is my laptop bad

[Yuriiwu]

my cpu: AMD A4-9125 RADEON R3, 4 COMPUTE CORES 2C+2G      2.30 GHz

my ram: 4gb ddr4 

 

is it bad

[WhitetailAni]

Yes.

Can you upgrade the RAM or no?

[Husky]

It depends on what you expect from it. If you want to play any games more complicated then Minecraft, then yes, it is bad.

 

But if you use it for productivity, browsing the internet and watching videos then it is not bad at all and should perform perfectly fine.

 

If you don't already have an SSD, consider installing one for a very big speed boost. It won't help games run better, but it will make the rest of the system much more responsive.

 

And also, as @ragnarok0273 above said, can you upgrade the RAM? Because 4 GB is a bit low and since the RAM is shared with the GPU it will leave even less than 4 GB available to the system. Therefore 8 GB or more of RAM would be a nice upgrade.

Edited January 11, 2021 by Husky
Extra information

[jaslion]

Yeah it's barely enough for general work. People have tested that out and shown. The cpu is just too weak it can't even play minecraft. Do a microsoft teams or zoom meeting and boom cpu at near 100% good luck doing anything else whilst that is going.

 

No upgrades will help as this is simply put the cpu (and gpu) being the issue and once those are the problem it's over.

[WhitetailAni]

I wouldn't count on it having removable storage...
An A4 sounds like an AMD Celeron to me, and with every single Celeron laptop that I've looked at, it's always been eMMC storage. 

[kelvinhall05]

Bad is relative. Depends what you're using it for.

[Yuriiwu]

Just now, ragnarok0273 said:

I wouldn't count on it having removable storage...
An A4 sounds like an AMD Celeron to me, and with every single Celeron laptop that I've looked at, it's always been eMMC storage. 

it has eMMC. but i have a external drive 

[starry]

If you want to get more value out of it I recommend a light linux distro like Lubuntu

Also upgrade the RAM

 

You wont be running games on it either way so you might as well. Should make using the web browser a lot smoother.

 

Also if the wifi card is upgradable , i recommend you look into how good it is. Wifi chips are often overlooked and can really make or break a web-browsing-oriented device.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, Yuriiwu said:

it has eMMC. but i have a external drive 

Can you upgrade the RAM or no?

[Yuriiwu]

1 minute ago, ragnarok0273 said:

Can you upgrade the RAM or no?

i can. i'll upgrade it when i have money again

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, Yuriiwu said:

i can. i'll upgrade it when i have money again

Do that, then. 8GB would help, as would Linux (Linux Mint is best )

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

Can you upgrade the RAM or no?

It's pointless tho. The cpu cannot multitask due to how weak it is so by the time you fill up 8gb it's gonna be crawling if even. That a4 is weaker than a 10 year old core 2 duo midranger.

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

It's pointless tho. The cpu cannot multitask due to how weak it is so by the time you fill up 8gb it's gonna be crawling if even. That a4 is weaker than a 10 year old core 2 duo midranger.

What would you do in their situation?
 

[starry]

3 minutes ago, jaslion said:

It's pointless tho. The cpu cannot multitask due to how weak it is so by the time you fill up 8gb it's gonna be crawling if even. That a4 is weaker than a 10 year old core 2 duo midranger.

Its not pointless, the laptop is specced towards web browsing. CPU doesnt matter much, the 8gb is basically just for web browsing with extensions and tabs. OP wont be doing much else on it anyways so they might as well upgrade the one thing it does well

[jaslion]

Just now, ragnarok0273 said:

What would you do in their situation?
 

Sell it and get like a used core i5 laptop. I kid you not you can get a third or 4th gen i5 dell business laptop with an ssd for under 200 and that obliterates this thing in every way. For a little more you can even get business ultrabooks like a e7440 dell.

[starry]

Just now, jaslion said:

Sell it and get like a used core i5 laptop. I kid you not you can get a third or 4th gen i5 dell business laptop with an ssd for under 200 and that obliterates this thing in every way. For a little more you can even get business ultrabooks like a e7440 dell.

I wouldnt buy the laptop they have for $50

[jaslion]

Just now, starry said:

Its not pointless, the laptop is specced towards web browsing. CPU doesnt matter much, the 8gb is basically just for web browsing with extensions and tabs.

Have you seen the a4 in action? It can just about play a 1080p youtube video and that is it. When doing zoom or anything web browsing becomes almost impossible.

[jaslion]

Just now, starry said:

I wouldnt buy the laptop they have for $50

It'll sell for around 100$. People want cheap new laptops and they'll buy it.

[Yuriiwu]

Good idea

[starry]

2 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Have you seen the a4 in action? It can just about play a 1080p youtube video and that is it. When doing zoom or anything web browsing becomes almost impossible.

I have, because i used an A4-6300 for over a year (horrible I know)

But with a light linux distro a 8gb of RAM, windows no longer assaulted my CPU constantly and I was able to do ~8 tabs. I even did skype calls while using the browser, it was fine. Was even able to run minecraft.

[Krxpt]

17 minutes ago, Yuriiwu said:

my cpu: AMD A4-9125 RADEON R3, 4 COMPUTE CORES 2C+2G      2.30 GHz

my ram: 4gb ddr4 

 

is it bad

Very bad

[jaslion]

Just now, starry said:

I have, because i used an A4-6300 for over a year (horrible I know)

But with a light linux distro a 8gb of RAM, windows no longer assaulted my CPU constantly and I was able to do ~8 tabs. I even did skype calls while using the browser, it was fine. Was even able to run minecraft.

That a4 6300 is faster you know. Like a lot faster. The gpu in the 6300 is also multiple times better hence why it can do hardware decoding whilst the 9125 has such a weak gpu it gets maxed out immediately.

[Yuriiwu]

Just now, Krxpt said:

Very bad

it isn't that bad. it's good for doing basic stuff like emulating Nintendo 64 games

[starry]

5 minutes ago, jaslion said:

That a4 6300 is faster you know. Like a lot faster. The gpu in the 6300 is also multiple times better hence why it can do hardware decoding whilst the 9125 has such a weak gpu it gets maxed out immediately.

Gotcha. Same story when I was in highschool tho. I had a laptop with an AMD E1-1200

which is far far far worse

I was in a situation where i couldnt really get anything else at the time, so I used puppy linux and was able to get a lot of value out of it. Ran very smoothly that way.

But yeah, OP should try to get an old thinkpad or something if they can. Otherwise a RAM upgrade and a light linux distro would be great. Linux has a lot of emulation options so they shouldnt have to give that up either.

[jaslion]

Just now, starry said:

Gotcha. Same story when I was in highschool tho. I had a laptop with an AMD E1-1200

I was in a situation where i couldnt really get anything else at the time, so I used puppy linux and was able to get a lot of value out of it. Ran very smoothly that way.

Oh yeah that is a good starting point. But back when those things came out the internet was a lot lighter. Basically imagine that but more modern but it's actually slower compared to the hardware the e1 was coming up against :p.