Acer 5315 Memory Upgrade

I've just completed a CPU upgrade on my 5315 (to a T7300, which took 15 minutes!). I'm now thinking of upgrading the memory from my current 2GB @ 667 MHz (with the new CPU the memory runs at 667 MHz rather than 533 MHz with the old CPU) to 2GB @ 800 MHz.

However, I've read that the performance increase between 667 MHz and 800 MHz is very little, thus, it's not worth spending the money, even if it is only $AUD40.

Can anyone provide any input, benchmarks or experiences?

 

I think you read right.

 

Why would you want to do that?
Even though the FSB of the T7300 is 800MHz, your 800MHz memory will downclock and still run at 667MHz as your chipset supports up to 667MHz RAM memory. Your old CPU probably had 533MHz FSB so that's why your RAM was running at 533MHz. Now that you have T7300, the limit is your chipset which is at 667MHz maximum. You probably have the PM965 or PM945. Only the new PM45 can support up to 800MHz RAM DDR2.
However, you might notice a difference only if you buy RAM that has less latency than the one you have now (like CL4 or CL5). Or buy more memory for your laptop, go for 3GB or 4GB in total.

 

4GB are not supported from 5315, and believe me, lower latency doesn't make any real-world-performance difference. Congrats for your CPU upgrade pmerrill

 

Just dumped out the Intel spec sheet on the 965 and you're right, 667 is the maximum speed memory support, so I guess I'll save my $40 for memory and think about a faster and larger hard drive.

The Toshiba SATA-I 5400rpm 8MB cache is a little slow. I'm thinking of a WESTERN DIGITAL 320GB (WD3200BEKT, SATA-II, 7200RPM, 16MB CACHE) at $AUD114 ($USD90).

Alternatively, there's the SSD drives but they seem a little expensive still $AUS265 for a 64GB drive is a little rich.

 

You are right, it would make a difference if you buy WD black scorpio for your everyday use. It is a good price I guess, $90, here in UK you can get it for £55-£65. SSD are way too expensive, and if you have SATA 1 in your laptop then it is not going to be very much faster than the black scorpio (it would be blocked at ~150MB/sec). It will be faster but not as much as you will expect for that amount of money. Plus you get a lot of storage with the WD. I want to buy WD but I am between 500GB Blue scorpio and 320GB Black scorpio. I am waiting for the prices to go down a bit because a new breed of 640GB hard drivers are coming out.

 

Fortunately, I'm a little more lucky than that. The GM965 chipset supports SATA-II drives even though Acer only installed an 80GB Sata I drive. I guess it was their attempt to save money. So, the SATA-II drive will run at SATA-II speeds and for the cost of the laptop $400 + 1GB memory upgrade $30 + T7300 C2D processor $100 + SATA II drive $90 = $AUD620. It's not too bad. I know that I can't get a similar speced machine for the same price at this point.

 

Unlikely that it would be bottlenecked since my WD RE3 320GB drives in raid 0 put out a peak sustained 210MB/sec.

 

I just said that because I thought the SATA in his laptop was SATA I and not SATA II. To be honest I didn't even know that his laptop had GM965.
Is anyone know how to identify which SATA your laptop is supporting?
Because even if your chipset supports SATA II the manufacturer might have disable it like I heard what Apple did with the new Macbook pro.
I don't know much about RAID but I might be wrong saying the following: RAID 0 combines the speed of two SATA channels, right? So the speed you see, might be not from one SATA but from two SATA type I. Does this make sense? So your theoritical limit is double the speed of SATA I. Of course, SATA type II has double the speed of SATA type I, so is there any other way to identify which SATA your laptop has?
But still the maximum write or read speed a single HD can reach (not SSD), it is below the SATA type I speed limit.
After all improvements in controller technology (SATA I or II) may make you think the drives are retrieving data faster mechanically, but they are not. There are still behind in the speed interface. Only the SSD can pass the limits of the controller or maybe the new type of hard drives HRD that can reach up to 500MB/sec.

 

what? new bread? how much? when? why are they better?

 

There are new slim external hard drives from Seagate with 640Gb FreeAgent Go
Soon I guess there are going to be offered as internal HD for laptops but pricing has been revealed yet.