Worth upgrading HP DV6-1030US to 8GB of RAM, mostly for Media Center?

[unoplayer]

The most demanding activity I do on my laptop is watch live TV on Windows Media Center. The picture is mostly smooth, just sometimes a little choppy. The laptop has a Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz processor and Intel integrated graphics 4500MHD.

Is it worth it to upgrade to 8GB, or should I save the money toward a new laptop? 8GB costs over $100 on Amazon.

 

[zigzag3143]

The most demanding activity I do on my laptop is watch live TV on Windows Media Center. The picture is mostly smooth, just sometimes a little choppy. The laptop has a Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz processor and Intel integrated graphics 4500MHD.

Is it worth it to upgrade to 8GB, or should I save the money toward a new laptop? 8GB costs over $100 on Amazon.

Before upgrading I would figure out what the choppiness is caused by. It may be your Download speed and not the ram.

Add to that the fact that when adding ram you should through the old ram out and buy 8 gigs of new ra, I would be sure

RAM should be purchased all in one package, and all at once or you run the risk of having sticks that dont match

 

[ignatzatsonic]

That's very expensive for 8 GB of RAM. Have you checked Newegg or other sources?

You might not need to buy a full 8 anyway, depending on your slot situation and what RAM you have now.

But I'm not sure it would help at any rate.

 

[bobkn]

That's very expensive for 8 GB of RAM.

It's DDR2. Much more expensive than DDR3 SODIMMs at the moment.

At a guess, the upgrade won't help the OP much, if at all.

 

[whs]

Definitely not worth upgrading the RAM for the stated purpose. Your choppiness is probably more because of the weak graphics facility or your internet line speed.

 

[mickey megabyte]

i agree - ram is not the problem here.

internet tv is highly compressed to reduce bandwidth. the downside is that the computer then has to work hard to uncompress it so you can watch it.

i would say you are better off saving the money towards a new machine. have you thought about selling this machine to recoup some of the cost?

 

[whs]

Right Mickey, I did not even think of the compression. For the decompression you also need a lot of CPU muscle which a 2GHz CPU may not have.

 

[unoplayer]

I'm watching digital TV through an antenna, not Internet TV. Does that change any of your recommendations? Thanks for all your help.

 

[mickey megabyte]

hmm, it's still compressed.

when you next notice the choppiness, open up task manager (ctrl-alt-delete or right-click on taskbar and select it) and see what your cpu usage is.

(does intergrated gpu usage show up as cpu usage in task manager, geeks?)

 

[LiveSmiley]

Is it when it's unplugged that it get choppy?
Make sure your power setting system cooling policy is set to active. Passive mode conserves battery a little but pulls back the power of your cpu to keep it cooler. Will make watching videos very laggy

 

[unoplayer]

It's always plugged in. I move a lot, so I do not want to buy a desktop.

Thanks for all your help. I'll probably save up the money to buy a new computer instead of upgrading my old one.