What to upgrade in my laptop.

[tengumaru93]

I own a 2009 Acer Aspire 4736z laptop which I own and use for almost 3 years in all of my activities, specifically gaming and other stuff. But recently, maybe about 4months 'til now, my laptop started to slow down big time. What I mean is the laptop can't load some maps any more faster than before lets say, Green Circle Td 9.5 my friends already finished loading theirs but mine isn't even close to half the loading progress. As well as playing league of legends, if you are a player of it, you would notice that they've implemented a feature that would let you see the loading of your allies and your enemies as well. Also after a year upon purchasing this laptop it became rather faster in heating thus affecting my gameplay. I'm heading to a repair shop next week to get my exhaust and keyboard fixed. Now what I would like to know is what could I possible upgrade or rather what are my available options on upgrading this laptop? My top priority is to
get the exhaust fixed to reduce the heat levels(right now I'm playing next to a electric fan). Next is my fps, when I play games like warcraft3 or LoL I still get a decent 30fps upon leaving my base towards my lane and a great 4fps upon clashing with the opposing team. I plan on changing my one Hdd to a Sdd. <== Will this speed up things? Also I plan on changing my graphics card to a better one, a more gaming friendly one so that I could also own the enemy team upon clashes. In order to increase my fps, what should I replace? My laptop screen itself or the graphics card? Or maybe both?

My laptop specs

14.0" HD LED LCD (1366x768) 32bit 60Hz
Win7 Home premium 32bit
Intel Pentium processor T4400 (2.2ghz, 800mhz FSB) Dual core
2GB of ram
250GB HDD (Split in 2 Drives C and D being D bigger)
Intel GMA 4500M

[Vegas]

Besides ram and a different HDD, you are stuck with what you have. Video is on-board.

Laptop screen won't change anything.

A fresh windows installation might be the only option to get rid of junk files and programs bogging down your system.

[tengumaru93]

I've said that I'm going to a pc station next week to get my laptop fixed. But is it possible to get the graphics card modified to a higher one?

Will upgrading my Hdd, Ram and installing a fresh Win7 solve my fps problem?

[Bartimaeus]

It'll help...but not much. If you're playing on low settings already, chances are your RAM limit probably isn't being reached as it is. Upgrading to an SSD can make things faster...but probably not for games like League of Legends, which aren't typically loading stuff from hard drive constantly, (as opposed to games like Skyrim, which are constantly loading stuff off of your hard drive as you keep moving in the game...).

Generally speaking, looking at your specs, your biggest problem is probably your video card...I say probably, because I have no idea what that model actually is - Intel's video card chips, however, are not exactly known for being high-end - in fact, the opposite. Next after that is your CPU, followed closely by your RAM, and then your hard drive. Again, as said before, unless you're playing a game that's constantly loading stuff, hard drive has no real effect on your performance, as most of the game's data is already loaded into your RAM by the time you're actually playing. Unless I'm mistaken, League of Legends is sort of like playing a Warcraft map, right, where you initially load it and then stay pretty much in the same area the entire game with no dynamic loading? So upgrading that isn't going to help very much. And again, upgrading your RAM probably won't be much of use either, at least not for the games you're playing, as there's honestly not all that much to load into your RAM unless you're playing on higher settings.

Before upgrading anything, though, I would say reformat first and then see what your performance is - and if you're considering upgrading, you might as well, since you should start fresh on the new drive regardless. Your CPU could be bottlenecked by various background processes that have been installed over the years - which would bottleneck your video card simultaneously - as well as your RAM. It would also be good for your hard drive. I reformat every few months, personally, because I get so bloody sick of the slowdowns that Windows seems to inherently have after a while of usage...I shudder to think how bad it would be after three years.

[Vegas]

I get so bloody sick of the slowdowns that Windows seems to inherently have after a while of usage...I shudder to think how bad it would be after three years.

I actually held out for 14 months. I just redid my win 7 last week from scratch just to have the SP1 already installed. I will install most of my apps and then make an image. If my computer gets bogged down then I can easily restore it within an hour.

Back to the original topic. Save your money and just format and re-install windows( after saving all your files and settings and such). Try installing a "lite" version made for laptops. That or a gaming version.

[tengumaru93]

Thank for you replies Bart and Vegas, I'll consider reformatting first before doing anything else. Vegas, could you give me more info on that lite version and gaming version?? Thanks

[Vegas]

Just basically do an internet search for "windows 7 lite download" and you should find a version to work with your current serial number (win 7 proffesional)

[tengumaru93]

Hi it's me again, I just finished formatting maybe 3 hours ago and just finished transferring my files now. I noticed that, there has been a huge increase in boot and shutdown times. Yes, maybe it's because of the huge amount of junkfiles my system has. But the overheating hasn't been resolved. I used a gpu viewer: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ to see the readings of my Gpu and I noticed that my Gpu clock is not running or 0 mhz is it a bad thing? Or perhaps causing the heating?

[Bartimaeus]

It's normal for your GPU's clock speeds to be lowered on desktop...but obviously not stopped completely. Try using a different utility or two to see if that one is misreading. If multiple say that, well, that's probably not good.

[tengumaru93]

Actually the readings weren't while I was on desktop. I used the utility, opened wc3 played Green circle then tabbed out when the game was in mid-end wherein the mobs would increase alot but the gpu clock still doesn't run still 0 mhz. Though could you recommend a utility that could be trusted in regarding accurate readings?