Upgrades for E1705

The dell E1705 has been a reliable laptop for close to 5 years now. It however is getting old and tired. Time to upgrade, too cheap to buy another laptop. However if I cannot find a gpu upgrade thats not $200+ (the 7800 gs go I believe is the best that will fit) I may buy another laptop.

But as research goes on some upgrades may be applicable and cost worthy.
Probably going to throw in a 7200 rpm harddrive from newegg.
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint MP4 HM500JJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

The cpu is the solo 1.86 I believe and I have not found a lot of info on what is better. Would like to go duo but am a little lost on what the best duo I can get is called?


Again after some research I believe the nvidia 7800 gs go is the best vid card that will fit into my e1705. Right now I have the ati x1400 and it does ok but we can all desire more performance for gaming right? Right now all I can find is 7800s that are super expensive and may sink my whole upgrading plan? Can anyone find cheap ones?

Memory is also a bit of a mystery for the bios (A09) as only 2 gb are support and show up but in reality it supports up to 3.5gb or something odd like that? I may get a cheap 2gb stick and throw it in there?

Now, after all of that info does anyone see any problems or have any suggestions for my cpu, gpu and ram questions? Any good sites to get cheap gpus or the correct cpus? Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

I would get a 7200rpm HDD, and an Intel Core 2 T7200. I don't think upgrading the video card would be very cost effective. The T7200 is pretty cheap, and would be a big boost over the Core Solo you have.

 

Best CPU is a t7600. Others include t7400 and t7200.

It will probably support 4gb, yes.

There are a lot of equivalent models of this laptop, such as the inspiron 9400 that share the same graphics cards. Hopefully that will help you search for one at a good price. The other equivalent model is the precision m90, I believe all of the worksation cards (quadro fx 2500m and 3500m) will also work for you.

There has definitely been some speculation in the past about upgrading past the 7000 series with the newer cards from precision m6300. I believe there are some mechanical issues, but they may be only with the heatsink, you will have to find a lot of pics and compare your self. I think it is somehow possible.

 

5 yrs old?

The only upgrades I would consider/recommend is:

RAM (max it out),

O/S (Win7 if 2GB RAM or higher),

HDD (Scorpio Black 750GB, with partitioning applied).

Anything else will not see any real return for the amount of $$$ vs. usage you'll get out of it. Even if you got the gpu and dual core cpu 'free'. Don't forget to count the cost of installing them, having them work properly (re: heat output...) and the possibility of frying everything while you're in the process - not to mention various compatibility issues you might have to overcome.

Even with all these hardware/OS 'upgrades' you'll still be a few generations behind what you can buy for ~$400 on sale.

Proceed if the desire is to learn and discover. Save your time and money to buy new if your final goal is a real upgrade in performance with the minimum frustration.

Good luck.

 

The 945PM will support 4 GB but in reality will only utilize 3.5 GB.

You can use any 667 FSB Core 2 Duo, T7200 is your best bet without spending too much money.

Any SATA 2 HDD will work.

You can use the Quadro cards or the GeForce Go 7900GS/GTX BUT these cards are affected by the bad Nvidia chips.

To the above, Dell has some of the most unrestrictive BIOS out there, as long as the Chipset supports the processor you should be good to go.

 

Must be socket M. Not all t5**0 series will work!

The fx 2700m is less affected, its also a pretty cool running g94 based cards like the 9800m GS but even less shaders. As I said however there are definitely some mechanical issues that would have to be resolved.

 

Sorry you are right, I meant to type socket M 667 FSB Core 2 Duos, my apologies.

The E1705 uses a Dell proprietary module. Quadros are still based off the GeForce cores.

 

Right, dell proprietary fx 2700m from the m6400. Same connector. The 9000m cards not based of g8 gen cores were less susceptible to to failure.

But I don't think there is enough space for the board. You would have to find some way around that. Actually, the easiest way would probably be to build an extender cable for the connector. I think it would work.

 

wow first off thanks for the quick and informative responses.


So the t7200, new hdd and prolly a fresh stick 2gb stick of ram is all ill do.

Seems like the video card is just too expensive for what you gain. And possibly will I not gain that much over the ati x1400? I believe the x1400 is the bottom card here compared to GeForce Go 7900GS but its just too darn expensive for the gain correct?

Will keep a look out for those m90s and 9400s that could have some good parts being sold on ebay. Thanks again guys

 

Add up how much that is going to cost you, and then see what you can get second hand on eBay (I mean a whole laptop) for the same money.

 

CPU ~50 RAM~30 HDD~50....guessing 150 when everything is said and done. There are a few on ebay that i might be able to steal at a comparable price....maybe lol.


We will see thanks again to everyone

 

I'm betting that you can get a better, complete system from ebay for $150.

 

I recently looked for a decent laptop for around $170. The best I could get was a Dell Inspiron 6000(Pentium M, 512MB).

I'd upgrade the E1705.

Ram 2GB = $20: http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=supersmartphones&ftab=AllFeedback

7200rpm HDD = $45: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...m_re=samsung_spinpoint-_-22-152-234-_-Product

T7200 = $45: http://cgi.ebay.com/INTEL-T7200-2-0...923?pt=CPUs&hash=item3cb650c71b#ht_1920wt_905