[Mr.Guvernment]

Hey all

got myself an inspiron 9100

15.1 wide screen WUXGA (1920 x 1200)
512 DDR400 (2 x 256)
60g 5400 RPM HD
radeon 9700 64mb
Preshot 3.2 / 1mb l2 cache



Now, there are three things i want to updagrade

Ram

1g - 2 x 512
HD 60g 7200 RPM
Vid - radeon 9800 256mb


Now the vid card will be last cause it is $350 to buy.


Now, out of the memory and hard drive what would you get first?

I have been playing half life 2 on the laptop and i know i need more ram - but i would also like faster response time overall - but i do plan to play a few games on this system and i also use it for work so i have many apps open.


i am stuck! cause it will be @ least 1 month before i can the 2nd upgrade....

[ozzlo]

dude dell charges an arm and a leg for ram, go third party if you can try for exact same type/ latency it should work. i miss having 1gb ram *sniff* good ole p4 2.8 days. is your hd full? that would be my deciding factor though i would go for the mobility 9800pro first cause it's a huge performance increase over 9700.

[Mr.Guvernment]

i plan to go third party - newegg.com for sure - i know dell scams on ram and most other things.

my HD is not overly full - it almost was then i took my 10,000 digital pictures and moved em to my dekstop system but from reading the 7200rpm drive seems to give a nice boost.

i figure the vid card i probably cant get till Feb 15th - but i can afford one of the other 2 right now.


Dell wants $220 for the 7200 RPM hitachi - and newegg wants $140 - where do they get off... and the ram - newegg $100 per 512 stick dell! argh so much more.

[ozzlo]

hmmm... you can also get the hd third party maybe save some there so you can get your next sooner... i'm upgrading in the early spring (proccessor and video) then again in the fall (ram).

i'm a waiting for spring because by then intel will have released at least a sonoma 2.2 - 2.3which will drop the price on the dothan 2.1 by a few hundred bucks.

[Mr.Guvernment]

i am getting the HD 3rd party - i am getting it all 3rd party - i will never buy an upgrade from dell. - the video card i may have to, i found 2 on ebay but one was more then dell wanted.