It certainly will. I've got a T9300 in my D630 and that also uses a 6MB cache. The motherboard supports between 2 and 6 and switches to suit.
I wouldn't get too stressed about the difference in performance between a T7800 and a T9500 though. It only works out to about 10% looking at benchmark speeds, and that's not really enough for anyone to notice doing day to day tasks.
I put a T9300 in mine, replacing a T7250. Looking at the Passmark benchmark scores for both processors that yields an improvement of just over 50%, so upping the processor is definitely worth doing.
Swapping a T7100 for a T9500 though, that would be a dramatic processor power increase, something in the order or 75% ( T7100 scores 1037 on Passmark, and the T9500 scores 1823). The jump in perfomance is bigger than the increase in Ghz suggests because the T9xxx series are a different processor family and they get a bit more grunt per cycle.
I've heard of people putting Core 2 Extremes in D630s before (not sure exactly the model numbers) getting up to around 2.8Ghz but they emit so much heat you're just gonna reduce the life of the machine.
Well that is great to know, I was actually curious if there was anything greater than a T9500 I could push.
This is an experimental mobile workstation build out of spare D630s, I would love to try and run 8GB ram too.
I have an identical D630 that sits next to it with no mobo, no optical, no keyboard or touchpad...it has a circuit board in the base that drives the display off a VGA input so I link the two from the VGA output on the other for extended desktop. The LCD and driver board are powered off the original internal battery, not only is there a VGA link cable between them there is a USB link for extended hub ports in the "display D630" as well as more hard drives. There is a SSD for the OS in the functional D630 and everything else is dependent on the display base via USB link; there is another SSD for apps/programs and a high capacity HDD for files...these extra drives are not powered from the USB link cable they are ran off the original battery in that "display base" my theory of running a second SSD for apps/programs instead of running them off the OS SSD was to maximize bandwidth but I do not really think it makes a difference or was needed?
If I'm understanding right these extra HDDs SSDs are all running via USB? If that's the case, then any theoretical advantages you'd gain would be mitigated by the speed of the USB transfer, as the D630 only supports USB2.
That said though, in my humble opinion, I think dualling SSDs for bandwidth purposes is a bit over the top for most people anyway. The advantage (and that speed you see on boot and so on) with an SSD is its latency, or in other words the time between the computer telling it "give me 'this' file," and the SSD handing it over. Hard drives had big lag in this way by comparison; there was seek latency which was how long it took the read arm to move backward and forward over the platter, and rotational latency which is how long it took the appropriate bits to rotate under the head. These might be 10, 20 milliseconds or so. Not long in themselves, but when you're accessing multiple tiny files, (like you do during boot) it adds up.
These times are a tiny fraction on SSDs, so it can zip through these tiny files like lightning, perhaps a hundred or more times faster than a hard drive can manage; it's not unusual to have a small fraction of a single millisecond for access times on an SSD.
That and SSDs have a far greater data throughput capability than hard drives can manage.
Linking back to dualling them up, the limitation with a D630 isn't going to be the SSD, it's its own internal SATA interface. The D630 supports SATA 1 I think, or it might be SATA II can't remember. All but the cheapest SSDs nowadays support SATA III so they're already capable of maxing out the bandwidth of the D630. Splitting things down via USB 2 isn't going to give you any real appreciable improvements I wouldn't think. I mean when you're starting with fractions of a millisecond latencies, and hundreds of megabytes a second throughput, there's not a lot of room for improvement there, particularly not over USB which itself will bottleneck the transfer rate to a snail-like pace compared to direct SATA.
Even putting another SSD in the D630's secondary hard drive bay (thus using SATA) wouldn't really be worth the effort in my opinion. They're blazingly fast compared to hard drives as they are. It's up to you though.
8GB of RAM, next. I -think- whether or not the D630 supports above 4GB depends on its specific hardware, I think there were a few internal-to-Dell design changes that were never widely publicized that mean some D630s support upwards of 4GB, and some don't. One often recommended route to discovering whether you're lucky or not is to download the Crucial System Scanner at Crucial.com, and that will tell you one way or the other.
I've looked into this plenty of times, though, and the main problem you're gonna have (and the reason I've never bothered) is how much it costs to do. You've got to remember, these laptops originally came out 7 years ago. Back then, 8GB of ram was, at least for most people, a pretty ridiculous amount of memory to have. My PC at the time had 2GB in it, and I thought that was good. For that reason, not many 4GB DDR2 SO-DIMM modules were ever sold, and as a result they've never dropped as much in price, and, thanks to the D630 having two RAM slots, they're what you need to achieve the lofty heights of 8GB.
I've never found an 8GB kit of RAM that's compatible with the D630 at a price that I would consider reasonable. Often it's a significant fraction of the price the machine itself is worth, and sometimes more than. Again though, they're out there, and assuming your machine is compatible (crucial.com, as mentioned earlier), then the option is always there.
Talking about those faster processors, having done a bit of research, I believe the ultimate processor that won't cause D630 to stick it's middle finger up at you is the Core 2 Extreme X9000, 2.8Ghz (passmark score of 2006), provided you’ve got the BIOS bang up-to-date.
I will say though that the D630, particularly the one that has the Nvidia Quadro capable motherboard has well-publicized heat issues. Adding something as ferocious as an X9000 into the mix will only exacerbate the problem. Comparing the X9000 to my processor, the T9300, you’re only gaining about 17-18% something like that, and the X9000 is seriously pricey, for the same sort of reasons that the 8GB of RAM is. Again just my opinion but if you want a solid, long-lived machine, going too crazy with the processor isn’t worth it. You’ve got to remember anything less than 15-20% most people won’t notice without the aid of a benchmarking program anyway, and let’s be honest, real-world usage improvements is what you’d really be bothered about.
Best of luck with it, any more queries, let me know.
You know I have never really thought about the transfer rate between the internal SATA and USB2.0 but it makes a lot of sense. I was not referring to running a RAID, just doubling bandwidth for OS environment and programs. Makes me rethink this I may actually run a second SSD in the expansion bay and use the DVD drive in the other "display base" via USB if I can find a way to wire a factory optical drive to USB. Like you said even if I used both internal SATA ports for SSDs; one for OS and other for programs I would not notice much difference unless....I found a way to run them in a RAID but I do not think that is supported. Either way I can not fit my files on a SSD so I will need to run a HDD either in the expansion bay or via usb from the other base I am sure I can stream HD videos via USB from the HDD?
Yes I know 8GB of ram will be expensive Im looking at $100-$150 I may not even need it...6 may be more then enough if if will take it.
The T9500 can be had for around $60 so that is where I will stop, I did heard some Quadro heat issue problems and if used with Arctic Silver 5 and a cooling pad I am sure I could monitor it...but is the extra video ram worth it? Would it improve the VGA output (much needed).
One elegant way around that problem of figuring out how to wire a factory optical drive to USB is googling something called the Dell External D-Bay. As you may be guessing this is an extra expansion bay of the same type that's internal to the laptop, only packaged in a neat little external casing with a (slightly propietrary) USB cable hanging off. I'd have thought nowadays you'd be able to get one of those very cheaply. They do need the docking station in order to connect (to the D630) though, that's worth bearing in mind. Might be easier though. Plus the docking station gives you extra ports such as DVI-D.
The Quadro will give better graphical output, probably, but the heat issue stems more a design problem with how the heat was managed, that being that the CPU and the GPU both share the same heat-pipes and run to the same heatsink. So the faster GPU, as well as a faster-than-factory CPU adds up to potential problems. I use one of those USB-powered cooling mats with my laptop. Not only does it make it a lot more comfortable on the lap but because of the D630's metal casing, it really does vastly imrpove the cooling capability. That might be an option.
Considering the royal pain in the *** changing the motherboard is though, I'm happy just sticking with the Intel graphics. Up to you though, of course.
Great idea but the cord end could be cut off and rewired for USB couldn't it? The base will already have a USB backbone in it for hub ports looks like all I need to do is supply the drive with an external 12v supply outside the USB connection it could all be wired internally in the base (thats what a diagram for the connector says but the battery on the laptop says 11.1v so I am stumped).
Docking station would be a plus to have a DVI output I think the docking station has a GPU of its own doesn't it? This would cause one to sit higher then the other too...docking station may not be a great idea.
If I run a second SSD in the expansion bay I would want to double the read bandwidth through some sort of software RAID. At the very minimum run all programs from the secondary SSD and possibly even some Windows services/applications that run the background.
Oh I already planned on running dual cooling pads, and Arctic Silver...maybe even a custom punch out in my cooling pad for the heatsink area.
I just realized the bios version was A03 haha I just updated to A19 think I already notice some performance increase at least in stability.
StevePSmith
3 Posts
0
December 3rd, 2014 18:00
It certainly will. I've got a T9300 in my D630 and that also uses a 6MB cache. The motherboard supports between 2 and 6 and switches to suit.
I wouldn't get too stressed about the difference in performance between a T7800 and a T9500 though. It only works out to about 10% looking at benchmark speeds, and that's not really enough for anyone to notice doing day to day tasks.
I put a T9300 in mine, replacing a T7250. Looking at the Passmark benchmark scores for both processors that yields an improvement of just over 50%, so upping the processor is definitely worth doing.
Swapping a T7100 for a T9500 though, that would be a dramatic processor power increase, something in the order or 75% ( T7100 scores 1037 on Passmark, and the T9500 scores 1823). The jump in perfomance is bigger than the increase in Ghz suggests because the T9xxx series are a different processor family and they get a bit more grunt per cycle.
I've heard of people putting Core 2 Extremes in D630s before (not sure exactly the model numbers) getting up to around 2.8Ghz but they emit so much heat you're just gonna reduce the life of the machine.
pinkfloydeffect
1 Rookie
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37 Posts
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December 1st, 2014 21:00
Still no thoughts?
pinkfloydeffect
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December 4th, 2014 00:00
Well that is great to know, I was actually curious if there was anything greater than a T9500 I could push.
This is an experimental mobile workstation build out of spare D630s, I would love to try and run 8GB ram too.
I have an identical D630 that sits next to it with no mobo, no optical, no keyboard or touchpad...it has a circuit board in the base that drives the display off a VGA input so I link the two from the VGA output on the other for extended desktop. The LCD and driver board are powered off the original internal battery, not only is there a VGA link cable between them there is a USB link for extended hub ports in the "display D630" as well as more hard drives. There is a SSD for the OS in the functional D630 and everything else is dependent on the display base via USB link; there is another SSD for apps/programs and a high capacity HDD for files...these extra drives are not powered from the USB link cable they are ran off the original battery in that "display base" my theory of running a second SSD for apps/programs instead of running them off the OS SSD was to maximize bandwidth but I do not really think it makes a difference or was needed?
StevePSmith
3 Posts
0
December 9th, 2014 10:00
If I'm understanding right these extra HDDs SSDs are all running via USB? If that's the case, then any theoretical advantages you'd gain would be mitigated by the speed of the USB transfer, as the D630 only supports USB2.
That said though, in my humble opinion, I think dualling SSDs for bandwidth purposes is a bit over the top for most people anyway. The advantage (and that speed you see on boot and so on) with an SSD is its latency, or in other words the time between the computer telling it "give me 'this' file," and the SSD handing it over. Hard drives had big lag in this way by comparison; there was seek latency which was how long it took the read arm to move backward and forward over the platter, and rotational latency which is how long it took the appropriate bits to rotate under the head. These might be 10, 20 milliseconds or so. Not long in themselves, but when you're accessing multiple tiny files, (like you do during boot) it adds up.
These times are a tiny fraction on SSDs, so it can zip through these tiny files like lightning, perhaps a hundred or more times faster than a hard drive can manage; it's not unusual to have a small fraction of a single millisecond for access times on an SSD.
That and SSDs have a far greater data throughput capability than hard drives can manage.
Linking back to dualling them up, the limitation with a D630 isn't going to be the SSD, it's its own internal SATA interface. The D630 supports SATA 1 I think, or it might be SATA II can't remember. All but the cheapest SSDs nowadays support SATA III so they're already capable of maxing out the bandwidth of the D630. Splitting things down via USB 2 isn't going to give you any real appreciable improvements I wouldn't think. I mean when you're starting with fractions of a millisecond latencies, and hundreds of megabytes a second throughput, there's not a lot of room for improvement there, particularly not over USB which itself will bottleneck the transfer rate to a snail-like pace compared to direct SATA.
Even putting another SSD in the D630's secondary hard drive bay (thus using SATA) wouldn't really be worth the effort in my opinion. They're blazingly fast compared to hard drives as they are. It's up to you though.
8GB of RAM, next. I -think- whether or not the D630 supports above 4GB depends on its specific hardware, I think there were a few internal-to-Dell design changes that were never widely publicized that mean some D630s support upwards of 4GB, and some don't. One often recommended route to discovering whether you're lucky or not is to download the Crucial System Scanner at Crucial.com, and that will tell you one way or the other.
I've looked into this plenty of times, though, and the main problem you're gonna have (and the reason I've never bothered) is how much it costs to do. You've got to remember, these laptops originally came out 7 years ago. Back then, 8GB of ram was, at least for most people, a pretty ridiculous amount of memory to have. My PC at the time had 2GB in it, and I thought that was good. For that reason, not many 4GB DDR2 SO-DIMM modules were ever sold, and as a result they've never dropped as much in price, and, thanks to the D630 having two RAM slots, they're what you need to achieve the lofty heights of 8GB.
I've never found an 8GB kit of RAM that's compatible with the D630 at a price that I would consider reasonable. Often it's a significant fraction of the price the machine itself is worth, and sometimes more than. Again though, they're out there, and assuming your machine is compatible (crucial.com, as mentioned earlier), then the option is always there.
Talking about those faster processors, having done a bit of research, I believe the ultimate processor that won't cause D630 to stick it's middle finger up at you is the Core 2 Extreme X9000, 2.8Ghz (passmark score of 2006), provided you’ve got the BIOS bang up-to-date.
I will say though that the D630, particularly the one that has the Nvidia Quadro capable motherboard has well-publicized heat issues. Adding something as ferocious as an X9000 into the mix will only exacerbate the problem. Comparing the X9000 to my processor, the T9300, you’re only gaining about 17-18% something like that, and the X9000 is seriously pricey, for the same sort of reasons that the 8GB of RAM is. Again just my opinion but if you want a solid, long-lived machine, going too crazy with the processor isn’t worth it. You’ve got to remember anything less than 15-20% most people won’t notice without the aid of a benchmarking program anyway, and let’s be honest, real-world usage improvements is what you’d really be bothered about.
Best of luck with it, any more queries, let me know.
Kredikartitaksi
1 Message
0
December 9th, 2014 12:00
Bios is work?
pinkfloydeffect
1 Rookie
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37 Posts
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December 10th, 2014 01:00
You know I have never really thought about the transfer rate between the internal SATA and USB2.0 but it makes a lot of sense. I was not referring to running a RAID, just doubling bandwidth for OS environment and programs. Makes me rethink this I may actually run a second SSD in the expansion bay and use the DVD drive in the other "display base" via USB if I can find a way to wire a factory optical drive to USB. Like you said even if I used both internal SATA ports for SSDs; one for OS and other for programs I would not notice much difference unless....I found a way to run them in a RAID but I do not think that is supported. Either way I can not fit my files on a SSD so I will need to run a HDD either in the expansion bay or via usb from the other base I am sure I can stream HD videos via USB from the HDD?
Yes I know 8GB of ram will be expensive Im looking at $100-$150 I may not even need it...6 may be more then enough if if will take it.
The T9500 can be had for around $60 so that is where I will stop, I did heard some Quadro heat issue problems and if used with Arctic Silver 5 and a cooling pad I am sure I could monitor it...but is the extra video ram worth it? Would it improve the VGA output (much needed).
Thanks
StevePSmith
3 Posts
0
December 10th, 2014 13:00
One elegant way around that problem of figuring out how to wire a factory optical drive to USB is googling something called the Dell External D-Bay. As you may be guessing this is an extra expansion bay of the same type that's internal to the laptop, only packaged in a neat little external casing with a (slightly propietrary) USB cable hanging off. I'd have thought nowadays you'd be able to get one of those very cheaply. They do need the docking station in order to connect (to the D630) though, that's worth bearing in mind. Might be easier though. Plus the docking station gives you extra ports such as DVI-D.
The Quadro will give better graphical output, probably, but the heat issue stems more a design problem with how the heat was managed, that being that the CPU and the GPU both share the same heat-pipes and run to the same heatsink. So the faster GPU, as well as a faster-than-factory CPU adds up to potential problems. I use one of those USB-powered cooling mats with my laptop. Not only does it make it a lot more comfortable on the lap but because of the D630's metal casing, it really does vastly imrpove the cooling capability. That might be an option.
Considering the royal pain in the *** changing the motherboard is though, I'm happy just sticking with the Intel graphics. Up to you though, of course.
pinkfloydeffect
1 Rookie
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37 Posts
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December 11th, 2014 06:00
Great idea but the cord end could be cut off and rewired for USB couldn't it? The base will already have a USB backbone in it for hub ports looks like all I need to do is supply the drive with an external 12v supply outside the USB connection it could all be wired internally in the base (thats what a diagram for the connector says but the battery on the laptop says 11.1v so I am stumped).
Docking station would be a plus to have a DVI output I think the docking station has a GPU of its own doesn't it? This would cause one to sit higher then the other too...docking station may not be a great idea.
If I run a second SSD in the expansion bay I would want to double the read bandwidth through some sort of software RAID. At the very minimum run all programs from the secondary SSD and possibly even some Windows services/applications that run the background.
Oh I already planned on running dual cooling pads, and Arctic Silver...maybe even a custom punch out in my cooling pad for the heatsink area.
I just realized the bios version was A03 haha I just updated to A19 think I already notice some performance increase at least in stability.