worth it to upgrade from a Dell D830? - Super User

worth it to upgrade from a Dell D830?

2009-11-06T14:09:07Z

I do Visual Studio development on my employer-issued Dell D830 laptop (see specs). Like many developers, I am ashamed to say, I am quite ignorant of hardware. The main thing I noticed in looking at the specs of my current machine is (1) it came out over 2.5 years ago and (2) it has 2 GB of RAM.

I am currently experiencing somewhat slow build times. I often have 3 or 4 Visual Studio instances running (due to having to work on several "solutions" at once) plus SQL Server, the web server, etc.

Is it worth the "capital" I would need to expend to twist my employer's arm to upgrade my laptop? I'm thinking a newer model would have 64-bit Windows and at least 4 GB or RAM and a faster processor, but I don't want to have to go through all that and not see a noticeable difference.

Due to the "contractor" nature of my job and the fact that I work from home sometimes, I need to have a laptop, not a desktop.

Any advice?

Answer by Molly7244 for worth it to upgrade from a Dell D830?

2009-11-06T14:24:56Z

maybe not the answer you want to hear, but ... a fresh windows installation often works miracles, especially on a machine being used heavily for 2 years.

with a C2D processor, nVidia Quadro GPU and 7k2 rpm HDD this one should be still up to the challenge.

Answer by DaveM for worth it to upgrade from a Dell D830?

2009-11-06T15:01:05Z

I work with a number of developers that use D830s every day and they work quite well. We do a fresh install on a regular basis. We have a master image so the user is not "offline" for many hours for the refresh.

I would also suggest that 4GB of RAM would help. However, some D830 systems will only recognize 3.5GB even with 2 2GB SODIMMs installed.

You should be able to use Task Manager and other PerfMon tools to see any bottlenecks. If your RAM in use exceeeds installed, you will have a big performance hit.

We also run Diskeeper on the D830s to keep the drive fragmentation down. I am sure there are other good products or even just a manual deffrag ona regular basis.

One developer has tries XP x64 and not found a big difference on the D830 as 4GB is the limit. A SolidCAD user has XP x64 with 4GB on an HP Mobile Workstation and tests don't show a big improvement over 32bit. The HP can take up to 8GB but we have not tried an upgrade as it seems fine now.

Answer by JoelFan for worth it to upgrade from a Dell D830?

2010-01-01T17:58:34Z

Switched employers... got a brand new laptop... even has Windows 7... problem solved :O