What is single most effective PC/Notebook speed enhancement ?

What would you say makes the single most noticeable difference to a PC or Notebooks speed in executing tasks, launching applications etc.

1) Hard drive speed.
Eg. a dual core 2.13Ghz processor and 5400rpm drive vs. a dual core 2Ghz processor and a 7200rpm or 10000rpm drive. Memory say 4GB for both. (Or a 2.66Ghz processor 5400rpm drive vs. the 2Ghz and 10000rpm drive)

2) The speed of the Processor.
3) Memory

I think it's a pity that only the top end laptops offer 7200rpm drives. Practically all the Sonys, Toshibas etc. are 5400 rpm.

 

It's a pretty close tie between RAM and hard drive spindle speed.
Hard drive speed is very noticeable during bootup, and launching of apps.
Memory helps bootup a bit, but more noticeable when working with apps, depending upon the apps of course. And overall PC performance when moving about doing stuff.

Most "home grade" laptops, especially those under $1,000 bucks, will have a cheaper 5400rpm drive. Super cheap models, and quite a few ultra portables, will have only 4200rpm drives.

The 3rd feature I look for on laptops is an Intel Centrino wifi chipset, better range and speed over cheaper budget proprietary wireless chipsets. Intel 5100 or 5300 are the current ones.

If you already have a laptop with decent RAM and CPU and you want to hold onto it for a bit longer, but you suffer from a sluggish hard drive....it's quite economical and easy to get a 7200rpm hard drive upgrade. For about 120 - 150 bucks you can pickup a quality 7200rpm drive, a laptop drive cloning/transfer kit like Apricorns EZ Gig, and in an hour or two be enjoying a much faster machine. I get most of my laptop drive upgrades at drivesolutions.com

Of course if you budget allows, and you don't need tons of space...check out SSD drives. WOW...hold on to your hat! They fly.

 

I got my eye on an SSD drive for my laptop. My friend has an Intel one, his boot up time has gone from sluggish, to insanely quick - genuinely quick. That is the one true tangible speedy improvement I have seen with it. Benchmarks VS Real-Time feel - I'm not so sure.

Here is a good site for SSD info.

 

Since I have my Super Talent Ultradrive GX 64 GB (SSD) installed in my desktop system there is no more question, 'what the single most effective PC/Notebook speed enhancement' is.

Of course you shouldn't buy just any SSD that's on the shelf of your supplier, you have to consider some things like TRIM support, firmware updates, if you have true Sata II support (not crippled which would limit max speed of SSD) and depending what OS you will use other things etc.

A good website IMO is also http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667 (just one article of many worth reading!)

With SSD and Win 7 (coming from XP and HDD) you will feel suddenly like you are running a race car what a day before on the same hardware was a lame horse with 3 legs!

I cannot understand people who invest now in this times in new HDDs if not for data storage reasons (your movie collection ). Win 7 should run on SSD, really. - And yes, it is so great and I am not exaggerating. - Just watch all those movies on YouTube!

And it's true what they say: after your first speed experience - you get very fast used too btw. - you get crazy if you have to work on a non-SSD system again. - It is sooo damn sloooow!

 

Sure, I know about SSD's thanks for the links. I suppose my WD 10000rpm Velocity Raptors are the next best thing.
However I would like some more input on my original question i.e. leaving SSD's out of the equation.

 

Had read your post and interpreted to only be about laptops...
Since PC is included, yeah...the 10k rpm WD Raptors are awesome...I use those on my home rigs, wouldn't give them up unless it was a 15k Seagate Cheetah!

 

Your question isn't really one, I thought that would be obvious from all answers.

You WON'T notice ANY difference between 'dual core 2.13Ghz processor and .. dual core 2Ghz processor' in real world experience IMO.

And of course 10000 rpm is > 7200 > 5400 > 4200 - did you ever have the 'pleasure' sitting in front of an dual core laptop with 4200 rpm? Waiting while getting old? So really, what is the question here?

You should go for the fastest disk you can afford, isn't that clear? But the thing is ... the fastest disk (hdd) is unbearably slow (and loud!) compared to SSD. - As I said .. I don't understand anyone now buying something else than SSD for system partition (desktop or laptop), especially if 'speed in executing tasks, launching applications etc..' is important to you. For mass storage you could always plug in some cheap eSata/USB TB monster

The HDD is the bottleneck in whatever system you are going to build! I guess if you really had seen SSD at work you wouldn't have asked the question, right?

But as it seems you like noisy and - relative to SSD - lame HDDs which are only rotating very fast .. so no one is gonna stop you buying whatever you *think* will be the best in 'performance'.

Maybe you are one of those that buy 16 GB and load every application they probably need next week into a Ram-Disk or cache! - That could be once loaded (make a coffee ) very fast too, right? *justkidding*

 

I really want to build a new machine for Win 2008 & 7.

I like the idea of a core i5-750 or similar, bags of power at a extremely good price. Overclocks to 3.2GHz, supports DDR3.

I always use a minimum of 2 hard disks if I can using 2 page files - just enough on C: for a dump file and the main pf on the other one with both disks at 10000rpm makes for great performance in that area. This time I will use SDD.

 

First off...why do you keep insisting they are noisy? Yeah cheaper hard drives are noisy, I'm used to the better ones...liquid bearings, and in your better computer cases and laptop chassis, they are mounted on rubber grommets. So you don't hear the better ones.

And SSDs aren't for everyone....primary reason..they're still quite cost prohibitive. A good brand SSD drive of partially decent capacity will cost as much as the rest of the computer combined! Yeah they'll come down in price, but still, it's quite cost prohibitive for most end users.

 

Putting the pagefile on a separate spindle from your OS and programs is suuuuuch a nice performance boost. I don't even bother with the dump file on C...who the heck goes and turns to that dump file for troubleshooting? Perhaps 3 people in the whole world. Just ignore that prompt.

 

without an ssd, the biggest speed increase is to get rid of all your antispyware software and just use a basic antivirus/firewall/ and returnil (or similar virtual software instead of antispyware). I know firsthand how much all these antispyware software will slow you down, that's why I don't use them anymore. Even some of the bloated antivirus software will reduce your pc to a crawl.

My phenom 9750 boots ups faster than my amd 4800 but I'm not sure if having quadcores makes a big difference. All my boot drives are 7200 IDE. Never used a sata as a boot drive only for data. So I'm not sure if I'm missing out in any speed increases.

People always blame hardware for there computer slowness but it is usually a software problem.

 

Yeah, thanks for the thumbs-up on that. I have 2 internal WD VelociRaptor backplane ready drives in my Desktop PC. They are quiet and run cool @ 28 deg. C practically all the time.
When still running Windows XP cold boot-up was only 12 secs. (not reinstalled for 3 years).
I am just trying to advise a member of the family needing a new laptop whether more powerful processors will make up for the sluggishness of a 5400rpm drive, seeing that the majority of laptops ship with them, or whether an upgrade to a faster 7200rpm drive will obviate the need for a more powerful processor. I have also suggested SSD drives but there is the cost factor to consider.

 

your kidding right?

@jonyjoe81 naw get rid of the av