Upgrading Dell D610

Hey All!

So I've been browsing the forums for a while now but I thought I'd make my first post! I have a question about upgrading my laptop. I've had it for about two and a half years and I want it to get me through another year and a half of university. I am curious how much of an improvement I will see by upgrading to a 80 or 100GB 7200rpm hard drive and 2gb of RAM. I think my graphics card is going to be my bottleneck but I want to try and make this baby last. I do some gaming (Flight Simulator and America's Army) but I'm okay with having the settings down until I graduate =). Let me know if you don't think it's worth it. My basic specs are:

Intel Pentium M Processor @ 1.86GHz 2MB L2 533MHz FSB
768MB DDR2 RAM (256 and 512 Module)
40.0GB 5400RPM HD w/ ATA-6 Interface
64MB ATI Mobility Radeon X300
Running Windows XP Pro

The rest is pretty standard (2 batteries, touchpad, CD burner, standard screen, etc). If you do think I should upgrade, I can do the RAM pretty easily but what kind of 7200RPM would I be able to use (is there a difference between SATA and ATA interface? and where can I get one ?). Thanks for all your help in advance guys and gals!

Cheers,

Josh

 

Under XP 2GB of RAM ain't that big of a deal. I've got XP Pro on 1GB and 2GB and almost never use more than 1GB. I don't think you'll notice too much a difference between 768MB and 2GB. Probably better off just switching that 256MB stick for a 1GB for 1.5 or something...

ATA6 and SATA are indeed different interfaces. You can buy laptop drives from Newegg. And you can pretty much use any 7200RPM drive that fits the standard.

 

Awesome, thanks for the info! So basically, the RAM isn't too important for XP but what about for gaming and whatnot... will I see an improvement with 2gb even if my graphics card is maxed at 64mb?

Oh, and for the hard drive, I think I found a good deal on ebay for an ATA-6 7200rpm 100gb drive. Thanks for the interface help!

Cheers.

 

It probably won't be a big difference if any... probably depends on what you're playing, but I'm not totally sure about the specifics. Most games will probably be GPU limited here... it's an 855GM or something similar?

 

X300 is way outdated, so upgrading your RAM up to 2GB won't help much while playing games, but considering DDR2's price is low, i think it's the time to boost your RAM.

 

Hey Guys! Thanks for all the info. So I decided to boost my memory to 2GB 533mhz from 768MB at 400mhz since it only cost $40. I have a brand new 100GB 7k100 from Hitachi coming, and that's pretty much it. I am curious if you guys think an upgrade from a pentium M 1.86GHz chip to a 2.13 or 2.26GHz chip would be worth my while. It looks like I can probably get one off of ebay for around $200 to $250 and then sell my old one for $100. But the question is, is it really worth the money for the performance increase I will get? Any insight will be awesome!

Cheers.

 

Save your money. It probably is not worth it.

 

Thanks for the advice. By the looks of things, by having the 7.2k rpm drive with a higher density than my old 40gb 5.4k, I will see the best performance increase for my money. I think the RAM may help be out for my gaming as well. I think my upgrades are maxed out with that now. That is until teh Asus GX Station becomes more availible for an external graphics solution ( http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=5369). Happy holidays everyone!

Cheers,

Josh