8 year old laptop... should I upgrade or buy new?

[IIROCCO]

I have an HP dv4-1117ca.
Specs are as follows:
- 2.00 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5800
- 2 MB L2 Cache
- 4Gb RAM
-300Gb HDD
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD - 1759MB of Video memory
- Networking: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN
802.11a/b/g/n WLAN
Bluetooth

I am running Windows 10 Pro.
Am I better off buying an SSD and additional RAM (supports up to 8Gb) or am better of buying a new laptop?

More specs
h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=c01555865

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Eight years old? GMA? Just buy a new one.

 

[Wolfshadw]

What's the general usage of the system?

-Wolf sends

 

[theyeti87]

Upgrading to a SSD will breathe new life into this laptop in a way that no amount of RAM can do.

If this laptop does what you need it to do, but you'd like overall smoother operation and increased responsiveness, a SSD is the way to go.

Now if money isn't a variable here, of course most would suggest a new laptop, but it all depends on what you're looking to get out of it / what you use it for.

 

[IIROCCO]

I've started a Computer programming course so a lot of coding is done on my laptop. That being said, I do like to watch Netflix and play some games every now and then. I built a PC for gaming, so gaming performance is not a priority for my laptop though 1080P playback for videos is is below par. Deep down, I know its best to suck it up and buy a new laptop; however, when you look at the the cost comparison, a single SSD is far cheaper than a new laptop.

Perhaps buying a cheaper laptop with a i3 processor will be sufficient enough for me.

thoughts?

 

[kyzarvs]

I dropped an SSD into a circa 2006 Acer laptop last year and upgraded it to W7 at the same time.

Still boots in <15 seconds, is more than capable of Outlook / Word / Excel / Firefox and is just as quick at those tasks as anything else. If the workload is suitable, give it a try - though I would also try to increase the RAM at some point on yours as it shares with the system RAM (mine has a whopping 128MB of dedicated RAM for it's ATI x700 gpu!)

 

[photonboy]

Yours is similar to my dad's laptop and his works great with Windows 10.

I added an SSD and while it boots faster and is a bit snappier, it won't help with anything that's processing intensive. Not at all for games.

So as said, WHY are you asking about upgrading?

It's like saying you have an eight-year-old car and want to know if you should get a new one? How do we know? Maybe it works fine to get groceries?

So...

a) If you want it to open/close programs a bit quicker, and boot quicker then get an SSD (clone or reinstall W10).

b) If you need more processing power you need a new laptop with a better CPU (like a quad-core Intel i5-6xxx or similar).

c) If you want some GAMING potential then the GPU is most important but they tend to be fairly expensive (like a 960M + i3/i5 CPU)

 

[HEXiT]

mate for its age its doing well if your running win 10 on it.
but personally i think you would be wise just to bite the bullet and buy an i3.

the ssd while an option wont have the same effect as it woud if you were throwing it into a modern system containing sata 3.
yours will be sata 2 at best which means your ssd will be limited to sata 2 speed, which in the real world would be less than 200MBps, which is less than half the speed of a sata 3 enabled system.
so while an option it wont be that much of a difference.

 

[photonboy]

Update: Okay, I guess just read the advice I wrote and see what applies. Note the SSD as said only helps with loading application times.

My dad's laptop plays HD video just fine, but he has a better GPU with hardware acceleration.

*An SSD will absolutely NOT help with video if the CPU is the bottleneck.

*TRY THIS:
1) Install K-Lite Standard
http/www.codecguide.com/download_k-lite_codec_pack_standard.htm

2) Playback video
- in "WMPC-HC" (the new media player) you can enable hardware acceleration if you didn't enable during installation of K-Lite. However, your GPU (4500MHD) must support it.

*It appears to support MPEG2 for DVD's, but there is no apparent support for H.264 which is the most used video codec now. Thus, your CPU would have to decode this and might not be good enough.

However, K-Lite is much more efficient than some other media players so it may suit your needs.

Other:
Install Intel driver software from Intel site to have it check for newer drivers.

 

[kyzarvs]

mate for its age its doing well if your running win 10 on it.
but personally i think you would be wise just to bite the bullet and buy an i3.

the ssd while an option wont have the same effect as it woud if you were throwing it into a modern system containing sata 3.
yours will be sata 2 at best which means your ssd will be limited to 1.5mbps max which in the real world would be less than 200MBps which is less than half the speed of a sata 3 enabled system.
so while an option it wont be that much of a difference.

Have to politely disagree there.

As someone who has done it, the difference between any modern SSD saturating a 150MB Sata connection vs a 10 year old 5400 rpm (or slower) drive is astronomical. My W7 install is 20 seconds or under to boot and is as snappy as my i7 laptop or 6350 desktop. If the workload is appropriate, there's no reason not to invest £30 on a small SSD as opposed to whole new machine, surely?

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Latency is a bigger influence on most tasks than bandwidth.

 

[photonboy]

mate for its age its doing well if your running win 10 on it.
but personally i think you would be wise just to bite the bullet and buy an i3.

the ssd while an option wont have the same effect as it woud if you were throwing it into a modern system containing sata 3.
yours will be sata 2 at best which means your ssd will be limited to 1.5mbps max which in the real world would be less than 200MBps which is less than half the speed of a sata 3 enabled system.
so while an option it wont be that much of a difference.

Have to politely disagree there.

As someone who has done it, the difference between any modern SSD saturating a 150MB Sata connection vs a 10 year old 5400 rpm (or slower) drive is astronomical. My W7 install is 20 seconds or under to boot and is as snappy as my i7 laptop or 6350 desktop. If the workload is appropriate, there's no reason not to invest £30 on a small SSD as opposed to whole new machine, surely?

I put an older SSD (Vertex 2, 60GB) into my dad's eight-year-old laptop to replace his 250GB 5400RPM HDD and it made a huge difference in bootup time and general snappiness.

Don't forget an SSD is much faster at small file transfers which is common especially during bootup. Again though, this is ONLY to help with load times so be certain of your REASON for buying an SSD.

 

[hang-the-9]

I have an HP dv4-1117ca.
Specs are as follows:
- 2.00 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5800
- 2 MB L2 Cache
- 4Gb RAM
-300Gb HDD
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD - 1759MB of Video memory
- Networking: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN
802.11a/b/g/n WLAN
Bluetooth

I am running Windows 10 Pro.
Am I better off buying an SSD and additional RAM (supports up to 8Gb) or am better of buying a new laptop?

More specs
h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=c01555865

For non-gaming or video rendering, that system will run great with an SSD. Will run HD video fine. If you don't need to keep any larger files on the thing, a $40 120 GB or so SSD would make the system seem like new. Will be 1/10th the cost of even a lower end laptop that's worth getting. Keep in mind that the swap file also lives on the hard drive, with an SSD that access time is also lowered by a lot, making the overall system run faster even if you don't count the loading time drop.

 

[jaguarskx]

I've started a Computer programming course so a lot of coding is done on my laptop. That being said, I do like to watch Netflix and play some games every now and then. I built a PC for gaming, so gaming performance is not a priority for my laptop though 1080P playback for videos is is below par. Deep down, I know its best to suck it up and buy a new laptop; however, when you look at the the cost comparison, a single SSD is far cheaper than a new laptop.

Perhaps buying a cheaper laptop with a i3 processor will be sufficient enough for me.

thoughts?

I would buy a new laptop since a new one is relatively inexpensive. The reason why you are having issues with video playback is because of newer video encoding technologies (video codecs) that have been developed and are now used to make videos. If I am not mistaken, all videos on Youtube have been re-encoded using modern video codecs a couple of years ago.

Generally speaking, the graphics core is designed with the most recent video codecs to decode and playback videos. For videos encoded with newer technologies that the graphics core cannot handle, the decoding process gets shifted to the CPU. While the CPU can decode the video, it cannot do it as efficiently as the graphics core. This basically leads to stuttering and the CPU operating at 100% which causes the CPU to run hot.

Installing a SSD will make your laptop feel more responsive because SSDs have much higher read / write speeds compared to HDDs. Windows will load faster, programs will open up faster. But you are still going to have the exact same issues when watching videos.

A modern Core i3 CPU is more powerful than your old CPU. Plus Intel has made great strides when it comes it integrated graphics performance compared to the old GMA 4500MHD graphics core. Don't get me wrong, the Intel HD 5500 (5th gen Broadwell CPUs) and Intel HD 520 (6th gen Skylake CPUs) are not as powerful as dedicated graphic chips, but they perform well enough for what they are... integrated graphics.

A friend of mine has a laptop with a Core i5-4200u and the Intel HD 4400 graphics core. He wanted to play Skyrim, but was not sure if his laptop could handle it. I have a similar laptop, but with a dedicated graphics chip. I set up Skyrim to use the HD 4400 graphics core, and modified the graphic settings so that he can try out the game at 1366x768 resolution and 1600x900 resolution.

I let him play Skyrim on my laptop for about an hour or two. He found that Skyrim ran decently enough for him at 1600x900 resolution (30 FPS - 45 FPS depending on the environment) with the graphics profile I setup for him that he decided to buy the game.

Regardless of Intel's integrated graphics gaming potential, the graphics core will have modern video decoding hardware integrated inside that you should not have problems streaming videos unless you have an internet issue.

 

[photonboy]

To summarize about VIDEO stutter (I assume that's the issue).

1) GPU decode - or "hardware acceleration" helps a lot. Your old laptop appears to only support MPEG2 (i.e. DVD). The media player must also be set to use this or it will simply use the CPU.

2) CPU decode - with no GPU decoding the CPU does all the work. If not fast enough your video will stutter.

3) Media Player - they vary in efficiency. It's generally the DECODER they are using and the settings.. K-Lite for example works very well. For some laptops this may make the difference between stutter and no stutter

4) Web browser - same as media player, though opening pages will eat up CPU cycles and increase the likelihood of stutter. No hardware acceleration from your GPU that I'm aware of on the T5800 since that's usually H264.

5) NETWORK - aside from CPU/GPU, you can also stutter or at least have a DELAY due to network bandwidth. That happens to me all the time with Youtube however my NETFLIX account rarely has issues.

NEW COMPUTER->
There ARE some weaker computers that can be insufficient even though they are brand new. Some of the weaker AMD or Intel CPU's may at times have issues especially with other tasks running.

Avoid Pentium/Celeron and weaker AMD. In fact, I'd suggest any i3-4xxx or better.

(Some AMD CPU's run at 1.4GHz and only have two cores. There's a HUGE difference in processing potential between that and a modern i3 which has hyperthreading, and has a Turbo of 2.4GHz.)

THIS APU has four cores, and the Intel has TWO physical cores with hyperthreading:
A4-5000-> http/www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A4-5000+APU
i3-5010u-> http/www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-5010U+%40+2.10GHz

Each core for the APU has a score of 586, whereas the Intel has a score of 1177. So each physical core of the Intel is 2X as powerful approximately which is especially important if a program has code that can only run on one thread (can't be split between CPU cores).

The HT for the Intel is virtually like adding weaker cores, but what really happens is the same CPU can process a separate thread of data during the normally unused CPU cycles (due to delays in getting new data). It can add up to 40% performance boost but that depends on how well threaded the program is.

*Basically look for a laptop with more than 1000 score for single thread and you're probably fine. Then concentrate on other aspects (like screen resolution, and most importantly the QUALITY of the laptop estimated from customer feedback).

GPU acceleration is important but it's best to have a good CPU to avoid any such issues. A modern i3 can likely decode a BluRay movie without GPU decode (all on CPU).

OTHER:
Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL, or right-click "Start" to access) - this can monitor your CPU performance. You should monitor each core (not a single graph). Open it up and play a video. You should see the CPU usage spike. If it stays below 100% on all cores it shouldn't stutter (if it did it's not the CPU's fault). If one core hits 100% it may or may not stutter.

Anyway, you can determine if its the CPU that is your problem. My dad's laptop eight years ago couldn't play HD video. I got K-Lite later and it could with GPU acceleration. It can even play most HD now without GPU acceleration with K-Lite as the decoders have slowly gotten more efficient.