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Hey there, my laptop for college runs way too slowly. Basically, I'm looking to improve my laptop's performance while playing games.
Specs: Dell Latitude D830 4GB RAM Standard everything else.
I'm not sure what aspects of a laptop you can really "upgrade" without removing the motherboard, etc.
I'm running Windows Vista, and was thinking of downgrading to XP just because of Vista's resource hogging, would this be a step towards a faster laptop?
Just looking for any suggestions/tips/ideas that might help me make my laptop at least a little better, thanks!
EDIT: Sorry about not being able to give full specs, but I'm at work and no where near the laptop. :X Thanks again
This post has been edited by cmwise: 30 Jun, 2009 - 07:33 AM
You can try downgrading, but why not just try do some house keeping tasks? Defrag, Anti-Virus, Disk Cleanup...
Also, never tried it myself but, try get software/programs that boost your system performance.
I looked at a review of a laptop similar to yours, and it seems decent enough. If you're work entails media, then perhaps get a new laptop (as the Processor speed is only 2GHz on the review), but it seems fine to me.
Does it run slowly all the time, or just in games? The former, you need to sort your software out. The latter, you need to buy a new computer or settle for older or simpler games.
The 830 came with a couple of different graphics chipsets, intel and nvidia iirc. Maybe you've got the crap one. You can't upgrade without changing the motherboard (which can be done, it only takes half an hour and a screwdriver and some guts) but it's just not a gaming laptop.
Changing Vista to XP might make some things feel more responsive in Windows, but is unlikely to help your games much. It's swings and roundabouts.
Hmm. Well it will run fine for a little while and then get random spikes of insanely low frame rates and then go back to normal for a little while. I think it might be an overheating problem, and if so what could I do about that? I've shopped for heat sinks before, but I'm not really sure which are reliable and worth the money.
Quin: What software boosts your computer's performance? I haven't a clue what you're talking about, could you elaborate?
There are some software that just makes your system more responsive. Like I said, I've never tried these things because I don't trust them - they don't really seem legit... not illegal, just I don't like them (backdoors, etc.)
Still, I'd do the rounds on the laptop. If you still have problems, go through the updates too. If all else fails, including new hardware/components, then get a new system (you can keep or sell-on the new components).
Like Quin said, do some housekeeping. I would personally get CCleaner and fix both system and registry. Other than that, go through Services and processes and close anything that is not needed. Change your msconfig so it boots faster and doesn't start up many applications, only the essentials
hit F11 during startup, and follow the instructions. The government gave me the same laptop w/1GB of ram. I upgraded it to 2GB, threw in a wireless card, put win7 on it, and threw on a 4GB thumbdrive for readyboost. Thing runs like a top.
If your laptop is this new and already this shitty, then you need to spend some time on google, looking up sites like tomshardware or downloadsquad. Help yourself out a little bit. If you can't take the hint, yeah, hit F11 and go from there.
also, be aware this thing has intel 965 integrated graphics. If you like playing the original half-life, then you're good. Other than that? keep dreaming.
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