To Upgrade or Buy New...?

The 4gb Intel Turbo Memory is in...

Computer seems fast... but not?

I'm not entirely sure how to explain it... It load some things faster and some things a little slower...

It also seems to be running a bit hotter...? WTF?

For example... If my computer craps out for anything and I have to do a hard reset, or if it overheats because it turns on in my backpack... (sometimes these things happen... both have only happend once since installing the TM but... its they're not related...) If this happens, then the restart takes forever... BUT one more restart and the whole thing runs like a champ...

Anywho... I'm not entirely sure how to bench test the machine since i'm pretty sure passmark scores won't be helped so much with User Pinning... But We'll see...

I'll post some screenshots soon...

-Spart

 

Before anything else, I would like to say that I'm very sorry this took soo long to get out... I'm never gonna be a best selling author

OK guys... Here's what I hope will be the final update for this thread...

First off I'll go over the updates and then the performance increases...

I originally purchased the C-140X in 2007 it came with the ATI 2300HD, an Intel T7300 running at 2 ghz, 2gigs of memory and an 80gig HD.

Over time it was good but like any tech enthusiast I suffered from buyer’s remorse after about 6 months...

So, I upgraded to a Hitachi 7k200 (I think)... that's a 7200rpm 200gig HD and upgraded one of my 2 memory cards from 1gig to 2gigs.

That held me off for another year actually and for the most part I have been quite happy... But there was always that blasted CPU...

2009 saw me graduating from college and taking a job teaching in Japan and with pretty real money for the first time in my life. The time was prime for this C140X's final upgrades...

Windows W7 definitely helps make this system much snappier than it had ever been with Vista and I had initially intended to switch from a 32-bit to a 64-bit OS to get the most snap possible... Alas, it was not meant to be... With the 64-bit install of W7 I had this stutter running through my system that was not simply noticeable but enraging... I have no idea why this happens but I can definitely say that this is NOT a problem with the 32-bit install... Anyway, after I had set everything up on the new HD under the 64-bit system I did something pretty stupid. I was testing the temps coming from the system (apparently W7 runs hotter than Vista... Don't ask me why, it just does... I know for a fact it does on this system. So no arguments ) with the old hard drive (the one that had Vista on it...) I put the system to sleep so that I could pull the HD and swapped back in the new HD with my 64-bit W7 install. I turned the computer on and... Well, wouldn't you know it came out of sleep mode and ran W7 but with a Vista interface... WTF? Anyway, I shut it down instead of hard rebooting (which I'm sure would have saved the system) and wouldn't you know it, some file that was supposed to be written as W7 got written as Vista and teh system never booted again. Had to do a fresh install and decided to go with 32-bit because of the stutter anyway... Lesson learned: Don't swap HDs without shutting down the system...

The Hitachi 7k500 is huge and I finally feel like I have the space I need for my movies, music, pictures and documents... Not to mention all that pr0n...
(I would have preferred to go the SSD way, but I fear it will still be another 2 years before these come down to reasonable prices and by that time, (especially with all the hype and fruity fanboys that are rushing out to buy their maxiPads) I'm sure more convertibles will soon be out that will be running even better specs than what I have now...)

Additionally, the Intel turbo memory that came out at about the same time as this laptop originally did had finally become as stable a component as it probably ever will in about early 09, and even if Intel is scrapping it, it does make a noticeable difference in performance.

I had initially intended to upgrade the system memory from 3gigs to 4gigs, but since I'm running a 32-bit OS I kind of don’t see the point... (I still might though, but I won't post about it as it will not really boost performance by very much...)

Finally, the processor was upgraded to the t9500 running at 2.6ghz... The original t7300 running at 2ghz has a 4mb L2 cache and is based on the 65nm tech… the T9500 has a 6mb L2 cache and is based on the 45nm tech. In short it runs much (a good deal anyway) faster and cooler.
So, the part that you’ve all been waiting for… Please keep in mind that many of these results are for the 64-bit version of W7 and do not have the 32-bit results available and Vista both without any service packs or updates with as few things running as possible. Additionally I pulled up a review done by Bevelund, back in ’07 when these things first came out. You can find the complete review here . However please remember that the specs for this system are the same as the one that I bought back in the day.

Comparison:

Performance:

Windows Experience Index:

W7 T9500 (32bit w/turbo memory)
Overall: 3.8
Processor: 6.1
Memory: 6.1
Graphics: 3.9
Gaming Graphics: 3.8
Primary Hard Disk (Hitachi 7k500): 5.9

W7 T9500 (64bit w/turbo memory)
Overall: 3.8
Processor: 6.2
Memory: 5.9
Graphics: 3.9
Gaming Graphics: 3.8
Primary Hard Disk (Hitachi 7k500): 5.9

Vista T7300 (Stock System as reviewed by Bevelund on 08/30/2007)
Overall: 3.8
Processor: 4.9
Memory: 4.8
Graphics: 3.9
Gaming Graphics: 3.8
Primary Hard Disk (Original 80gb): 4.8​

PC Mark 05

W7 T9500 (64bit w/out turbo memory): 4902 PCMarks

W7 T9500 (64bit w/turbo memory): 5253 PCMarks

Vista T7300 (Stock System as reviewed by Bevelund on 08/30/2007): 4342 PCMarks​

3DMark05

W7 T9500 (32bit w/Hitachi 7k500 AND Intel Turbo Memory): Could not get this to run properly on W7… Kept reporting back 1012 3DMarks… No idea why this happened.

Vista T7300 (Stock System as reviewed by Bevelund on 08/30/2007): 1956 3DMarks​

HDTune Read

W7 T9500 (w/Hitachi 7k500 AND Intel Turbo Memory):

Min: 31.5 MB/s
Max: 107.3 MB/s
Avg: 83.4 MB/s
Burst Rate: 153.6 MB/s
Access Time: 16.9ms
CPU Usage: 9.4%
​

Vista T7300: Not Available… Can’t see Bevelund’s results on the site anymore​

Pi (time to calculate to 2 Million digits)

W7 t9500 (32bit w/Hitachi 7k500 AND Intel Turbo Memory): 43s

Vista T7300: 58s​

Temps:

Dropping from an overall idle system average of about 40-50 degrees Celsius (Vista and 2ghz T7300) to about a 30-40 degrees Celsius (W7 2.6ghz T9500)
(These numbers are defiantly approxi-guesstimations… No graphs were made. The only thing that I’m going off of is the logging function of Speedfan. Sometimes that temp of the GPU spikes all the way to 70 (shuts down if it spikes to 82-ish but this hasn’t happened since I remembered to clean out the air vent…), but that’s been the norm since I first got this computer...)​

Battery Life:

Real life usage on a worn down almost 3 year old battery running on performance mode and surfing the Internet, Skyping, the occasional YouTube video, etc.

W7 t9500 (32bit w/Hitachi 7k500 AND Intel Turbo Memory): 1hr 50mins

Vista T7300: 1hr 30mins​

Personal feelings:

Overall I’m extremely satisfied with this Laptop. When I first got the C-140X it was just a few months before the 141 came out and as I said, I was very saddened by this. But with a few bucks, the performance has definitely increased (the system is maxed out except for memory which I might still upgrade…) and I couldn’t really be happier.
Sorry this took so long to get out…​

I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did. For the most part this laptop will still perform pretty close to some of the newest comparable stuff out (this means other tablets and such... Not gaming laptops). Let me know if you have any questions... I usually get back to those. Have a good one.

-Spart

P.S.

I have several pics of the test results... If anyone has doubts or would like them posted... I'll take people help on it... I'm too tired to care about it right now... Sorry ​

 

Looking over the test results, I really want a new hard drive. Nothing particularly wrong with the stock 160 GB one, other than that it feels a tad sluggish and runs noticeably hot at times. Only thing I can't really decide on there is whether I want to upgrade the HDD or the RAM first, and I certainly don't like the insane price jump that DDR2 has had over the last year and a half.

 

I'd go with the RAM... I was just reading an article on Engadget that was talking about 1-1.5TB drives being released soon... Can't upgrade the memory past 4gb. Later you might regret buying a HD right now.

-Spart