Would this potential upgrade yield any improvement?

[Replytoken]

My primary machine for LR is listed in my signature below. For various reasons, we need to replace another PC in our house and I would like to give my laptop to my wife and then pick up a replacement for it. Another PC laptop is what I would like to purchase, and I am somewhat partial to Lenovo. Unfortunately, my budget is not as free-flowing as it once was, and the two machines I am considering purchasing are a bit beyond my comfort zone. These machines would have 3GB of memory, run XP, and use core 2 Duo P86'' processors. Alternately, Lenovo has some budget laptops that are significantly more affordable ($4''-5''), and they run with 2 or 3 GB of memory, Vista and T34'', T42'' or T64'' processors. While I will eventually move to Win7 when it is released (and stable), my assumption and question are as follows:

I am assuming that moving from a Pentium M (Dothan) processor to any of the above processors should yield some noticable gain in performance. But, what I do not know if how much of a noticable performance gain is to be had in moving from the budget processors to the P86'', assuming all (or most) other things equal?

While I would love to spend the money on a nice machine, PC's are almost becoming a disposable commodity given how fast hardware and software keep changing. IMHO, the budget machine, a Lenovo G53', is built beyond its price point, its just not a T4''. I am not worried too much because it will be mostly used around the house and it should not be subject to daily travel or abuse. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

--Ken

 

[Gene McCullagh]

Hi Ken!

LR, like many other programs, will perform better in response to the typical factors: higher processor speed, more cores, more memory, more disk space, etc. Either of your choices should yield a performance boost over your current PC. You need to weigh your budget concerns against incremental performance between the new processor choices.

 

[Replytoken]

Thanks for the reply, Gene. I have been searching and thinking a bit more, and I believe I have found an affordable, well-built (Lenovo) laptop with a reasonably fast processor with a large cahce and fast FSB. At this point, I am willing to let other features slide as an improvement in speed was my primary goal in the updgrade.

--Ken