Is it a lemon? Or is something not right here...

[PixlRabt]

So recently the HDD in my sisters laptop failed. After a short lived recovery campaign sentenced the drive to death, I took advantage of the situation to upgrade my very poor quality laptop by simply switching the HDD's and installing the RAM (which surprisingly was compatible) into the inherited laptop. So now I have a surprisingly capable and super snappy uni/on the road web browsing and word processing notebook, running an AMD A4 APU with R3 graphics and 8GB of RAM. My problem now is that anything more graphics intensive than youtube refuses to work.  I'm not stupid, I know this thing is certainly no gaming behemoth, but when it was in my sisters ownership I saw it fly through sim's and WoW with ease. Now it struggles with the Minion's game on the windows store, and just before writing this failed to play Splix.io for crying out loud. Have I missed something or is this computer really just a lemon?

 

(P.S. APU driver was updated, made no difference)

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

It might have an APU as well as a dedicated graphics card.  (I used to have an HP DV6-3000sb which had a similar dual graphics solution).  If the secondary card has no driver, the laptop may be running on the weaker APU only, which would explain the lack of performance. 

 

Look up the laptop's exact specs and see if there is any mention of a secondary graphics card.  If there is, install the drivers for that. 

[Guest Kloaked]

What memory frequency was the old memory compared to the new?

[Matt_98]

4 minutes ago, tharrison14 said:

So recently the HDD in my sisters laptop failed. After a short lived recovery campaign sentenced the drive to death, I took advantage of the situation to upgrade my very poor quality laptop by simply switching the HDD's and installing the RAM (which surprisingly was compatible) into the inherited laptop. So now I have a surprisingly capable and super snappy uni/on the road web browsing and word processing notebook, running an AMD A4 APU with R3 graphics and 8GB of RAM. My problem now is that anything more graphics intensive than youtube refuses to work.  I'm not stupid, I know this thing is certainly no gaming behemoth, but when it was in my sisters ownership I saw it fly through sim's and WoW with ease. Now it struggles with the Minion's game on the windows store, and just before writing this failed to play Splix.io for crying out loud. Have I missed something or is this computer really just a lemon?

 

(P.S. APU driver was updated, made no difference)

 

what os are you on?

[PixlRabt]

3 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

It might have an APU as well as a dedicated graphics card.  (I used to have an HP DV6-3000sb which had a similar dual graphics solution).  If the secondary card has no dirver, the laptop may be running on the weaker APU only, which would explain the lack of performance. 

 

Look up the laptop's exact specs and see if there is any mention of a secondary graphics card.  If there is, install the drivers for that. 

I'll give this a shot, as I find it weird that there is no AMD display adapter listed in device manager under the Display Adapter tab.

3 minutes ago, Kloaked said:

What memory frequency was the old memory compared to the new?

I'm not 100% sure as both sticks are now inside this machine, but I remember that both the stick that was already in the laptop and the donor stick were definitely the same frequency and they were both from Kingston. The laptops are a HP and Acer but were only a little more than a year apart in model.

2 minutes ago, Matt_98 said:

what os are you on?

Windows 8.1 Home.

[colmanhymx]

14 minutes ago, tharrison14 said:

So recently the HDD in my sisters laptop failed. After a short lived recovery campaign sentenced the drive to death, I took advantage of the situation to upgrade my very poor quality laptop by simply switching the HDD's and installing the RAM (which surprisingly was compatible) into the inherited laptop. So now I have a surprisingly capable and super snappy uni/on the road web browsing and word processing notebook, running an AMD A4 APU with R3 graphics and 8GB of RAM. My problem now is that anything more graphics intensive than youtube refuses to work.  I'm not stupid, I know this thing is certainly no gaming behemoth, but when it was in my sisters ownership I saw it fly through sim's and WoW with ease. Now it struggles with the Minion's game on the windows store, and just before writing this failed to play Splix.io for crying out loud. Have I missed something or is this computer really just a lemon?

 

(P.S. APU driver was updated, made no difference)

What's the speed of your new hdd? (I Meant the RPM)

[Tieox]

Same frequency is one thing, the timing could be a whole different tale. I'd be tempted to remove the newly installed ram, then see if there is any noticeable improvement.

 

 

[PixlRabt]

2 minutes ago, igan3w_ said:

What's the speed of your new hdd? (I Meant the RPM)

I didn't think to check, and it's currently in the Laptop. I'd check it but it's not the simplest laptop to disassemble and for the next day or so while I'm out of town and away from my desktop rig it's all I have. It's a WD Blue 500GB drive I believe, and the original laptop it came in was released in 2013, if that gives any sort of indication as to it's performance.

[PixlRabt]

5 minutes ago, Kierax said:

Same frequency is one thing, the timing could be a whole different tale. I'd be tempted to remove the newly installed ram, then see if there is any noticeable improvement.

 

 

I've never dabbled in mixing RAM previously because of this and my limited knowledge on the topic. However, on the original 4GB it ran terribly, program load times were ridiculous and I was getting constant low memory warnings. Now, it's the snappiest laptop I've ever owned. I would however be keen to conduct your suggested experiment, but will have to wait until I'm back home when I don't specifically need it to be running.

[Matt_98]

9 minutes ago, tharrison14 said:

Windows 8.1 Home.

 

well there's your issue

[colmanhymx]

1 minute ago, tharrison14 said:

I didn't think to check, and it's currently in the Laptop. I'd check it but it's not the simplest laptop to disassemble and for the next day or so while I'm out of town and away from my desktop rig it's all I have. It's a WD Blue 500GB drive I believe, and the original laptop it came in was released in 2013, if that gives any sort of indication as to it's performance.

Honestly i once also had a HP Elitebook from 201x and i swapped the stock 7200rpm drive to a larger capacity 5400rpm drive but once loaded the os, it was barely usable. i couldn't even open chrome without waiting for a minute and boot up took so long. Also cpu and ram usage was almost at max for some reason but after switching to a ssd, it booted up fast, no problems with loading applications, even some basic games (intel hd graphics) and the most important thing is that the cpu and ram usage hand gone back down to normal levels (10-20%for cpu and ~30%for ram)

 

So try either a basic ssd, 128gb models are quite cheap nowadays, but just get one that you thing the brand is trustworthy or you can try a 7200rpm hdd but i would suggest a 128gb ssd since it makes daily usage of the computer so much better

 

 

 

[Tieox]

2 minutes ago, tharrison14 said:

I've never dabbled in mixing RAM previously because of this and my limited knowledge on the topic. However, on the original 4GB it ran terribly, program load times were ridiculous and I was getting constant low memory warnings. Now, it's the snappiest laptop I've ever owned. I would however be keen to conduct your suggested experiment, but will have to wait until I'm back home when I don't specifically need it to be running.

 

When you changed the HD did you fully re-install Windows, or just try to update the drivers?

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

RAM frequency or timing doesn't make any noticeable difference, Linus already made a video comparing different speeds etc. 

 

HDD speed would affect boot times and general responsiveness, but not video playback or game performance. 

My gut feeling is still pointing towards the graphics.  What's the exact make and model of that laptop?

[Spork829]

22 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

It might have an APU as well as a dedicated graphics card.  (I used to have an HP DV6-3000sb which had a similar dual graphics solution).  If the secondary card has no driver, the laptop may be running on the weaker APU only, which would explain the lack of performance. 

 

Look up the laptop's exact specs and see if there is any mention of a secondary graphics card.  If there is, install the drivers for that. 

That shouldn't make it this bad though. I used a laptop back in the day with an AMD A6 chip and just the onboard graphics, was able to play Minecraft, LoL and a few other games just fine.

[colmanhymx]

Maybe you should try a fresh install of windows first. Backup important data to another hard drive, then reinstall the operating system. Also format the drive before you install the os.

[PixlRabt]

3 minutes ago, igan3w_ said:

Honestly i once also had a HP Elitebook from 201x and i swapped the stock 7200rpm drive to a larger capacity 5400rpm drive but once loaded the os, it was barely usable. i couldn't even open chrome without waiting for a minute and boot up took so long. Also cpu and ram usage was almost at max for some reason but after switching to a ssd, it booted up fast, no problems with loading applications, even some basic games (intel hd graphics) and the most important thing is that the cpu and ram usage hand gone back down to normal levels (10-20%for cpu and ~30%for ram)

 

So try either a basic ssd, 128gb models are quite cheap nowadays, but just get one that you thing the brand is trustworthy or you can try a 7200rpm hdd but i would suggest a 128gb ssd since it makes daily usage of the computer so much better

 

 

 

I've got a Kingston 128GB SSD in my desktop, I'll steal it and see if it makes any difference before going ahead and purchasing another drive. Getting by on that University student budget, you know how it is haha.

[PixlRabt]

5 minutes ago, Kierax said:

When you changed the HD did you fully re-install Windows, or just try to update the drivers?

When I originally did the swap the HDD had a lot of data on it and I hadn't used it in a while and didn't have a chance to go through it properly to do a full reinstall, so I took the shortcut and just reinstalled drivers to match the new hardware.

[colmanhymx]

3 minutes ago, tharrison14 said:

I've got a Kingston 128GB SSD in my desktop, I'll steal it and see if it makes any difference before going ahead and purchasing another drive. Getting by on that University student budget, you know how it is haha.

but is that ssd your main os drive?

[PixlRabt]

6 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

RAM frequency or timing doesn't make any noticeable difference, Linus already made a video comparing different speeds etc. 

 

HDD speed would affect boot times and general responsiveness, but not video playback or game performance. 

My gut feeling is still pointing towards the graphics.  What's the exact make and model of that laptop?

it's an Acer E5-521-47TB, only thing that's different from the original spec is an extra 4GB of RAM and a slightly older and lower capacity HDD.

[PixlRabt]

2 minutes ago, igan3w_ said:

but is that ssd your main os drive?

Yes, but literally all it has on it is the OS, I keep all my data on other traditional HDD's, so it wouldn't be too difficult to format and reinstall windows again.

[Tieox]

3 minutes ago, tharrison14 said:

When I originally did the swap the HDD had a lot of data on it and I hadn't used it in a while and didn't have a chance to go through it properly to do a full reinstall, so I took the shortcut and just reinstalled drivers to match the new hardware.

 

I'd seriously suspect that something is interfering with the drivers of the current laptop from the previous drivers.  A clean install may help things somewhat, adding an SSD would help it even more.

[PixlRabt]

6 minutes ago, Spork829 said:

That shouldn't make it this bad though. I used a laptop back in the day with an AMD A6 chip and just the onboard graphics, was able to play Minecraft, LoL and a few other games just fine.

I'm fairly certain that all this has is onboard as well, and I know that it was able to run WoW very smoothly, albeit at lower settings.

[colmanhymx]

1 minute ago, tharrison14 said:

Yes, but literally all it has on it is the OS, I keep all my data on other traditional HDD's, so it wouldn't be too difficult to format and reinstall windows again.

I see. And also have you checked the temps of your notebook? I'm not really sure but it might have a little chance that its overheating. Perhaps.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

14 minutes ago, tharrison14 said:

so I took the shortcut and just reinstalled drivers to match the new hardware

Yeah .... that could also be the problem

[Spork829]

1 minute ago, tharrison14 said:

I'm fairly certain that all this has is onboard as well, and I know that it was able to run WoW very smoothly, albeit at lower settings.

What I would do is check temps, I don't know why it would be overheating now if it didn't before but maybe. Also check the BIOS because I know a lot of laptops like that, such as my old A6 one, have options for CPU/GPU frequency reduction in the BIOS to save battery. I use my A6 laptop for school now (typing this on it actually) and I have the CPU turned down to 800Mhz max and get way more battery.