5Gb/s, 5400RPM, 8MB) ----> OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD for about 90£.

I think that the SSD will make some difference in loading windows, programs, etc.. but will the CPU be considerably faster at the end of the day?

I play a bit of WoW, maybe some older games, watching 720p movies, browsing the net a lot.

Thanks for any piece of advice in advance

A fellow 5920g owner here who has been through the upgrade bug! Really is a wonderful machine.

Personally I think the cpu upgrade to the T8300 (2.4Ghz, 3M, 800MHz) is the best-bang-to-buck. The performance difference between it and the T9500 will be negliable for you users and will present a significant performance and tdp boost over the 5XXX series. Going for ~£40 incl shipping on Ebay.

In terms of HDD, the SSD will naturally be an impressive boost. However it can get pricey, particularly for increased capacity. Have you considered swapping the optical drive (who uses them these days?) out for a smaller SSD (64gb maybe) and using that as your primary boot drive and the original HDD for data storage? Would be more then enough to install WOW, the OS and any other primary applications to gain the advantages of SSD speed wiothout losing storage space for movies etc. The acer guy blog (google!) has an excellent guide to do it (and to replace cpu/gpu/wireless etc..invaluable blog for 5920g owners)
Another option would be the 250/500Gb 7200rpm Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive with 4gb SSD cache... very noticable speed increase over the stock hdd while maintaining high storage for a decent price (~£100 for 500gb).

The greatest thing about the 5920g is its one of very few laptops that has the MXM-II socket for the GPU i.e a REPLACEABLE graphics card! No risk of having a paperweight when thefaulty Nvidia chip blows for us unlike those poor XPS users.
The GPU can be upgraded all the way to a HD 4650/4670 which really is an impressive card for older gaming and tbf not too far off the 540M standard you see in modern entry-mid level gaming laptops. Can be pricy though (~£200) so for a more cost effective option may be the Radeon HD 3650/3670 (~£50-100) or Nvidia 9650M GT (~£100) which will give a significant boost over the 8600M GS.

As said putting money into an old machine is generally a bad idea. However I can understand (as can many others if you look at some of the owners lounges) its hard to let a machine as good as the 5920g go and tbh I would argue it would be hard to find something below £500 (maybe even higher) that could rival it in terms of multimedia quality.