Performance Increase? *update post 100* Thanks guys!

Quote from nizzy1115 : Please read my above post on this. Reading comprehension is obviously not your forte.

You mean this part?

Quote : You have 2 ram slots. I bet it will support 4gb ram. They probably said max ram as 2gb (1gb x2) because at the time 2gb sticks did not exist.

So you think the screenshot is wrong and you're right?

Or might it be this part, where you so boldly state that

Quote : Because people are idiots!?!

Or might it be this inspirational and enlightened statement that says that if you're not gaming or doing video rendering, "whatever: will do.

Quote : If you play video games, render video or such then sure a processor makes a big difference, if not than your fine with whatever and wont see a difference.

Like a netbook, for instance, right?
I mean, if you're not gaming and video rendering, then a netbook would be as fast as a $1,000 Dell XPS, right?

Quote from RockySosua : Don't misquote me Bubba. I didn't say "Near Identical", I said, and I quote, And I stand behind that, from experience, daily experience, not because I'm a hobbyist who's read a few books and then tries to pull the politician game out on people, taking them out of context, and then goes on to make a fool of himself by stating his case, of having upgraded the CPU and THEN installing an SSD which gave him lots of speed, but evidently you never tried the SSD with the old processor, and BTW; THAT IS EXACTLY the topic at hand. I ain't looking for battles here on SD but when someone misquotes me and then tops it off with BS comparisons that are not applicable, then he's stepped over the line, which you just did. I appreciate that you probably believe what you're saying, but you're dead wrong. I've done it, MANY times. I don't think it, I KNOW IT !

It is understood in common discussion that I was refering to what you said exactly, not some out of context idea.

Quote : That tiny Celeron is soooo slow and weak, that all you would gain from an SSD is a bit more speed after first booting up and after that the performance would be near identical, assuming we are comparing it to a normal healthy spinner hard drive.

So you're basically saying that bootup speed would be the only benefit. I'm not "misquoting" you as you claim. And if you had any doubt you could pick up a dictionary:

Quote : mis·quote/misˈkwōt/ Verb: Quote (a person or a piece of written or spoken text) inaccurately. Noun: A passage or remark quoted inaccurately.

As for my "hobby" status, I used in be in IT for over a decade, much of which was hardware upgrades. Don't assume you know what you're talking about when it comes to judging me. But hey, we should just "trust you" all the same. And btw, this type of argument is known as an "appeal to authority" and it's considered a logical fallacy.

I don't need to try the SSD with the old processor, you will still reap the benefits. And if you don't "trust me" here's some proof, something you never seem to provide much of around here.
Old Computers Get Young w/ SSD [arstechnica.com]
Could An SSD Be The Best Upgrade For Your Old PC? [tomshardware.com]

But hey, starting a flame war is what you're good at around here, don't let me deny you the satisfaction...

Quote from nizzy1115 : In day to day tasks yes! absolutely it will feel faster! The processor sits idle 99.9% of the time during office applications and internet browsing. Without ram the computer is constantly using swap file to the hard disk which is painfully slow.

For day to day tasks, assuming you have no upgrade path options, I would take the Celeron with 8GB of RAM over an i7 with 1GB of RAM anyday when running Windows 7. Throw in an SSD with that Celeron for me and it would be a no brainer.

Quote from RockySosua : Like a netbook, for instance, right? I mean, if you're not gaming and video rendering, then a netbook would be as fast as a $1,000 Dell XPS, right?

For browsing the internet and typing up a few word docs/printing coupons yes!

God, I use a netbook exclusively at home when I have a 4gb core 2 duo laptop, and an 8gb i7 desktop collecting dust. They perform no different.

It browses the internet just as fast as my $15k servers I just bought at work with dual socket xenon's and 128gb ram and 15k scsi drives with 1gb raid controllers.

Forget looking at specs and benchmarks, they are meaningless for 99% of people.

My recommendation for anyone getting a new computer say your specking it out on dell.com, is to get the lowest processor that comes with it, up the ram to between 4 and 8 gb and get a decent speed hard disk. Thats all we need now days.

OP...

The processor @$70 is a decent upgrade for your Mom. I'd say its the most "bang for the buck" without changing other items.

I wouldn't put anything else into the system than that personally.... the $70 will certainly make it more usable and worth the investment, probably will give Mom good use for several years.

Quote from boltman2007 : OP... The processor @$70 is a decent upgrade for your Mom. I'd say its the most "bang for the buck" without changing other items. I wouldn't put anything else into the system than that personally.... the $70 will certainly make it more usable and worth the investment, probably will give Mom good use for several years.

I was just looking around on ebay, I can get the cpu for alot less than $70. probably around $35/$40. So yeah, I think it would be a good upgrade.

Quote from brbubba : For day to day tasks, assuming you have no upgrade path options, I would take the Celeron with 8GB of RAM over an i7 with 1GB of RAM anyday when running Windows 7. Throw in an SSD with that Celeron for me and it would be a no brainer.

So you would rather not be able to watch any HD videos or do anything remotely demanding?

Quote from boltman2007 : OP... The processor @$70 is a decent upgrade for your Mom. I'd say its the most "bang for the buck" without changing other items. I wouldn't put anything else into the system than that personally.... the $70 will certainly make it more usable and worth the investment, probably will give Mom good use for several years.

Quote from MikeOxlong : I was just looking around on ebay, I can get the cpu for alot less than $70. probably around $35/$40. So yeah, I think it would be a good upgrade.

I would assume there's a least some resale value in your current processor, so that should be taken into consideration as well ($10-15 ??).

Also, I would make sure you update the motherboard firmware to the latest release BEFORE upgrading the CPU. Sometimes older firmware may not support later processors without an update. It's a royal pain to find this out AFTER you pulled everything apart.

Quote from maramos : So you would rather not be able to watch any HD videos or do anything remotely demanding?

For starters this was in regards to standard day to day tasks, not 1080p movie watching. This should still be able to play back most HD videos. Obviously it might choke on a 5GB 1080p bluray rip. If you needed that little extra push you could probably get away with a lot using something like coreavc. Most people these days have some onboard GPU or discrete GPU that can accelerate this anyway.

I don't know what is considered "remotely demanding"? I didn't realize that having a celeron is like living in the stone ages. If you want to do video encodes then sure, this thing will probably suck big ones compared to the i7, but that's not really our target market in this scenario.

Quote from brbubba : For starters this was in regards to standard day to day tasks, not 1080p movie watching. This should still be able to play back most HD videos. Obviously it might choke on a 5GB 1080p bluray rip. If you needed that little extra push you could probably get away with a lot using something like coreavc. Most people these days have some onboard GPU or discrete GPU that can accelerate this anyway. I don't know what is considered "remotely demanding"? I didn't realize that having a celeron is like living in the stone ages. If you want to do video encodes then sure, this thing will probably suck big ones compared to the i7, but that's not really our target market in this scenario.

The celeron 440 he hasn't doesn't even meet the minimum flash 11 specs. It's going to choke on just about anything. A SSD and ram isn't going to do anything to help that. I would think being able to run flash is a much bigger concern than booting quicker.

Quote from nizzy1115 : Get out of here. A slow processor with 4-8gb ram will out perform in day to day tasks and user "feel" of being fast than an i7 with 1-2gb ram. Processors dont make your computer faster. Hard drive and ram are what matter most, and ram is the easiest cheapest to add.

This is actually so not true. In fact if you believe this then I would say you know almost nothing about computers...

I like to use laymans phrases for my customers to give them a basic understanding of what they otherwise could not understand. I'll use a common one now that I also heard from someone else.

The processor is the brain, it's how fast the computer can think. Just like the human brain. It is how FAST things go...

The ram is how many things you can be doing AT THAT SPEED, (almost like the human hands and arms, you can do more, but guess what if you don't have a good brain, you may not do anything at all).

Nizzy, general rule of thumb, The computer will only be as fast as it's slowest component.

If you have a P3 @ 450MHz with 8GB of ram, you want to tell me it will outperform a P4 3.0GHZ with 1GB of RAM??? I think not... you may be able to OPEN more, but the open speed will be slow I guarantee it.

Quote from nizzy1115 : In day to day tasks yes! absolutely it will feel faster! The processor sits idle 99.9% of the time during office applications and internet browsing. Without ram the computer is constantly using swap file to the hard disk which is painfully slow.

Idle is Idle. RAM Idles to. We're talking about usage. A faster processor is going to do more for you than MORE ram... It's like saying if you get a BIGGER gas tank you're car will drive faster. What you really need is a faster engine.

Quote from nizzy1115 : You have 2 ram slots. I bet it will support 4gb ram. They probably said max ram as 2gb (1gb x2) because at the time 2gb sticks did not exist. Because people are idiots!?!If you play video games, render video or such then sure a processor makes a big difference, if not than your fine with whatever and wont see a difference.

Those sticks did exist. They say a maximum of 2GB because that is all the board supports whether it's a 1x 2gb a 2x 1gb. If you put more than 2GB in the motherboard simply won't recognize it. Bottom line.

I suppose Nizzy you have a 32bit Windows machine running 16GB of RAM with a Terabyte SSD drive connected via infrared with a 320x DVD burner attached via PS2.

Yea...

Quote from eibgrad : I would assume there's a least some resale value in your current processor, so that should be taken into consideration as well ($10-15 ??). Also, I would make sure you update the motherboard firmware to the latest release BEFORE upgrading the CPU. Sometimes older firmware may not support later processors without an update. It's a royal pain to find this out AFTER you pulled everything apart.

I did not think about that. I think this is the download I am looking for but not sure.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/w...pv-60493-1

Quote from Aitrus : This is actually so not true. In fact if you believe this then I would say you know almost nothing about computers... I like to use laymans phrases for my customers to give them a basic understanding of what they otherwise could not understand. I'll use a common one now that I also heard from someone else. The processor is the brain, it's how fast the computer can think. Just like the human brain. It is how FAST things go... The ram is how many things you can be doing AT THAT SPEED, (almost like the human hands and arms, you can do more, but guess what if you don't have a good brain, you may not do anything at all). Nizzy, general rule of thumb, The computer will only be as fast as it's slowest component. If you have a P3 @ 450MHz with 8GB of ram, you want to tell me it will outperform a P4 3.0GHZ with 1GB of RAM??? I think not... you may be able to OPEN more, but the open speed will be slow I guarantee it. Idle is Idle. RAM Idles to. We're talking about usage. A faster processor is going to do more for you than MORE ram... It's like saying if you get a BIGGER gas tank you're car will drive faster. What you really need is a faster engine. Those sticks did exist. They say a maximum of 2GB because that is all the board supports whether it's a 1x 2gb a 2x 1gb. If you put more than 2GB in the motherboard simply won't recognize it. Bottom line. I suppose Nizzy you have a 32bit Windows machine running 16GB of RAM with a Terabyte SSD drive connected via infrared with a 320x DVD burner attached via PS2. Yea...

OK, if you go to configure a desktop today you cannot buy a p3...the slowest processors sold today in new computers are MORE than fine for 99.9% of people. Ram is what makes a difference. Thats what my argument is, your twisting it to be something different.

My netbook is a 3 year old lenovo 1.6ghz single core atom with 2gb ram 160gb hard drive, and windows 7 pro. It runs just fine. Vista runs ram heavy, thats why i suggested the OP benefit from 4gb ram. Processor will not make up for the lack of ram.

The whole laymans term "cpu is the brain" is not quite accurate in my mind seeing as our brains would be equivalent to the cpu, hard drive, and ram in a computer, and even northbridge and southbridge too.

Lets step back and see whats happening on the computer. Lets say the person wants to load up internet explorer to go to slickdeals.net.

They click their icon to launch the app. The hard drive is told to locate the application and load it into ram (if available if not then virtual memory (more hard drive activity)) and start the necessary services. There is a little bit of CPU I/O, but mainly its a hard drive intensive task.

Now that its open they go to slickdeals.net. There is a little bit of cpu power used to render the page as well as play all of slickdeal's wonderful advertisements, but again very little. A slow processor vs a fast processor might make a difference of say at most tenths of seconds. Nothing noticeable to the end user.

Now lets say they start visiting lots of other web pages and leaving many tabs open. This again repeats the process but is still very little cpu used and mostly ram/hard drive intensive since all the pages are being stored there.

Other programs are similar like word, just a bit of CPU upon program launch then mostly idle. RAM/hard drive page file keep it running in the background.

If your programs can avoid using page file and store everything in ram they will feel much faster.

Quote from Aitrus : I suppose Nizzy you have a 32bit Windows machine running 16GB of RAM with a Terabyte SSD drive connected via infrared with a 320x DVD burner attached via PS2. Yea...

And I dont get why you think I'm an idiot. I have many years experience in hardware and software and end user integration / support and make a boat load of money doing so...I have shelf filled with awards from my employers who love my work.

I dont know your history/experience, but I'm assuming you work for best buy's geek squad and quite likely live at home in moms basement.

To the OP, save your $70 bucks on the processor upgrade. Put it towards a new computer fund for your mom, it will be better spent there.