upgrades

[bortas1]

   hey all, I have a hp privilion g7 notebook pc. I have a  amd a4-3305m apu with  radeon<tm> hd graphics 1.90ghz  proscesser. what im looking for is an upgrade  in proscesser  and memory. im having a very hard  time finding anything that will assist me in finding  upgrades in those areas. I would like to find  something that would tell me what options I have. any help would be really helpful

<S> bortas1

[Mar]

Upgrading a laptop? Hrm...

According to your laptop's manual, your processor and memory should be upgradable. However, not only would it be a massive pain in the bellybutton just to get to the processor, I don't know where you would buy one for it.

http://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmcsdirect/emr_na-c02834058-1.pdf

Well, I googled the top cpu 'spare part number' and got the following, so maybe there's hope.

http://www.notebookparts.com/hp-pavilion-g4-g6-g7-amd-a8-3500m-2-40-ghz-processor-653350-001/

Upgrading the memory shouldn't be too hard though, there's just one panel to unscrew. Just follow that manual and you should be good.

[BaldEagl]

Frankly I wouldn't bother.  I've been down that path several times before and it's almost never worthwhile as you're eventually going to have to replace the system anyway.  I'd set the money you were going to spend aside and when you have some more saved up buy a new system.

[Gman]

^^ Ditto.  Unless you bought your laptop from a dedicated gaming laptop builder which used components (particularly the MB) which are easily up-gradable, trying to upgrade a laptop is a very, very difficult proposition.  Selling and rebuying a new one is about the only real option.  For 1000-ish USD you can get a 17" 960M gaming laptop which will run AH3 and other games "ok", and for 1300ish you can get a 970M of the same, and be right in there for a lot of games including AH3. 

Gaming laptops will shortly be getting a big boost from better CPU tech for them, and MUCH better GPU tech - you can now get non "M" and full GTX nVidia GPU versions of cards in some laptop builders, and more/better stuff is coming.  Full 980 GTX laptops tested against similar desktops are nearly identical in performance.  They always cost more though.

[Bizman]

The only cost effective way to upgrade a laptop processor is to salvage one from a damaged laptop. Even then you should be careful to find the correct type to avoid heat related problems.

If that's a g7-1310sg, I wouldn't even bother since there's 4 GB of memory with a max of 6 GB. Plus the better possible processor options aren't really much better than yours. 0.1 GHz doesn't make a difference...

As a rule of thumb, if you want to upgrade because of performance issues you should roughly double the performance level of your current system to see any noticeable improvement. I don't mean doubling everything, only the critical parts. Also, you can't directly look at the numbers, since component generations aren't commensurate. Benchmarks and comparison reviews will help.

[bortas1]

  thank you all for comments and help.  I have much to conceder. I am no computer wizkid I understand very little about them. my real concern is if I got an component is it going to bother others. or worse not compatable.
and again thank you all.
  <S> bortas

[Bizman]

thank you all for comments and help.  I have much to conceder. I am no computer wizkid I understand very little about them. my real concern is if I got an component is it going to bother others. or worse not compatable.
and again thank you all.
  <S> bortas

Whenever in doubt, just ask. There's plenty of people who know what goes with which. And there's plenty of those who have built a serious gaming rig after throwing in multiple suggestions to be evaluated.