Will upgrading a laptop from 5400rpm drive to SSD be a HUGE improvement? Or just noticeable?

[mlah384]

Will upgrading a laptop from 5400rpm drive to SSD be a HUGE improvement? Or just noticeable? I have a Dell XPS 1530 that has a t7800 cpu, 500gb 5400rpm samsung drive and 4gb ddr2 667mhz. I want to make it faster. I wish there was a way to put more than 4GB of ram in it and a faster gpu and cpu.... So I guess I'm limited to only upgrading the hard drive to ssd and the ram to 800mhz?

 

[firewolfsm]

Don't bother upgrading the ram, but the SSD will definitely help.

 

[RollerBoySE]

Originally posted by: mlah384
Will upgrading a laptop from 5400rpm drive to SSD be a HUGE improvement? Or just noticeable? I have a Dell XPS 1530 that has a t7800 cpu, 500gb 5400rpm samsung drive and 4gb ddr2 667mhz. I want to make it faster. I wish there was a way to put more than 4GB of ram in it and a faster gpu and cpu.... So I guess I'm limited to only upgrading the hard drive to ssd and the ram to 800mhz?

Defineately HUGE.

I upgraded an old ThinkPad T61 from HDD to SSD (Intel X25-M G2) and Windows 7 boottime went from well over a minute to 20 seconds. Starting Word used to take 8 seconds now it takes 2. Everything is much more responsive, especially database operations.

 

[mlah384]

That's definitely encouraging... Right now i run Adobe CS4 applications on it and they are very sluggish!

 

[imported_Hok]

maybe cold hard numbers would be better...

i'll post my results later...

 

[Emulex]

huge! 5400rpm lol. painful

 

[KingstonU]

Just recognize that SSD's are ~$3/GB. If you can get your desired storage size and it's within your budget then go for it :thumbsup:

 

[n7]

IME, huge.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Huge. The first thing you'll notice is that it does not take 4.7 hours to boot the OS. Windows 7 is a good idea also if you can.

 

[mooncancook]

Imagine what a SSD can do to a notebook with a 1.8" 4200rpm drive. Sux that there's few selection of 1.8" SSD on the market

 

[Emulex]

^^ indeed. X18-M in a 2730p tablet is quite a mad fast tablet.

 

[Ben90]

Im not trying to bash ur computer, i just have to lol at something really fast (i bought myself an XPS before i became knowledgeable with computer stuff)

lol @ a 5400 drive in a Dell Xtreme Performance System

The first couple generations of XPSs were actually pretty decent systems (albeit expensive for what u got), but they seem to be getting slower and slower now

 

[Greg04]

Originally posted by: mlah384
Will upgrading a laptop from 5400rpm drive to SSD be a HUGE improvement? Or just noticeable? I have a Dell XPS 1530 that has a t7800 cpu, 500gb 5400rpm samsung drive and 4gb ddr2 667mhz. I want to make it faster. I wish there was a way to put more than 4GB of ram in it and a faster gpu and cpu.... So I guess I'm limited to only upgrading the hard drive to ssd and the ram to 800mhz?

Ron Jeremy Huge. I just upgraded my desktop to an intel G2 80GB from a WD 640GB 7200rpm, which is no slouch - and the diff is night and day. PS starts in 2-3 seconds, all MS office suite is instant on, boot time is quartered. Smoking fast.

 

[TC91]

Originally posted by: Ben90
Im not trying to bash ur computer, i just have to lol at something really fast (i bought myself an XPS before i became knowledgeable with computer stuff)

lol @ a 5400 drive in a Dell Xtreme Performance System

The first couple generations of XPSs were actually pretty decent systems (albeit expensive for what u got), but they seem to be getting slower and slower now

it's a laptop man

 

[mlah384]

Well, the laptop came with a Samsung 64gb SSD which was fast (only 60mbs/sec or something like that though) but 64gb was just way too small.... So i got the 500gb samsung 5400rpm drive because there were no 7200rpm ones and it seemed ok on speed.... figured I'd upgrade it later.... and now is later... and SSDs are a hell of a lot faster then the 1st generation ones like i had... I just wish i could get a 256-500gb ssd that wasn't stupid expensive...

 

[pcslookout]

It will feel like a new computer.

 

[coolVariable]

It's faster but does not give the WOW effect.
It's rather the reverse ... if you then work on a spindle disk computer you get really, really frustrated.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
It's faster but does not give the WOW effect.
It's rather the reverse ... if you then work on a spindle disk computer you get really, really frustrated.

I agree with this. Initially you may think "WOW, that's FAST!" but it'll be partially a placebo affect, and partially the actual speed of the SSD. Over a week or so, the feeling will die down and it'll feel like an "average" computer again. However, the next time you work on a computer with a slow/moderately slow spindle drive, you'll want to put it throw the nearest window; it'll feel painfully slow compared to your new SSD.

I'm not insinuating that SSDs are worthless or won't give a noticeable performance boost. I love mine, and it's definitely the most noticeable upgrade I've made in the past several years. Don't expect to be blown away every time you sit down at the computer, though.

If you can afford it, get one.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky

Originally posted by: coolVariable
It's faster but does not give the WOW effect.
It's rather the reverse ... if you then work on a spindle disk computer you get really, really frustrated.

I agree with this. Initially you may think "WOW, that's FAST!" but it'll be partially a placebo affect, and partially the actual speed of the SSD. Over a week or so, the feeling will die down and it'll feel like an "average" computer again. However, the next time you work on a computer with a slow/moderately slow spindle drive, you'll want to put it throw the nearest window; it'll feel painfully slow compared to your new SSD.

I'm not insinuating that SSDs are worthless or won't give a noticeable performance boost. I love mine, and it's definitely the most noticeable upgrade I've made in the past several years. Don't expect to be blown away every time you sit down at the computer, though.

If you can afford it, get one.

thats not a placebo; in fact it is the exact opposite of a placebo (Something that does nothing but that the people using it SWEAR it is working), What you have here is you adjusting your expectations / perception. It feels less awe inspiring after about a week, although I Wouldn't go as far as saying it feels like a normal computer... except the next time you use a normal computer it feels so slow you want to throw it through a window as you said. Although it never feels completely normal, I can still tell it is faster.

Placebo: Ever since I painted flames on my car, it drives faster and gets better MPG. My friend calculated the MPG based on my gas consumption and actual mileage and says it is the same, but I don't believe him, I think he just failed in math.

Adjusted Perceptions: When I started driving, 30 MPH felt very fast and I Was scared to do over 40MPH... a few weeks later I Was going 70 MPH and it felt normal, while 30MPH felt like a slow crawl of death.

 

[jimhsu]

I didn't think my SSD install was that fast until I was stuck with a laptop with a (fairly speedy relative to what's out there) 7200 rpm for a couple of days. God ... the molasses on startup - 1 minute to start up firefox and "just a few" explorer windows after boot. I have unrealistic expectations of all computers launching Word in 2 seconds now.

 

[taltamir]

once you go SSD, you never go back

it is a better upgrade than any other system component (except for some extreme cases... like if you have 512MB of ram on a vista system)