Are you tired of your slow running laptop? Your games doesn’t run smoothly or your laptop is tied to a power socket most of the time? Then you may have a laptop whose performance levels are not matching your requirements. If you are in a market for a laptop upgrade or a totally new one, first thing you must ask – How much and how will you use your laptop? Deciding the performance levels in a laptop requires a lot of research and if not done properly you might end up getting a slow sluggish device.
Today we will discuss what are different factors that can affect the overall performance in a laptop.
Performance of a laptop can be determined by a combination of 5 components: Processors, RAM, the inbuilt storage, inbuilt battery and the included graphics card.
1 – Central Processing Unit (CPU)
Well good news is there are only two main competitors making processors chips for laptops and desktops: Intel or AMD. So choosing a company should not be a big deal. But wait, there are different models and generations offered from these companies.
From here you can note that the cores and clock speed range in GHz determines the performance and computing speed of a processor. The higher the cores and CPU clocking numbers, the better the processor will be.
If we talk about Intel, they have their Intel Pentium, Intel Xeon, Intel Celeron, Intel Atom and Intel Core processors. Intel Core processor series are the most popular and widely available for general users in the market. Intel Xeon processors offer the highest performance but they are mainly focused on servers and workstations. Next comes the Intel Core processors in which we have Core i9, i7, i5 and i3 chips, then comes the Pentium, Celeron and Atom processors. Inside the most popular Intel Core family, Intel i9 tops the chart with a minimum of 8 cores while Core i3 is the lowest with 2 to 4 cores.
On the other side we have AMD, who manufactures A, FX and Ryzen series of processors. Ryzen is the most popular series with Ryzen 9, Ryzen 7, Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 chips. Ryzen 9 have a minimum of 8 cores while lowest Ryzen 3 can have 4 to 8 cores. Ryzen 9 to Ryzen 3 are the most popular series of processors offered by AMD.
Again if you want to learn deeply about the different processor models and generations being offered by Intel and AMD, visit below links:
Intel modern Processors naming schemes
AMD Ryzen processors naming scheme
2- Random Access Memory (RAM)
RAM stores for Random Access Memory without which your computer won’t be able to load applications in the system. All the data stored on RAM is temporary and provides superfast data access to a computer when demanded. RAM in laptops comes in typical sizes of 4GB, 8GB or 16GB where some laptops allow additional expansion using another slot.
So More RAM means more power to your multitasking and faster application loading times. Apart from size, look for the different RAM speeds denoted in MHz where higher numbers denote faster data access on a RAM.
There are basically 2 types of RAM found in modern laptops models: DDR4 and DDR3. DDR4 are modern RAM which is faster, more efficient and consumes less power. On the other hand DD3 types are old RAM which is slowly getting replaced by DDR4 RAM.
My advice here will be buy a system with more RAM than your current requirement and that system should have an additional slot for further RAM upgrades. This is because in future systems OS and different applications will get upgraded and will demand more memory to run smoothly. This choice will make your system future proof.
3 – Internal Storage
For data storing purposes, computers use Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or a Solid State Drive (SSD) or combination of both drives.
SSDs are modern data storage drives which provide much faster access to data. They provide superior performance and durability compared to HDD. However SSDs are more expensive. On the other hand Hard Disk Drives have moving parts inside them to read the data. You can get much more HDD storage at a lesser price. They are also less energy efficient.
You can also choose to go for an hybrid storage option in which your windows or other important applications can be loaded on SSD for faster access while your files, movies or images can be loaded on HDD.
4- Battery
Battery capacity in a laptop is measured in Watt-hours where higher numbers means more battery backup. However bigger the capacity the heavier the laptop. Battery backup also depends upon application settings and usage of a laptop. Certain activities such as gaming, rendering, video editing will drain the battery faster.
5- Graphics Card aka Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
While a powerful CPU handles all the complex instructions and multitasking in a computer, a graphics card handles all the graphical output appearing on your system screen. You may be wondering why your favorite game is not running and if running then why with poor fps. This may be because your system requires more GPU power to handle intense activities.
A laptop graphics handling capability is dealt with an integrated GPU solution or a dedicated graphics card. Intel and AMD both provide inbuilt graphics solutions in most of their CPUs. While a dedicated or discrete GPU is meant for more advanced users who pushes the limit of their laptop beyond their day-to-day tasks. Nvidia and AMD both companies offer dedicated graphics cards in laptops.
Similar to RAM, a graphics card adds virtual RAMs to your system where more GBs means a more powerful graphics card. With help of dedicated GPUs you may be able to run games in FullHD or even 4K without any hiccups.
In the end I hope you find this article helpful in deciding basic laptop components that severely affects your device performance.
Also read:
Best laptops under INR 70000 for gaming in India
Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs with 10nm SuperFin Technology launched for Ultra Slim Laptops
