Series 3 netbook...how can I make it better and faster

[HopelesslyFaithful]

I got the series 3 netbook off the 1saleaday sale for 350 bucks, which was awesome but I want to know if you guy's have come up with any cool mods or tweaks for it. So I got a couple things to ask.

1. Are there any mods?
2. Can you overclock the i3 in it or the gpu? I haven't done anything with the the new intel CPUs so i am a noob in this area. Wasn't sure if setFSB works.
3. I notice it hangs a lot...for an example, the mouse will freeze when it does something once in a while and it gets old fast. Why does it hang? Is it the hardrive or the CPU? The hardrive is actually really fast for a 5400rpm. It is almost as fast as my 7200 rpm drive in my laptop. It gets like 80MBps sequential and 34MBps i think in 512 and .5-.9MBps for 4k random, which is really good for a 5400 rpm drive. So is it the CPU that makes it hang? Kinda lost on this one.
4. Am I missing anything cool?

[bensmith0212]

Considering it is a netbook, there is not much you can do since netbooks aren't really made for performance. In my opinion, if you netbook it really slow, there is probably some unused programs, so try uninstalling those and defrag your hard drive, or even better, format hard drive and reinstall OS.

[HopelesslyFaithful]

Considering it is a netbook, there is not much you can do since netbooks aren't really made for performance. In my opinion, if you netbook it really slow, there is probably some unused programs, so try uninstalling those and defrag your hard drive, or even better, format hard drive and reinstall OS.

though does setFSB work for it? I wouldn't mind over clocking to 1.5ghz or so Again where are the hangs coming from? hardrive or CPU? Wouldn't an SSD upgrade be pointless if the hangs are from the cpu?

[John Ratsey]

How much RAM does it have? Can the module be changed for a bigger one? If it follows the old netbook standard of coming with 1GB then that's like trying to make Windows run with its pants around its ankles.

John

[HopelesslyFaithful]

How much RAM does it have? Can the module be changed for a bigger one? If it follows the old netbook standard of coming with 1GB then that's like trying to make Windows run with its pants around its ankles.

John

it has 4 gigs and one slot so I would have to buy an 8 gig stick. It chills around 1-2gigs of ram. Also I have noticed a couple things. It hangs when i scroll down in opera and then try to move mouse. It also hangs when i delete files and try to move mouse. First thought after opera thing was the cpu/gpu but it runs at 30-50% cpu and the most used core is only 70%. But with the recycle bin and deleting files and it hanging makes me think its a hardrive/ram issue. I know when I went from 4 gigs on my other laptop and upgraded to 8 gigs opera went from 500-1000 MB ram to always using at least 1gig of ram no matter what sometimes even more. Granted I have no idea why opera never used all the ram to begin with...When I had 4 gigs it used only 2-3 gig total and the rest was free. Why wasn't opera using the rest back then? So maybe it is opera and other programs caching to the hardrive even though i got plenty of space in my ram?


http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/sams...-35001907.html

[John Ratsey]

I agree: 4GB RAM should be plenty. You may be able to get a better insight into what is happening by adding columns such a Page Faults and the I/O reads and writes on the Processes tab in Task Manager. Resource Monitor is another way to see what is using the resources.

You may also want to look at My Computer / Properties > Advance System Settings. I have the Visual Effects set to Best Performance + Smooth screen fonts. I actually prefer the XP style square windows but it also gets rid of some effects that make me feel giddy. Then, on the Performance tab, make sure that memory usuage is optimised for programs.

Ultimately, a combination of a relatively slow (1.3GHz CPU) and single channel RAM access mean that you don't get to benefit from some of the improvements made in the Sandy Bridge platform. An SSD would be the best way to boost performance within the other hardware limitations.

John

[HopelesslyFaithful]

I agree: 4GB RAM should be plenty. You may be able to get a better insight into what is happening by adding columns such a Page Faults and the I/O reads and writes on the Processes tab in Task Manager. Resource Monitor is another way to see what is using the resources.

You may also want to look at My Computer / Properties > Advance System Settings. I have the Visual Effects set to Best Performance + Smooth screen fonts. I actually prefer the XP style square windows but it also gets rid of some effects that make me feel giddy. Then, on the Performance tab, make sure that memory usuage is optimised for programs.

Ultimately, a combination of a relatively slow (1.3GHz CPU) and single channel RAM access mean that you don't get to benefit from some of the improvements made in the Sandy Bridge platform. An SSD would be the best way to boost performance within the other hardware limitations.

John

aleight i'll check those out but i am nearly sure the programs performance is set like that from default. Also do you know about setFSB...does that work? I would love to push it up a little bit for more juice.

[John Ratsey]

aleight i'll check those out but i am nearly sure the programs performance is set like that from default. Also do you know about setFSB...does that work? I would love to push it up a little bit for more juice.

Whether SetFSB works will depend on it supporting the PLL clock generator chip. I've not read of people trying to use SetFSB with recent hardware.

While your CPU is only 1.3GHz, it does have two cores each running two threads, so it should not be a serious bottleneck to normal usage. Download and run HWiNFO32 and see what the CPU speed display shows. Is it spending a lot of time at full speed?

John

[Sir Punk]

i always turn off virtual memory, but be aware that if you have a lot of things open you might get the annoying messages "you are low on memory"
I really hate the single ram slot of this laptop, otherwise for the price it offers very decent performance for me.

[HopelesslyFaithful]

i always turn off virtual memory, but be aware that if you have a lot of things open you might get the annoying messages "you are low on memory"
I really hate the single ram slot of this laptop, otherwise for the price it offers very decent performance for me.

I would have never bought it except for getting it for $350 bucks.(600-700 is way too much but it is a nice netbook) I tried turning off virtual memory but it said it was on after i rebooted...weird. Tomorrow when i got time i will post my thoughts and what i have noticed about the stuttering. I honestly got no clue on the stuttering considering nothing is bogged down...neither the ram, gpu, cpu, or hardrive so its perplexing.


side note biggest complaint is no usb 3.0 :/