Ultimately what is more important for FM?

i am asking this question for people who like me what to improve speed performance for FM but maybe do not afford to buy a new pc but want to maybe upgrade some parts.

so my question is this:

what is more important for FM? the cpu, the hard disk speed or the RAM?

basically i have a Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop with a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, 160GB 5400rpm hard drive and 2Ghz DDR2 RAM.

i don't think that upgrading the CPU is really worth it so i was thinking of upgrading my hard drive to a 7200 rpm one and doubling my RAM.

what sort of performance increase can i expect?

thanks

As many people know, a laptop can not be made by myself or you as all the parts are not available to us. Are you even sure the CPU can be upgraded? I know the Memory can and the hard disc can.

CPU will be expensive may aswell just buy a new one so no point. Yeah the best way would be to get faster hard-drive and doubling your RAM. You would probably see a better increase from hard-drive then RAM as if you already have 2GB of RAM then upgrading to 4GB won't make as much of a difference as going from 1GB to 2GB would be. Also if you put the page file on a different drive/partition to your operating system.

He didn't say it was a laptop.....(@ LLM'er)

The RAM increase would be unlikely to give you much if any performance increase imo, the HD will probably give you a little better speeds, though perhaps not as much as you would hope

And following from above, your page file should be fixed size.

He didn't say it was a laptop.....

basically i have a Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop with a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, 160GB 5400rpm hard drive and 2Ghz DDR2 RAM.

erm..... :o

As many people know' date=' a laptop can not be made by myself or you as all the parts are not available to us.[/quote']

That is not strictly true. I found this website

http://laptoplogic.com/resources/detail.php?id=22 which may be of interest.

No he really didnt say laptop did he? he just said "basically i have a Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop with a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU".

Try to read his post first before you bother posting mate.

Well when i've looked around, as i'm planning on building my own computer, I have noticed the odd few components on sale such as the Ram and Hard Disc Drive, but i haven't seen a processer or anything on sale. Maybe i haven't been going to the correct websites?

Upgrading the hard drive will increase the initial loading speed. If you don't have enough RAM, then the hard drive will be used as virtual memory (but this will be slow). If that is happening, speeding up the hard drive is solving the wrong problem - you'll need more RAM. I'd say RAM and CPU far outweigh HDD for FM.

But to actually have to open up the laptop to replace CPU is quite difficult and only recommended if your an expert. May aswell buy a new laptop for the hassle. But RAM won't make much difference if he already has 2GB its bin proven. But it improves it i agree but i don't know if it would improve it more then Hard-drive or not.

Verdict just do HDD and RAM as singularly it will be hard to feel the difference in speed.

I think that once you get past 2GB of RAM you're really not going to notice that much difference in the speed of the game. Same with the hard disk.

To noticeably improve the performance of FM on the machine you already have you'd probably need a more powerful processor, but as has been said, this is not practical unless you're a bit of an expert in laptops.

Why do you feel the need to get more speed out of FM? With the setup you have it should run reasonably well to be honest. Perhaps your best option for more speed would be to run a few less leagues and maybe a smaller database. Upgrading the RAM and hard drive past what you already have will probably not make that much difference.

what sort of performance increase can i expect?

Very little, I would have thought. Increasing the RAM past 2GB won't give you much because FM doesn't use that much, maybe if you're muti-tasking but otherwise not. HDD speed increase will help a little but I doubt you'd really see much from it.

Well when i've looked around, as i'm planning on building my own computer, I have noticed the odd few components on sale such as the Ram and Hard Disc Drive, but i haven't seen a processer or anything on sale. Maybe i haven't been going to the correct websites?

The components are so cheap now, that you don't need them to be on sale. You can get a Quad Core @ 2.40 GHz for around 120 quid, for example.