couple of SSD questions

[halfcard1]

if i get a SSD, is there any reason to upgrade the CPU from t2400 to t7200?

my present bios is 2.27, if i put in SSD do i have to change that bios before i put the SSD in?

i have 2.5 gb of ram, would i add more?



t60, 2007, windows 7 32bit

thanks !

[RealBlackStuff]

No, no and maybe.
3GB is a little better than 2.5GB, and 3GB is also the max. your T60 supports, even though you can put in 4GB.

[ajkula66]

A T7200 will give you 4MB L2 cache as opposed to 2MB on T2400. It will also run a bit cooler.

Not a must by any means, but not a bad upgrade if you can locate an inexpensive one...

My $0.02 only...

[ZaZ]

As someone who upgraded my R60 from a T2300 to a T7400, 99% of the time and that's being conservative, I could not tell the difference.

[halfcard1]

interesting replies!


which raises another question:

this machine has windows 7 32bit. IF i put 4 gb of ram AND a t7200 cpu AND use the "product key" to reinstall windows ... i will now have a 64 bit system?

[Cigarguy]

No you'll still have a 32 bit system. 64 bit Win XP sucks. I found it to be very buggy. Also, installing and setting up the SSD on Win XP is not as easy as Win 7. Having said that you'll notice a bigger "perceived" performance benefit by upgrading to a SSD than anything else. It's worth the effort. Ideally, if cost is not to prohibitive, you'd want to upgrade everything.

[TuuS]

interesting replies!


which raises another question:

this machine has windows 7 32bit. IF i put 4 gb of ram AND a t7200 cpu AND use the "product key" to reinstall windows ... i will now have a 64 bit system?

You'll still be limited to 3gb even if you install 4, but the T7200 will give you a 64bit system, meaning it's capable of running a 64bit OS, although the ram limit won't change.

As far as upgrading your ram from 2.5 to 3gb, I'd do it... your win7 really doesn't begin to run well until you have at least 2gb, and with 2.5 that leaves very little for running apps so I'd make sure to get all you can into the system, besides the needed 1gb chip is under $8 shipped in one of my listings and you may be able to recoup a some of that if you sell the 512mb chip you remove, so we're talking the price of a nice cup of coffee... need I say more?

Regarding ram limits, its a misconception that 32bit OS won't use more then 3-4gb of ram. To fully explain this would take an hour or two, so I'll try to be succinct.

A 32bit cpu using Intel x86 architecture has only 4gb of address space. Your computer hardware needs to fit in this space so with most conventional systems after the computers hardware takes what it needs, you're left with 3-3.5gb for ram. On a
tseries it's closer to 3gb, and on a barebone system with minimal amount of hardware about 3.5gb. Ram memory can and is often remapped above the 4gb space, Windows OS refers to this as PAE (physical address extension) and there are many 32bit windows versions that can support 64gb, 128gb and more ram, but these OS are costly and generally not sold to the general public. If you really want to get technical about it then even if you have a 32bit windows system with 64gb of ram installed and working, you'll still be limited to 4gb of ram per application of which only 2gb can be used directly by the app and 2gb by the system. This can be tweaked so the app can have upto 3gb using 4GBM (4 gigabit mode), but this is all really outdated technology and only applied to very high-end servers from over a decade ago before 64bit chips were used, so now that we have access to 64bit chips, some less then $5, it makes no sense to trying to mess around trying to get a 32bit system to efficiently use more then 4gb of ram.

Also as much as I love the Intel cpu chips, we all owe a great debt to AMD for designing their x86-64 extension to intels x86 architecture. They forced Intel to change directions and this is the reason we now have 64bit systems that are backwards compatible with 32bit systems. AMD has made some very nice chips too and until the core2 line was introduced they had a clear advantage over Intel.

Back on topic... even when you upgrade your T60 to 3gb, you'll still find times when it consumes all the ram and turns to virtual memory. With traditonal harddrive this will slow your system considerably, but with SSD you'll have much faster virtual memory making the SSD one of the best upgrades for these systems, even if you use a small one. with a larger HDD in your ultrabay to make up the lost storage space. This can be a very cost effective combination for a T60.

Good luck with your upgrades.

[halfcard1]

thank you for your informative replies!