Laptop Hardware Upgrade. Worth it?

[Pech]

I currently have a Lenovo Y560 laptop. The specs are:

Windows 7 64 bit
Core i7 Q720 @ 1.60GHz
4GB RAM
500GB SATA 3.0GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue 5400RPM
AMD Radeon HD 6570M/5700 1GB

I was just wondering if I upgrade the RAM and HDD if there would be any noticeable performance gain? I do some pretty heavy gaming and have noticed random slowdowns while simply using the desktop. The components I have in mind are:

8GB Ram
http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231342
320 GB 7400 RPM Western Digital Black
http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280

I was also thinking I would just take the old HDD and throw it into an external enclosure with an eSATA cord since the laptop has an eSATA port.

Thank you all in advance!

 

[rgd1101]

not much. processor/gpu is weak

 

[nbelote]

Modern games are reaching for more than 4GB of RAM now, so upgrading that's your first and best answer. Your 5400 RPM hard drive is holding you back and probably causing some slowdown in the loading area, and sure a 7200 RPM drive can help there. I would suggest a SSD first but if you can't afford it, you're still good with the 7200 drive.

 

[ryanrich83]

The HDD change from 5400 RPM to 7200 RPM will help with access speeds, but a SSD would be better upgrade, performance wise. Multitasking should be better with more RAM installed.

Gaming performance isn't going to change at all, though.

If you are needing to keep this laptop for a while, the upgrades make sense to do, but with how cheap new laptops are, you might get more for your money buying a new laptop, as opposed to upgrading RAM and HDD.

 

[Pech]

Thank you all for the suggestions and insight. After reading your responses, I think I may just hold out and save up for a nice Haswell desktop. Although, If I buy an SSD for this laptop, would I be able to also use it for a future desktop build?

 

[whyso]

SSD's work cross platform (all are 2.5 inches).