Upgrading Dell Vostro 1000, does it worth it?

Page 5 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

PeterMuellerr

Commendable
Mar 29, 2021
105
19
1,585
This laptop belongs in the trash and you should not spend one penny upgrading it. A Sempron laptop CPU was underpowered even when it launched, and struggled to run Windows XP. You have zero chance of a useful windows 7 or 10 experience. It will take 20 minutes to boot and 5 minutes to load each application, even with an SSD.
Finding DDR2 laptop ram that still works will be a pain, and the screen will be painfully low resolution, and your graphics chipset will be barely supported in any applications.

No.
Aha. That should be why the user already found working RAM of his/her type.
 
  • Like
Reactions: troyer1234567

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
From what I know, Windows develops by growing; the kernel doesn't shrink. So later systems are definitely heavier (and IMHO they are probably noticeably heavier because of thousands of employed programmers continuously write Windows).
I have a 2009 era low end Toshiba laptop.
It runs no worse on Win 10 than it did on Win 7.

It runs badly, because it is a low end laptop.
It ran badly when it was new.

The system in the first post in this discussion:
 

TommyTwoTone66

Prominent
BANNED
Apr 24, 2021
983
189
640
I remember systems being launched with that awful Celeron 900 CPU. It was almost unusable. Even still it was still about 50% quicker than OPs Sempron 3600. Using those was like actual torture, even on XP.

Running windows is one thing, but this is a single core chip with practically zero cache. Windows will be just about all it can handle, plus maybe the notepad and calculator apps.
 

troyer1234567

Reputable
Dec 31, 2020
355
13
4,715
This laptop belongs in the trash and you should not spend one penny upgrading it. A Sempron laptop CPU was underpowered even when it launched, and struggled to run Windows XP. You have zero chance of a useful windows 7 or 10 experience. It will take 20 minutes to boot and 5 minutes to load each application, even with an SSD.
Finding DDR2 laptop ram that still works will be a pain, and the screen will be painfully low resolution, and your graphics chipset will be barely supported in any applications.

No.
ok :(
but it takes only 1 minute to boot and about 1 minute to open chrome and telegram and express vpn at the same time, i think it's not that bad
 

troyer1234567

Reputable
Dec 31, 2020
355
13
4,715
I remember systems being launched with that awful Celeron 900 CPU. It was almost unusable. Even still it was still about 50% quicker than OPs Sempron 3600. Using those was like actual torture, even on XP.

Running windows is one thing, but this is a single core chip with practically zero cache. Windows will be just about all it can handle, plus maybe the notepad and calculator apps.
what if i upgrade it to AMD Turino X2 64 which is 2 core 1.8 Ghz with 1 mb of L2 cache?
 

PeterMuellerr

Commendable
Mar 29, 2021
105
19
1,585
And then 1 minute just to open Chrome?
The user went on with “and telegram and express vpn at the same time”. Lol. The way I know Windows 7, in reality, a fresh installation would be still busy installing updates about 1 week long. The user apparently has super powers.
That 1 minute boot up is not coming off a full power off.
Then the machine would not be booting, but getting awake from hibernation, strictly speaking.
 

troyer1234567

Reputable
Dec 31, 2020
355
13
4,715
The user went on with “and telegram and express vpn at the same time”. Lol. The way I know Windows 7, in reality, a fresh installation would be still busy installing updates about 1 week long. The user apparently has super powers.

Then the machine would not be booting, but getting awake from hibernation, strictly speaking.
well i just checked the time, it took 53 seconds to boot and show desktop, and about 22 seconds to load startup applications (ESET, BW meter, CareUeyez and ATI Catalyst). then i double clicked on chrome and it took 30 seconds to open and loard home screen of chrome.
so... it took 1 min and 45 seconds to turn on and boot and load start up apps and open chrome :D
 

punkncat

Champion
Ambassador
I had one of these Vostro back years ago that came with the Sempron. I went on eBay and found the Athlon CPU that was the upgrade model of this same laptop for around $15 give or take some shipping. At the time it helped its performance quite a bit.
I later loaded the machine with W7 and it ran, but wasn't particularly awesome. I have had three or four different laptops since then with Core Duo and Core i series CPU that might as well have been 4x what the Vostro was in performance and in spite of also being (at least two of them) low end machines.

If you look at this along the lines of "just something to do" try to dig back in Dell's old literature and you can readily find the options that came with this specific model. Once you can verify the Athlon that was used in the higher priced option it's just a matter of locating one as cheaply as possible. The swap is easy, these old laptops are easy to take apart and nothing is soldered in like they do now. Why not?
 
  • Like
Reactions: troyer1234567

TommyTwoTone66

Prominent
BANNED
Apr 24, 2021
983
189
640
what if i upgrade it to AMD Turino X2 64 which is 2 core 1.8 Ghz with 1 mb of L2 cache?

Then it will be about as good as the processor in my dishwasher.

There’s no way you have this booting Windows 7 in one minute on the original HDD, maybe it opens from sleep in one minute, but a full restart? No way.

Chrome taking a full minute to open a new tab I can believe.

If you updated the CPU to that one, maxed out the RAM, found a SSD that you can use in it (IDE flash card) you would have a semi usable Windows 7 device.

Or you could spend that same money on a used corpo desktop from 2015 or 2016 and get a core i5 6500 cpu around 8 times quicker than the x2, and an iGPU that would be easily 10 times quicker.
 
Last edited:

troyer1234567

Reputable
Dec 31, 2020
355
13
4,715
Then it will be about as good as the processor in my dishwasher.

There’s no way you have this booting Windows 7 in one minute on the original HDD, maybe it opens from sleep in one minute, but a full restart? No way.

Chrome taking a full minute to open a new tab I can believe.

If you updated the CPU to that one, maxed out the RAM, found a SSD that you can use in it (IDE flash card) you would have a semi usable Windows 7 device.

Or you could spend that same money on a used corpo desktop from 2015 or 2016 and get a core i5 6500 cpu around 8 times quicker than the x2, and an iGPU that would be easily 10 times quicker.
read older posts i said i bought a ssd and installed 4 gb of ram instead of 1 gb, and yes it boots in 1 min and 15 secs and opens chrome in 30 secs :D
 

TommyTwoTone66

Prominent
BANNED
Apr 24, 2021
983
189
640
Ok so the last thing left to change is the CPU I guess. At least with a dual core and some cache it will be able to work properly.

And yes, let windows manage the page file. With 4GB RAM you will need a lot more than 200Mb.
 
  • Like
Reactions: troyer1234567

PeterMuellerr

Commendable
Mar 29, 2021
105
19
1,585
Well, the user does have super powers or else I don't understand the world any longer.
A 200MB pagefile is useless.
That's right. For a noob user (I though it would be @troyer12345 too, but I might be wrong), I recommend OFF if the machine's has an SSD or "plenty" of RAM. For an HDD and a "standard" amount of RAM, I recommend a swap file of size between 50% and 200% of RAM size (the less RAM, the larger the pagefile) or system managed. I recommend HDD for any super old machine or limited-RAM machine, in particular, that of @troyer12345 .
 
Last edited:

TommyTwoTone66

Prominent
BANNED
Apr 24, 2021
983
189
640
I recommend OFF if the machine's has an SSD or "plenty" of RAM. For an HDD and a "standard" amount of RAM, I recommend a swap file of size between 50% and 200% of RAM size (the less RAM, the larger the pagefile) or system managed.

So you’ve been giving out super bad advice, my friend. The correct setting is always and without fail “system managed”.

The only reason to ever modify this setting is maybe in embedded systems like an ATM or one of those digital sign boards and the storage available is super limited.

Back in the days of Windows 98 and XP you could actually increase performance by limiting page file if you had a large amount of RAM. This was partly down to how bad those OSs were at managing it, and partly down to the speed of storage at the time, with SSD yet to make it to market in any real way.

Today, with windows 7, 10 and 11 the swap file is extensively used no matter how much RAM you have.

SSD is the perfect place for a swap file, and windows 7, 10 and 11 use it for all kinds of performance enhancing and stability enhancing tasks, so to advise users with an SSD or a lot of RAM to disable it completely is about the worst advice you could give.

System managed. Always and forever. Unless you really know what you’re doing and you’re building an embedded system.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Well, the user does have super powers or else I don't understand the world any longer.

That's right. For a noob user (I though it would be @troyer12345 too, but I might be wrong), I recommend OFF if the machine's has an SSD or "plenty" of RAM. For an HDD and a "standard" amount of RAM, I recommend a swap file of size between 50% and 200% of RAM size (the less RAM, the larger the pagefile) or system managed. I recommend HDD for any super old machine or limited-RAM machine, in particular, that of @troyer12345 .
My wifes system has a single 250GB SSD, and 8GB RAM. Not what I would call "plenty of RAM".
Pagefile left at System Managed. Has been that way for several years.

Guess what....the drive has not died yet.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TommyTwoTone66

PeterMuellerr

Commendable
Mar 29, 2021
105
19
1,585
@TommyTwoTone66: you're misinformed or misguided or have not done proper testing yourself. In other words, you're wrong. On all of my systems that have an SSD or “plenty” of RAM, the page file is off and it doesn't hurt any tiny bit. Since the days of Windows 95 till Windows 10. Windows is programmed to work with the swap turned on or off and (bugs nonwithstanding) does its job.
@USAFRet Nowadays, 8 GB RAM is not much, but it's way more than 4 GB of @troyer12345. Previously, 8 GB was “plenty”. Of course, what “plenty” means, changes with time.
 
Last edited:

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
@TommyTwoTone66: you're misinformed or misguided or have not done proper testing yourself. In other words, you're wrong. On all of my systems that have an SSD or “plenty” of RAM, the page file is off and it doesn't hurt any tiny bit. Since the days of Windows 95 till Windows 10. Windows is programmed to work with the swap turned on or off and (bugs nonwithstanding) does its job.
@USAFRet Nowadays, 8 GB RAM is not much, but it's way more than 4 GB of @troyer12345. Previously, 8 GB was “plenty”. Of course, what “plenty” means, changes with time.
Will it work with 0 pagefile?
Absolutely.

But there is little reason to NOT have a pagefile enabled.

And if that reason is to not wear out an SSD, that is false economy. Unless you buy a tiny 3rd rate drive, wearing out from too many write cycles has not been a thing for many years.
 

PeterMuellerr

Commendable
Mar 29, 2021
105
19
1,585
Will it work with 0 pagefile?
Absolutely.

But there is little reason to NOT have a pagefile enabled.

And if that reason is to not wear out an SSD, that is false economy. Unless you buy a tiny 3rd rate drive, wearing out from too many write cycles has not been a thing for many years.
As I said, for low-RAM systems, swapping happens all the time, and writing flash memory destroys it, especially under heavy load. An SSD in a low-RAM computer may even go into shutdown due to overheating after an hour of work, effectively making the machine useless.
Regardless of the permanent-storage type, with plenty of RAM, there is little reason to have pagefile enabled.
 
Last edited:

troyer1234567

Reputable
Dec 31, 2020
355
13
4,715
guys i got a question: is the gpu of my laptop, kind of an igpu which is inside the CPU like Ryzen 3400g ? or is it in motherboard?

Actually i want to play Call of Duty4: Modern Warfare, so i want to know , does upgrading the cpu to AMD Turion X2 64 would let me play this game or not? (i thought that maybe it would have a better igpu too if gpu is not in the mainboard)
because with current spec it gives me about 7 fps in lowest resolution and texture.
 

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
guys i got a question: is the gpu of my laptop, kind of an igpu which is inside the CPU like Ryzen 3400g ? or is it in motherboard?

Actually i want to play Call of Duty4: Modern Warfare, so i want to know , does upgrading the cpu to AMD Turion X2 64 would let me play this game or not? (i thought that maybe it would have a better igpu too if gpu is not in the mainboard)
because with current spec it gives me about 7 fps in lowest resolution and texture.

3400G has the graphics built into the CPU. One of AMDs older graphics technologies, Vega, but they are cramming into the CPU die. But that model is a desktop CPU.

Laptop APUs end in U or H and also have Vega graphics, but that doesn't mean that your particular laptop doesn't have a discrete GPU, depends on what it actually is.