T7250 to T9300 Worth It for Win 10?

Running Win 10 on a T7250 + SSD. It is surprisingly very smooth. At times, I feel some sluggishness when multitasking and I think the CPU is maxing out. Yes, the system has 2 GB of RAM but if I go with a T9300, will I see a significant speed increase? Not looking for any miracles, but I do see a T9300 is about $30 USD. I have seen comparisons but not sure I will see much of a difference so thought to check.

Have set virtual memory to 6GB to compensate just in case physical RAM is eaten up. Don't use this 7 year old notebook for heavy lifting, just wanted to increase speed if possible. Like I said, Win 10 + SSD has already brought new life to this unit. Wondering how much more money I should dump into it. Thx.

 

My guess is the RAM is probably more of a bottleneck than the CPU. 2 GB isn't very much these days, and if you throw in an anti-virus program, a few browser tabs, and so forth, you can get over 2 GB without very much effort. That you mention sluggishness when multitasking also points to RAM - if you're multitasking and it's slow, that means you have more programs open, and thus are using more RAM.

To check, open Task Manager (Crtl+Shift+Esc) and leave it up in the background while you do what you'd normally do. When it gets sluggish, go over to Task Manager and check the CPU and memory usage. If the CPU usage has been at 100% while it's sluggish, it's the CPU that could use an upgrade. If the memory use has been above 2 GB, it's the RAM. It's possible that at various points both could occasionally be the bottleneck, but the priority on the upgrade should be whichever is most often. My guess is it'll be the RAM, but Task Manager will give a more precise answer, and it could be the CPU.

Virtual memory does allow you to not have programs crash due to lack of memory, but even when the virtual memory is on an SSD, it's still much slower than regular memory. In my experience, once you get to using around 125% of the physical RAM you have (so 25% is only in virtual memory), noticeable sluggishness occurs. You may have a bit more headroom with the SSD, but at some point you'll still run into sluggishness if you're relying heavily on the SSD for virtual memory.

If the CPU is the bottleneck, $30 to go from T7250 to T9300 isn't bad. You'll go from 2 to 2.5 GHz for a 25% bump, and also have twice as much L2 cache, which will help in some programs. While it's an old laptop, if you can get another year from it for less than $40 (don't forget thermal paste if you don't have any), it's a cost-effective upgrade. If RAM is the bottleneck, either get a 4 GB SO-DIMM to upgrade to 5 GB total (if you're on Windows 10 64-bit), or two 2 GB SO-DIMMs to upgrade to 4 GB total (if you're on Windows 10 32-bit); it looks like those run sub-$40 these days, too.

Although if the RAM is the bottleneck, it may help to post your laptop model, as different laptops from that time period have different RAM ceilings. I don't know them all, but it's possible 4 GB is the max it supports, in which case 2x2 GB is ideal. Others go all the way up to 8 GB, and still others are limited to 6 GB.

 

Very insightful Apollo13. Shows your knowledge here. I did check Task Manager and it seems I never reach 100% RAM, it's usually CPU hitting 90-100% in spikes. Then it comes back down. With a few browsers opened, things are still smooth. It's when I try to do more, then I feel slight sluggishness. If I let it settle for a few seconds, whatever I am doing is smooth again. Just using this notebook for web based apps, business type stuff. But this thing can still run Starcraft 2! lol

If CPU is the bottleneck, will the T9300 still have the same bottleneck. I understand this is a newer generation CPU but may still work in the Vostro 1400, which has a limit of 4GB of RAM. Win 10 works well on this 7 year old machine. Unless hardware breaks, not even sure I need to upgrade out of necessity, just for wants. Just trying to see if I should add any more money into this laptop. Already bought a decent SSD. But I do love this old Vostro 1400. It was one of the first gen small business laptops from Dell. They built it right before they started cutting corners. I think the T9300 runs cooler too and may draw less power? This 7 year old batter still has 2 hours of life per charge!

 

mealto, it's worth it if you upgrade CPU to T9500 and RAM to 3GB+, otherwise use as is and dump the sooner the better. T9300 is not worth $30 in my opinion.

 

For less than $100, I would do both (T9500 or T9300) and 4GB RAM.

See:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1008&cmp[]=1000&cmp[]=1010

Even if you buy something much better in the next six months, this system (with the upgrades) will still be usable for a long time.

Clock speed % jumps don't mean anything by themselves.

Going to the T9300 is between 40% and 50% performance increase (single/multithreaded) and going to the T9500 is 49% and 64% (again, single/multithreaded, respectively) more performance increase over your current cpu.

If these are drop in replacements for your platform and you can do them along with maxing out the RAM, the jump in how the system will respond will be night and day.

Keep in mind that Windows is very dynamic with RAM. A 2GB system won't show RAM as a bottleneck except when you compare it to an identical setup with 4GB RAM or more. Windows changes itself as to how it uses the RAM depending on how much is installed. So just looking at Task Manager with too little RAM (2GB is WAY too little... in 2015...) is kind of meaningless, imo.

I'd be interested to here about your progress here. Especially if you can do the better cpu+RAM option too.

Good luck.

 

mealto, I would advice against 4GB RAM. You won't be able to utilize the whole amount on 32-bit OS, and after installing resource-hungry 64-bit OS you end up getting only ~0.5GB more free memory at best. And going beyond that... if your chipset supports 4GB modules, it may be worth a try - but your system is DDR2 obviously, and such modules are frakking expensive...

 

Won't matter if the whole 4GB is utilized, the notebook will utilize as much as it can - with 3GB RAM, it is guaranteed to be crippled, RAM-wise. I do agree that 32bit O/S would be preferred, but a 64bit O/S is much more robust, ime, even at the loss of a few MB's of RAM with the overhead it incurs (and Win10 is much better in that regards too vs. previous Win O/S's).

 

In my experience, if RAM is consistently over 75% in use, then the system will benefit from more. As Tiller said, RAM use rarely is displayed at 100%. But whenever the system is regularly using most of the available RAM, especially with few programs running, it's time to get some more (if the system can accommodate it).

 

That's interesting on how much feedback regarding this system is not sufficient. To be honest, it does not need upgrading, I just wanted to try to squeeze more speed out of it becasue it could be done. I used the T7250 + 2GB of RAM on Win 10 + SSD for an entire day as my work machine. Web dev, online apps, multiple Google Chrome tabs, etc... The system kept up. I could feel it's not as fast as a new desktop but that SSD is a life saver. I doubt normal users who just surf the web and check email at home would even know this notebook was 7 years old. Youtube videos are slightly slow to load but playing 720p videos was not a problem. Played and had one of full screen as not a problem either. I am betting it's the SSD and how Win 10 is optimized for that. I also disabled some services and eye candy of course. I think I am going to wait till the T9300 drops to $10 USD then try it! Who else wants to know more info about my setup Ask way if it helps.

 

One issue that you may or may not run into is the BIOS barking at a Penryn CPU. I'd do some research on that Vostro of yours before attempting an upgrade from a Merom CPU.

With that being said, if the chipset belongs to the 965 generation and you have two RAM slots available, you should be able to go up to 8 (2x4) GB of RAM. Whether that would be a feasible upgrade in your usage scenario is something that only you can decide.

Happy upgrading.

 

I have the Vostro 1500 (kind of meshed with the Inspiron 1520), which is essentially the same as yours but slightly larger. ajkula66 has a good point about the BIOS - you should make sure you're on the latest BIOS before upgrading the CPU, if you do so. The latest BIOS shouldn't have any problems with it, but older BIOS versions may or may not support it. It's definitely a good generation of Dell laptops.

djembe also has a good point that the RAM itself will never show 100% in use on Windows 10. In the Windows 8/10 Task Manager, if you go to Performance -> Memory, also look at the Committed figure. If this is higher than 2 GB, that's the case where your memory demands are above what you have, and you'll run into slowdowns due to lack of memory.

While the 965 generation should be able to go up to 8 GB, forum members have tested the 1500 and found it's limited to 6 GB (though the 1700 can use 8 GB). I am not sure what the 1400's limit is, but probably either 4 GB or 6 GB. If you're on 32-bit Windows, the benefit you get from 4 GB vs. 3 GB depends on your graphics card. I know the 8600M GT (which is only on the 1500/1700 IIRC) gives 3.5 GB usable in total; if you have the 8400M GS, you should have at least that much available if you put 4 GB in. If you have Intel graphics, I'm not sure how much they reserve.

I think Windows 8 and 10 (and maybe 7) also will report the full 4 GB on 32-bit, even if they can't use that full amount. Not sure, since I switched my Vostro/Inspiron back to XP, and my friend who has one runs Vista.

 

Given you have a Merom 2-M, I really don't think a Penryn processor is going to work in your system. Go with a Intel X9000, should be compatible with the PM965 chipset.

However in my humble opinion, the CPU difference will feel negligible when compared to a SSD + RAM upgrade.

 

X9000 is a Penryn. He would need X7800/X7900 to stay within the Merom range.

Agreed. Even a T7500/7700 would make a difference from the measly T7250 that is in there right now, though.

 

D'oh, you're correct. I thought it might have been the X7900 but wasn't too sure.

 

965 chipset should accept a Penryn, provided its the same FSB. I would know, I've upgrade my Vostro 1500 through multiple Merom/Penryn chips. And Dells for the most part don't care about different parts, I would update the BIOS just in case.

 

Thanks for all the info gang. Here is a quick update. I have indeed ordered 4GB of RAM. It just hasn't arrived yet. I am pretty sure 2GB to 4GB is going to show a nice boost in speed. Now I am debating the $30 USD to go from a T7250 and T9300. Since this notebook already has an SSD, I figured what's another $30USD lol.

Thanks for posting this link: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1008&cmp[]=1000&cmp[]=1010

It confirms that my $30 USD should be well spent.

Anyone else do a similar upgrade?

 

I've upgraded more *61 series ThinkPads in a similar manner than I'd dare count.