Dell 640m Processor: is it this simple?

Hey everybody.

As background, my Dell 640m is getting close to being out of the three year warranty. It has a T2050 processor and 2 Gb of -5300 memory. I'm happy using using XP Home.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I'd like to replace the processor from the entry level Core Duo. Is it simply a case of replacing the processor and the BIOS sorts it all out?

Is it worth upgrading from the Core Duo to the Core 2 Duo at the same time?

 

If you are replacing it with a compatible processor, yes, it is as simple as popping it in.

Core Duos are NOT compatible with Core 2 Duos, so you cannot put a Core 2 Duo in your machine. I think you can go up to the Core Duo T2700 2.3GHz, although I'm not positive.

 

Yay, that's great news. The jump from a 1.6 to a 2.0 GHz processor won't be obvious when it doesn't need to be but hopefully, I'll notice it when I need the extra power...

As for the Core 2 Duo, I understood that the early Core 2 Duos were motherboard compatible with the Core Duos. Since I'm happy enough with XP and 2 Gb, I didn't see a reason to change processor family... so I don't feel that I'm losing out here.

Right, in due course, time to get some thermal paste and find a T2500 or higher specification processor...

 

Yeah, I think you can upgrade to an early (Napa-based) Core 2 Duo if you like... see this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=100648

I think Core 2 Duo is supposed to have slightly worse battery life than Core Duo... so you may take a little hit there if you upgrade to Core 2. Core 2 is a little faster at the same clock speed though... plus it supports 64-bit in case you ever want to use that.

I would also say though that if you haven't upgraded to a modern fast hard drive yet, that would probably make a more noticeable difference in everyday use... but it does depend on what things you want to speed up.

 

Aye; Core 2 Duo would be an advantage if I needed 64-bit, but I don't. The battery life hit wouldn't be too big an issue because of how I tend to use the 640m (close to mains power).

As for what I want to speed up, the majority of applications do their thing as fast as I could want with the exception of Internet Explorer 8, which is sluggish. When I upgraded from 1 Gb to 2 Gb it made a decent improvement to performance and I figure that's because the original drive is a bottleneck and now it's using the page file less.

On the other hand, I can't clone my drive myself, I'd need some other means, so it isn't quite so simple an upgrade. But it's something to look at.

I figure I'll tolerate the slow game loading times as I'm used to them, but during play, things would be a little smoother.

But I will look at replacement drives. I can buy a T2600 for around £50 with a warranty, which seems cheap enough to give it a go...

 

If IE 8 is slow, consider trying this tweak: http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=2443

Also, the latest Firefox is very fast... and Chrome is even faster.

But yeah I guess a CPU upgrade would speed up page rendering (as long as your network connection is fast).

Also, you've probably done this, but be sure to defrag your drive.

I'd also check ebay for the CPU... there are some CD and C2D CPUs selling pretty cheaply there.

If you want smoother gameplay, then what I'd guess that what you need is not a cpu or disk upgrade, but to get a better graphics card. Unfortunately, that means selling your system and buying a new one.

 

Yeah, it would, as shared onboard video isn't the fastest. The thing is I quite like the 640m and I didn't buy the machine for gaming, more for business application stuff, email, web browsing. That it runs any game is something of a bonus really!

That all said, a small improvement in Sword of the Stars would be welcome. From discussions, the game is reputed to be just as hard on the processor than the video hardware. Upgrading the processor should make a small difference.

That's all I'd be expecting, too. The majority of notebooks with non-shared video are either larger than the 640m (I like the form factor) or too expensive for me to justify.

I have thought about this. I can add more memory and have done so. I can add a faster processor and a hard drive. But at what point does it become worthwhile simply chopping it in for a faster out-of-the-box machine? ThenI realise that my gaming is just because the notebook runs it, rather than why I bought it, and it handles everything else I throw at it (apart from three or four spreadsheets) with ease.

Sorry to ramble on!

 

Thanks everybody for your help so far.

Re-reading what everybody else has said, I'm of a mind to try one of the 667 FSB Core Duos, something like the T2400 / 1.83 GHz. I guess that people chop in their T2400s for the higher performance Core Duos, Core 2 Duos - the T7400 and especially the T7600 are expensive. The T2400 looks to be about 20% quicker, in benchmarks, than the T2050. I figure it'll feel the same most of the time but I might see a more responsive game. For how little they sell for, any slight improvement is probably good value for money!

As for the hard drive... I keep it defragmented but I tend to operate with around 30% free space. HDTune reports all sorts of information, most of which doesn't mean all that much to me. When I benchmark the drive I get:

Transfer Rate
Minimum 14.2 MB/sec
Maximum 33.6 MB/sec
Average 25.5 MB/sec

Access time 17.4 ms
Burst Rate 65.8 MB/sec.

So now I need to spend time looking at other drive benchmarks then, unless somebody can tell me that these figures are okay / poor / terrible / not bad..? I don't need lots of space, but when I see how little drives seem to go for and if a 160 Gb drive is quicker, it seems silly not to do this too.

 

Keep in mind that the Core 2 Duo is an entirely new architecture, as opposed to a Core Duo being two Pentium Ms stapled together.
There is a definite clock-for-clock improvement there that you should consider.

 

Yeah. Clock for clock, the Core 2 Duo appears to be very approximately one multiplier quicker than the Core Duo: the 1.83 Core 2 Duo is as quick as the 2.0 Core Duo.

The eBay prices reflect this: they're priced on performance and not GHz...

 

The T2400 will be an upgrade, but a lower core 2 duo will fare better. In my experience, a T5300 is quite a lot faster than the T2500 I used to have in my Dell E1505. Core 2 duo processors are about 25% faster per MHz clock speed than a core duo processor.
A T5300, T7200 may be a much better option for an upgrade as long as your system can support it.

What is the chipset in your laptop?
You can downlaod CPU-Z and go into the motherboard tab to find out.
It should be i943 or i945

Upgrading the harddrive will also increase performance. A 320gb 7200rpm drive goes for around $60. It will yield around 65mb/sec average, which is more than twice as fast.

You need to verify the interface of your drive before upgrading. I do not know if the 640m uses PATA or SATA drives

K-TRON

 

I would think for most poeple the harddrive upgrade would be easier than the processor upgrade. Instead of cloning the drive you can always do a clean install which in my opinion is typically better without crapware.

 

Thanks for the tips! Your observation between the two processors is especially interesting - I've read a lot about the differences between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo over the last fortnight and the only thing I understand is that with some synthetic benchmarks, the Core 2 Duo is quicker, in others it's much quicker. I now understand... how little I understand!

The 640m has the i945 chipset. My 640m was ordered just before the Core 2 Duos were launched. That I can tell, Dell swapped the Core Duo out for the Core 2 Duo...

For the hard drive, HDTune shows this:



That says SATA-1..?

For upgrading it... well... the processor swap appears simpler on this machine. The drive swap would either require a complete reinstallation of everything and this would be the perfect solution if I had the reinstall discs. But I don't. Meh. I could upgrade to Vista, but my intention is to keep this notebook going for at least another two years and then skip Vista and move to Windows 7 on a completely new machine. Probably.

The other alternative is a drive cloning exercise - I know I can figure out how to do this, but it will either require an application that can read to our network drive without launching Windows or an external drive, which adds to the cost. On the other hand, drives do eventually wear out, so upgrading and keeping the original is probably sensible.

My thoughts were that the first stage is the processor, then I can go back and look at the drive. I've no issue with how long stuff takes to load, but how slow it can be when running and this doesn't appear to be page file related.

 

Napa does infact support the T5300 and T7200 provided that the BIOS recognizes it. What the OP needs to do is update his sytem BIOS first before actually doing the upgrade.

I've found the official BIOS download page for the 640M here

Code:

Fixes/Enhancements:
1. Added support for newer versions of the Intel processor.
2. Updated message prompt for unmatched adapter & battery.
3. Updated Computrace ROM to support under Vista.

I found this in one of the packages, so download the newest version. It'll include this fix above.


I've also googled your Hitachi drive, and it is indeed an SATA drive. So you can upgrade your drive to a higher density, faster rotation speed SATAII HDD drive. I'll likely run only at SATAI but you'll won't suffer from any bottlenecks unless you are purchasing an SSD.

 

As Charlie would say, "a world of awesome." Thanks for the information.

Now to look at Amazon UK and this forum for high speed SATA-II drives.

Edit: I also forgot, I updated the BIOS shortly after the last one was released at the end of 2007. I should be good to go!

 

For the hard drive, I'd say either the WD Scorpio Black or the Seagate 7200.4

 

Thanks for the recommendations. The 320 Gb WD Scorpio Black is only £66. 7,200 rpm and twice the cache of hard drive goodness. The smaller capacity drives are only a little cheaper and it has a five year warranty.

I didn't see exactly the right Seagate 7200.4 I wanted, so it looks like the WD Scorpio Black will be on the shopping list. Along with a drive cloning application... any recommendation here? Sorry that's a bit off topic...

 

I can honestly Say that my 640m has been through hell and back and this little computer has all the original pieces of hardware from dell still perfectly intact ( Except Upgraded RAM). This computer really held its own thats for sure.

 

Mine looks "used" or "enjoyed," depending on your perspective! It felt like a major purchase at the time, it was £670 - but it's lasted well from a "everything still works and runs fine" perspective. I am truly glad I ticked the 1440 x 900 button when I configured it, too.

 

Thanks D3X for your research.

Dervman, you have a lot of upgrade options available.
Go for a faster harddrive first since that will yield a very high performance increase per dollar. Than go for a processor. A T7400 is a great choice considering its price and its performance.

As for a harddrive, the Hitachi 7K320 and the WD3200BEKT are great options.
Your system may only support SATA 150 speeds. So worse case scenario, you need to use Hitachi Tool or WD Lifeguard to change the SATA speed in the firmware from SATA 300 to SATA 150 mode.
Unfortunately you can only do this from a system which supports SATA 300 drives. So you can do this from any modern desktop, or a newer laptop.

This link may help you:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=347779

K-TRON

 

Some really useful information there and a big catch-all... access to a newer notebook or desktop. That could be a problem. My ICT manager _may_ allow me to connect a new hard drive to my desktop at the office, but this is about 18 months old and we don't have anything newer. He _may_ also allow me install a foreign application to the system too. But he may not.

Our other notebook in the house is a slightly newer Dell 1501, which is about two years old, maybe a little younger but not much.

Not being able to use the drive would ruin the show... plus I also have the whole cloning the drive issue too. :-(