Trying to update an old laptop - some questions

Bonhomie

spaceboy said:

Bonhomie said:

My advice would be to save spending money on next to useless RAM and to spend more on an SSD with DRAM.

Thanks. It looks like you're right as the RAM upgrade is ridiculously expensive anyway.

One thing I was just wondering is would a graphics card upgrade be beneficial? I suspect the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 might be a direct replacement and has double the onboard RAM.


*actually on checking prices on ebay they seem to be about £40-£50 which isnt great.

I don't think you can easily swap the graphics component.
The RAM will make a miniscule difference. SSD a much bigger difference than any RAM upgrade without an SSD.

spaceboy

Bonhomie said:

spaceboy said:

Bonhomie said:

My advice would be to save spending money on next to useless RAM and to spend more on an SSD with DRAM.

Thanks. It looks like you're right as the RAM upgrade is ridiculously expensive anyway.

One thing I was just wondering is would a graphics card upgrade be beneficial? I suspect the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 might be a direct replacement and has double the onboard RAM.


*actually on checking prices on ebay they seem to be about £40-£50 which isnt great.

I don't think you can easily swap the graphics component.
The RAM will make a miniscule difference. SSD a much bigger difference than any RAM upgrade without an SSD.

Cool. Just need to find a cheap SSD with DRAM

Bonhomie

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Factor-Intelligent-Magician-Software/dp/B08PC43D78

Bonhomie

spaceboy said:

Bonhomie said:

spaceboy said:

This is the RAM I'm considering. It says "for AMD" in the title, do you think it will be ok with an Intell Core2Duo?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004625750934.html?spm=a2g0o.cart.0.0.378738dakLGjx2&mp=1

No........

Ah. Does AMD need different RAM?

No. AMD memory controller provided the an extra specification to recognise 'high density' RAM. It might not work with your chipset or it might recognise only half it's capacity.

facade

Just get something like a 1TB Samsung Evo 870, around £60 (I bet they were cheaper on Prime day.....) The Crucial MX500 series have DRAM for around £50 - the cheaper BX500 don't.

Then when the laptop gets replaced, you can pull the ssd and slot it into one of those £5 eBay cases and use it as a fast external drive.

(modern laptops use nvme drives- if they don't have fixed flash memory soldered to the board, so you can't reuse the 2.5" drive)

Newcad

On an old machine check how much RAM it can actually access.

I like https://www.mrmemory.co.uk enter the machine details and it will tell you what is possible and give price options.

A fairly recent experience:

Old Toshiba Tecra M9 laptop, XP Pro.

I installed Win 10 64-bit, very slow.

Took it up to 4GB ram, the most the icore2  processor would support - no change.

Then I swapped the old spinning drive to a SSD - massive improvement in speed and overall performance.

It's now comparable to my much newer 'everyday' Asus laptop.

Neil_Jones

Newcad said:

On an old machine check how much RAM it can actually access.

I like https://www.mrmemory.co.uk enter the machine details and it will tell you what is possible and give price options.

A fairly recent experience:

Old Toshiba Tecra M9 laptop, XP Pro.

I installed Win 10 64-bit, very slow.

Took it up to 4GB ram, the most the icore2  processor would support - no change.

Then I swapped the old spinning drive to a SSD - massive improvement in speed and overall performance.

It's now comparable to my much newer 'everyday' Asus laptop.

That laptop, if it uses the Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 CPU processor, is 64-bit capable.  64-bit processors have been a thing in consumer hardware since 2006.  That laptop dates from 2008.

I think what you mean to say is Windows XP, being 32-bit operating system, can only access 3.2Gb of memory (the rest is reserved)  Its (since 2006) has nothing to do with what the processor can support as they are all 64-bit anyway and can in theory support more memory than you could possibly ever need.  Your operating system's limit will be the overriding factor rather than that of the processor - after all Windows 11 Home "only" supports 128Gb of memory...

spaceboy

I did check and it has the 64-bit Windows 10 installed so 2 x 4GB RAM should be possible. But the price of that RAM is ridiculous - you're talking £100 which is pointless.

Bonhomie

spaceboy said:

I did check and it has the 64-bit Windows 10 installed so 2 x 4GB RAM should be possible. But the price of that RAM is ridiculous - you're talking £100 which is pointless.

Let's put this one to bed;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn6zxoh3oK4

Newcad

Neil_Jones said:

Newcad said:

On an old machine check how much RAM it can actually access.

I like https://www.mrmemory.co.uk enter the machine details and it will tell you what is possible and give price options.

A fairly recent experience:

Old Toshiba Tecra M9 laptop, XP Pro.

I installed Win 10 64-bit, very slow.

Took it up to 4GB ram, the most the icore2  processor would support - no change.

Then I swapped the old spinning drive to a SSD - massive improvement in speed and overall performance.

It's now comparable to my much newer 'everyday' Asus laptop.

That laptop, if it uses the Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 CPU processor, is 64-bit capable.  64-bit processors have been a thing in consumer hardware since 2006.  That laptop dates from 2008.

I think what you mean to say is Windows XP, being 32-bit operating system, can only access 3.2Gb of memory (the rest is reserved)  Its (since 2006) has nothing to do with what the processor can support as they are all 64-bit anyway and can in theory support more memory than you could possibly ever need.  Your operating system's limit will be the overriding factor rather than that of the processor - after all Windows 11 Home "only" supports 128Gb of memory...

I know very well how old that Toshiba laptop is and what it is capable of.

Yes the XP Pro was 32-bit, running on the 64-bit architecture.
When I got it it only had 1GB of RAM installed though.
I first put 32-bit Windows 10 on it but it was slow on only 1GB RAM, then I put Linux Mint on it for a while which was better.
 Then I upgraded the RAM to the 4GB max that the old chipset can address* and put 64-bit Win 10 on it, better but still slow. Finally I swapped out the old, slow, spinner for a SSD and it is now a decent machine again.

Overall it cost me about £55 for the new RAM and SSD, and my time, to take it from an old XP machine that was being thrown out to a Win10 machine that most people would be happy with as an everyday machine.
It's not going to beat any records but for general everyday use it's fine, for certain tasks it's now faster then my newer laptop.

*If you look at the Intel specs for their processors/chipsets it tells you the maximum RAM that each can address. In the case of the chipset in that Toshiba, an Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo T7250, it's 4GB. It doesn't matter what the OS can address in this case, the old chip itself sets the limit.