What would speed up my 1.6GHz M6BNe: Faster HD, Faster RAM or More RAM?

Based upon your configuration you could do these, in the order below is my recommendation...

1) Upgrade to 60GB 7200RPM
2) Replace your memory and get 2x512MB DDR-400 PC3200. Why? Because the bus speed of the original Centrino is 400Mhz bus. Using PC2700, you are not fully utilizing your bus speed. And getting 1GB will lessen the need to access your swap pagefile, thus reducing overall HDD access. (no need low latency, as most standard one these days have pretty decent latency anyhow).
3) Last and lowest priority is upgrade CPU to 2.0Mhz.

--SPk

What is your current ram usage?

I need numbers buddy In taskmanager.. how much physical memory are you using right now?

I believe that spec was based upon when the laptop was designed and tested with. At the time PC2700 was the only one available.

But as a general rule of thumb, as long it is DDR, same voltage, you should be able to take it up to the bus speed. Which in Dothan case on your laptop 400Mhz bus. PC3200 goes to 400Mhz bus speed.

I recall Snorre did sometihng similar with his Acer Ferrari 3200, which was originally PC2700 and he used PC3200 Corsair (can't find the post to confirm sorry).

As for now, I would go with the HDD replacement first rather then just the swap of memory you've suggested above.

Go to Price Grabber or Pricewatch.com. You could get the 60GB for cheaper than that. Hmm Then again you might have a hard time finding one since there is a shortage.

Between your two options

1) Replace HD to 60GB 7200RPM

-VS-

2) Replace 512MB PC2700 with 512MB PC3200

Option 1 will give you better performance increase. However, if in option #2 you go with 1GB memory, then that would give you better performance increase.

You will see a good difference just for the fact you have better bus speed with it. But you will be limited on the differences as the swap page file has to write back to your HD, and that is your bottleneck there.

So if cost in a factor, yes go with the PC3200.

Installing PC3200 (400 MHz) will not give better performance by default because the 855 chipset supports up to PC2700 DDR (333 MHz).

Too lengthy to describe, but the CPU 'talks' to the northbridge (855 chipset) at 400 MHz whereas the memory 'talks' to the northbridge at 333 MHz so installing a PC3200 stick won't improve performance unless you perform some overclocking.

You'd be better off purchasing lower latency memory sticks (those with at least 2.5 CAS, but 2.0 is better yet more expensive and difficult to find).

Right now in your situation I'd go with 7200 RPM HDD upgrade since it will be the 'cheapest' path to improve performance, but you would also get noticeable performance improvement going from 512MB PC2100 to 1 GB PC2700 if you had a bit more of that hard earned money.

Most places the price of PC2700 and PC3200 usually only less than 5-10 bucks differences. I would go with PC3200 just for that sake.

But good latency PC2700 cost more than PC3200....by average 30-50 bucks. I test the latency differences on my desk top at one point and there is an article on it for notebook the performance between latency is only 3% - 8% average. Which is not as noticable as you would think it would be using PC3200 of standard latency.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...roperty&DEPA=0

But yes I agree, 7200RPM will be best, but given the shortage and price of it right now, it is a bit more than one stick of memory.

Actually let me take that back on prices...

Corsair XMS low latency is actually $96.00
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-540&depa=0

But this Corsair is $130.00 lower latency..
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-542&depa=0

Go with that PC3200 $96.00 one ehhehe...but again HD will be a bit costly...

That completely depends on how much memory you currently use? Doing nothing, my laptop is utilizing 435MB of Ram. 90 of that is dedicated to video. Running an AV scan with KAV will max my processor out at 100%. Ram usage goes up to 700MB and the swap file goes from less than 300 to over 400MB.

What is your lappy doing? That's why you were asked for numbers. If minor tasks max out your physical memory, you need more RAM even if it's only PC2100. In my case, I max out the processor long before my RAM so I'd be a candidate for a processor upgrade. LOL. Replacing my pokey 4200rpm HD wouldn't hurt either.

As I posted in the past http://www.highlandsun.com/hyc/centrino/ I only got a 1.6% gain going from 2.5-3-3-7 to 2-2-2-5 memory latency.

And DeafDaddy is right, the i855 chipset only goes up to 333MHz on the memory bus, so all that crap SmilePak said about matching the CPU's 400MHz speed is nonsense. Also if your Centrino is using a Banias (first generation Centrino processor) then it's quite possible you have a first generation i855 too, which doesn't even support PC2700/333MHz. In that case PC2100 is your only choice.

I think the jump from a 4200rpm hard drive to the 7200rpm drive will make the most noticable improvement, boot time will be faster, applications will load faster, etc. But that assumes that you're noticing these things to be slow right now. If boot time is acceptable already, and you don't notice any sluggishness loading a single app, but you notice more sluggishness as you load multiple apps simultaneously, then that points to your current amount of memory being too small.

I don't think you'll see any noticable difference in system response between 1GB of PC2100 vs 1GB of PC2700 vs 1GB of PC3200 memory. All of those speeds are faster than human senses could ever discern, only a benchmark would show you the difference. As mentioned, there is some benefit to installing PC3200 if you ever plan to overclock the CPU.

I did recommend going with the HD as option 1

As for matching up the CPU 400Mhz, i ment in terms of bus, bandwidth, etc. Over matchup. True that the 855 only support 333mhz talk to the memory, but there is still performance differences between using DDR-333 vs DDR-400.

Just as you stated in your URL, DDR-400 yield better performance over DDR-333

If you recall, I did mentioned memory replacement as option #2 and option #1 I would opt for 7200RPM drive. But his concern was around cost and going with HD replacement would yield over $200.00. Thus because of that, memory option replacement would be the next best solution as that is cheaper than replacement of HDD.

And also, he is using DDR-266 PC2100, which is no where close to capacity of the bus anyhow. Ofcourse DDR-2700 would match it perfectly, but why go with DDR-2700 when you could get a nice DDR-400 PC3200 for a little more money.

Also I agree with the latency differences. I did mentioned there was an article benching latency differences between memory. Both at the same speed however one with more aggressive latency while the other one more relax setting. It yield small % improvement between the two.

So in my opinion, if money is an issue, it is not worth it to opt for a higher latency PC2700 DDR when you could go cheaper @ DDR PC3200 for cheaper.

There is a shortage of the Hitachi 60GB 7200RPM drive. A lot of places that used to offer it as an upgrade options on custom notebooks have post delay until mid may the earliest to get some in.

So it would be hard to get them. If you could find them, it would be a bit pricey. Late last year, they were going around 150ish - 160ish USD (if i recall correctly).

You will get good improvement with the 7200RPM drive, especially when you have the 4500RPM drive now.

Keep in mind that HD access also bottleneck the overall system bandwidth because it also utilize CPU process time. Because the process get their data slower.

With 246MB in use in your paging file, you should definitely expand to 1GB of RAM. The other thing to beware of if you decide to buy PC3200 is that not all PC3200 memory works in Asus M6s, as I also mentioned on my web writeup. Anyway, reducing the use of the paging file will compensate somewhat for the slowness of the hard drive.