Can I make my laptop any better?

[Yourmomismyboyfriend]

I have an Hp laptop with the specs in the picture below. Its horribly laggy and freezes when switching between tabs. My question is this. If I put an ssd an more ram (another 8gb stick), will i see any improvement? Or is it not worth my time? Also with one application running I only have about 8gb out of the 12 installed. Any tips whatsoever will help. I can't afford a new laptop at the moment.

 

thanks

[Bitter]

That CPU is soldered, no upgrade there. Are you running out of RAM? Are you using a SSD or HDD?

[Norwegiantweaker]

it can be the fact that you have two random sized ram sticks. putting a ssd will make it 100 times faster. can also be alot of crap running in the backround . could be quite alot of resons as to why its slow but the biggest factor is that you have a hdd 

[Yourmomismyboyfriend]

1 minute ago, Bitter said:

That CPU is soldered, no upgrade there. Are you running out of RAM? Are you using a SSD or HDD?

Well yeah I know I cant change the CPU. Idk about running out of ram but it gets used quick. Yes, I have and HDD and I know an ssd would help but I was wondering if it would make a difference in the random freezing.

[unclewebb]

2 minutes ago, Norwegiantweaker said:

a lot of crap running in the background

That should be checked first.  People install programs without keeping a close eye on things.  An SSD will make a huge difference.

 

I would also install ThrottleStop from TechPowerUp so you can enable Intel Speed Shift.  On the main screen of ThrottleStop, it should show SST in green to confirm that Speed Shift is enabled.  If it is not enabled, go into the TPL window and enable it.  Now you can set the EPP (Energy Performance Preference) value to 0 for maximum performance.  This will give much better off idle performance compared to the default Windows setting.  EPP can be increased up to about 80 for more of a balanced profile.

 

With your system completely idle, what does ThrottleStop report for C0%?  This is the amount of time your CPU is spending managing all of the background tasks.  On a 2 core CPU like you have, getting the C0% down to about 0.5% is possible.  If C0% is up at 10% when your computer is idle, that will cause lags.  Here is an example of a 4th Gen 4 core CPU for comparison.  

 

 

All threads are reporting very low C0% activity when the CPU is idle.

 

 

 

[Norwegiantweaker]

3 minutes ago, unclewebb said:

-snip--

 

 

all of that can be adjusted in the power settings and wouldn't req a third party app btw. 

[Yourmomismyboyfriend]

15 minutes ago, unclewebb said:

That should be checked first.  People install programs without keeping a close eye on things.  An SSD will make a huge difference.

 

I would also install ThrottleStop from TechPowerUp so you can enable Intel Speed Shift.  On the main screen of ThrottleStop, it should show SST in green to confirm that Speed Shift is enabled.  If it is not enabled, go into the TPL window and enable it.  Now you can set the EPP (Energy Performance Preference) value to 0 for maximum performance.  This will give much better off idle performance compared to the default Windows setting.  EPP can be increased up to about 80 for more of a balanced profile.

 

With your system completely idle, what does ThrottleStop report for C0%?  This is the amount of time your CPU is spending managing all of the background tasks.  On a 2 core CPU like you have, getting the C0% down to about 0.5% is possible.  If C0% is up at 10% when your computer is idle, that will cause lags.  Here is an example of a 4th Gen 4 core CPU for comparison.  

 

 

All threads are reporting very low C0% activity when the CPU is idle.

 

 

 

This is what I got. Didnt change the EPP because I didnt know how.

[unclewebb]

If that screenshot is when your CPU is idle, it shows that it is spending 28.1% of the time processing background tasks.  Open up the Task manager and find out what is running in the background.  Go to the Details tab and click on the CPU column to organize the running tasks by CPU usage.

 

To change the Speed Shift -EPP value in ThrottleStop, just change the number 128 to 0.  You can edit that number and the change will happen immediately.

 

An idle CPU should show the cores spending 99% of their time in the low power C7 state.