Is my laptop too slow for 2019/2020?

[kratosthegodofwar]

It’s an HP Pavilion dv6 entertainment laptop with an i7 q720 (1.6ghz base 2.8 boost), 4gb DDR3 RAM, 560gb Samsung 5400rpm HDD, ATI HD5650. I notice it is painfully slow. I need to use it for virtualisation, packet tracer, multitasking, IT related stuff. Are these specs too weak for 2019/2020? 

[Spotty]

5 minutes ago, kratosthegodofwar said:

I notice it is painfully slow.

You've already answered your own question.

 

Judging by its specs it will be almost 10 years old. If you have the funds then it might be worthwhile replacing the laptop with something more modern.

 

[Lord Mirdalan]

3 minutes ago, kratosthegodofwar said:

It’s an HP Pavilion dv6 entertainment laptop with an i7 q720 (1.6ghz base 2.8 boost), 4gb DDR3 RAM, 560gb Samsung 5400rpm HDD, ATI HD5650. I notice it is painfully slow. I need to use it for virtualisation, packet tracer, multitasking, IT related stuff. Are these specs too weak for 2019/2020? 

Can you replace the RAM, and add an SSD? If you can pick up some used parts, it might be worth it. (You're probably running SATA II... That will make for some slow load times even with an SSD.)

 

Personally I wouldn't buy new parts for a 10 year old machine.

[LinusFan132]

Honestly, I'm there as well. The laptop I'm currently using (and typing on) is really slow. Also as Spotty said, having answered your own question, you might want to get a new one. But the only problem with new laptops is the price. Or just get a desktop, start of with a cheap one, and as you upgrade sell the old parts.

[Akira Shimazu]

36 minutes ago, Spotty said:

You've already answered your own question.

 

Judging by its specs it will be almost 10 years old. If you have the funds then it might be worthwhile replacing the laptop with something more modern.

 

or at least swap with an SSD and extra ram. otherwise buy new ones

[manikyath]

if you replace the HDD with a modern SSD that'll probably solve your slowness issues, the question is how long do you want to keep an old beast running?

 

i've currently got a laptop with i7 2nd gen cpu that i'm debating on mercy-killing. it's still doing great, but just about everything about the device is outdated, down to the display.

 

if you're into IT, HP elitebooks make for a nice presentation piece, and can be had second hand for a very palletable price.

[kratosthegodofwar]

57 minutes ago, Spotty said:

You've already answered your own question.

 

Judging by its specs it will be almost 10 years old. If you have the funds then it might be worthwhile replacing the laptop with something more modern.

 

I don't have enough money. Maybe I can do something with my current laptop to speed it up?

[19_blackie_73]

18 minutes ago, kratosthegodofwar said:

My question was is a laptop with these specs okay for 2019/2020? What can't I do with a first gen i7 that I can do with a 10th gen i7 and more ram? I said it's painfully slow because I might be doing something wrong maybe the specs aren't the problem maybe my OS installation is the problem. Painfully slow can vary from person to person. Slow for one person might be fast for another so I haven't answered my own question.

New laptop:

Better I/O like USB3.0 or even thunderbolt -> faster file  transfers

Much better energy efficiency -> better battery life

Way more cpu compute power -> the old i7 is basically so old that it will slow down even basic tasks

Better storage interfaces like nvme and sata3 -> better transfer speeds, system feels way snappier

 

That are only a few examples, everything will be faster by at least 5x - 10x probably, especially as the new mobile cpus have more cores and threads.

 

When an architecture is more than 10 years old, theres not much you can do to make it faster

[SupaKomputa]

1 hour ago, kratosthegodofwar said:

I notice it is painfully slow.

You answered the question yourself.

 

Now the 1st gen core is not that good, back then it was beaten with a AMD Phenom 4 core without hyper threads. Intel regain dominance with the 2nd gen sandy bridge, since then it's a total monopoly without any answers from amd, until Ryzen.

 

4gb ddr3 <- you won't cut it with 4gb nowadays. 8gb is the comfort zone, 16 is the safe zone. If the total memory consumption is bigger than what you have, the excess will be offloaded into the boot drive. When it does, the pc will crawl like a turtle.

 

560gb Samsung 5400rpm HDD <- upgrade to SSD will dramatically improve your performance. This is a very slow HDD.

 

ATI HD5650 <- you may not use this often, but this gpu is ancient.

 

29 minutes ago, kratosthegodofwar said:

My question was is a laptop with these specs okay for 2019/2020? What can't I do with a first gen i7 that I can do with a 10th gen i7 and more ram? I said it's painfully slow because I might be doing something wrong maybe the specs aren't the problem maybe my OS installation is the problem. Painfully slow can vary from person to person. Slow for one person might be fast for another so I haven't answered my own question.

If you still wanna use the laptop my suggestion is, first upgrade the ram to 8gb at least. Second upgrade to SSD. You might can still squeeze some little life from it. 

[kratosthegodofwar]

3 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

You answered the question yourself.

 

Now the 1st gen core is not that good, back then it was beaten with a AMD Phenom 4 core without hyper threads. Intel regain dominance with the 2nd gen sandy bridge, since then it's a total monopoly without any answers from amd, until Ryzen.

 

4gb ddr3 <- you won't cut it with 4gb nowadays. 8gb is the comfort zone, 16 is the safe zone. If the total memory consumption is bigger than what you have, the excess will be offloaded into the boot drive. When it does, the pc will crawl like a turtle.

 

560gb Samsung 5400rpm HDD <- upgrade to SSD will dramatically improve your performance. This is a very slow HDD.

 

ATI HD5650 <- you may not use this often, but this gpu is ancient.

 

If you still wanna use the laptop my suggestion is, first upgrade the ram to 8gb at least. Second upgrade to SSD. You might can still squeeze some little life from it. 

The part about me answering my own question it doesn’t bother me but your answer is excellent. Thanks for the tips. 

[kratosthegodofwar]

1 hour ago, kratosthegodofwar said:

The part about me answering my own question it doesn’t bother me but your answer is excellent. Thanks for the tips. 

I just found out that the 4gb of ram is slot 1 of 2. It uses SODIMM. Maybe I can add more ram to the second slot! Is this possible?

[Meefy777]

11 hours ago, kratosthegodofwar said:

It’s an HP Pavilion dv6 entertainment laptop with an i7 q720 (1.6ghz base 2.8 boost), 4gb DDR3 RAM, 560gb Samsung 5400rpm HDD, ATI HD5650. I notice it is painfully slow. I need to use it for virtualisation, packet tracer, multitasking, IT related stuff. Are these specs too weak for 2019/2020? 

I would definitely upgrade it. The CPU and GPU are very old and slow by today's standards. I think that 4gb of RAM will definitely not be enough for the workloads you described and not having an SSD just adds insult to injury. I wouldn't bother upgrading this, buy a new laptop. There are a lot of good cheap laptops with decent performances

[SupaKomputa]

12 hours ago, kratosthegodofwar said:

I just found out that the 4gb of ram is slot 1 of 2. It uses SODIMM. Maybe I can add more ram to the second slot! Is this possible?

Absolutely, add another 8gb to have 12gb, don't bother with dual channel, won't matter much with your specs.

8gb is around $30, an 256gb SSD is $40, for less than $100, the laptop will feel like new again.

If the laptop has a CD drive, replace it with a HDD caddy so you can use the ssd as boot and your old drive as slave drive.

A new "usable" budget laptop can be at least $400.

[Founders]

I think it's time to say goodbye man, the laptop is 10 years old Even if you throw $100 worth of parts at it (SSD and RAM) how much longer before something on it fails outright. Start putting some money aside, $500 will get you something miles ahead of that old timer. Just my two cents.   

[Zusafek]

You need to check how much ram your laptop can handle. I know on my old Samsung 1st gen core I7 was limited to 8gb ram Max. But a solid state drive would improve the loading speeds quite a bit. 

 

But as others have said, it's best not to pour a bunch of money into this system. It's best to save your money and purchase a newer or new machine. 

[Xiee]

I'd rather save up to buy a new one when you can. If you're living in the US, try waiting for Black Friday. I'm sure there will be heap tons of laptops going on for sale. 

[Founders]

3 hours ago, Xiee said:

I'd rather save up to buy a new one when you can. If you're living in the US, try waiting for Black Friday. I'm sure there will be heap tons of laptops going on for sale. 

They already are. It's basically Black November at this point. 

[kratosthegodofwar]

I think I found the problem guys. I only have Firefox and Cisco Packet Tracer running but Service Host is eating up 1gb of my RAM. RAM usage is at 100%.

[kratosthegodofwar]

Here is what Task Manager looks like:

[kratosthegodofwar]

[kratosthegodofwar]

Update: service host is now using 1.3GB and 9.1MB/s

[Kilrah]

As mentioned, 4GB of RAM is painfully low nowadays. Just a browser with a few windows/tabs open (which you seem to have) will fill that up on its own. System isn't the problem.

Any excess will swap, and swap on an HDD is terrible. 

 

Upgrading RAM and going to an SSD will help a lot, but still the CPU is dog slow by today's standards. I still have a comparable laptop (same CPU I believe) in a cupboard that I take out and update once in a while, it's got 8GB RAM and an SSD so it's quite responsive but still almost anything you do will peg the CPU.

 

Check 2nd hand, this is so old that you'll likely find better machines for almost nothing or at least less than what you'd spend for upgrades.