Can an ssd upgrade supplement some of the speed for the low end graphics performance of a laptop AMD apu? I currently have an e2100 apu with 4gb 400mhz ram and a 5400rpm 320gb hdd. Also I was thinking about a ram upgrade to help. Because I wont be able to afford a new system for some time.
I don't think anything is going to help that chip, it's really old, if you get the RAM for free do it, otherwise build a low end APU rig, it'll do 720p gaming well as well as some PS2 emulation, you can get it a bit lower with a refurbished hard drive, currently it's around $250 actually you could just reuse your current drive in the new PC, but you'd have to reinstall windows
You could maybe try that now razer game booster thing, it'll turn off a lot of CPU processes when you launch a game
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It won't directly help the graphics but it'll make the system in general feel a lot more responsive. Windows should boot quicker and virus scans etc. shouldn't slow the system so much and take ages which is one of my major gripes with any laptop and HDDs when servicing them for friends/family.
At this point I think almost all laptops should have SSDs. Simply because they aren't as likely to break from dropping, or slamming the lid down. Although it won't make your graphics any better.
an ssd only effects the read and write speed of the drive and will have no effect on the ram/cpu/gpu
I concur with @atcoptex. An SSD isn't going to help with your graphics performance, but will harden your laptop against drops, falls, and shocks. It will also make loading times a hell of a lot faster.
In the meantime, have you tried optimizing? Whats the cache size on your current drive in the laptop?
I ask because I had a APU previously that did much better without aero and stuff enabled, a RAM upgrade, and a bit of optimizing. The most recent MS updates for telemetry made mine into a slug. You might get better performance with 720p resolution than the 768 stuff if you don't mind it.
i´m not sure if upgrading your hdd to a ssd is going to make a whole lot of sense tbh.
It will speed up some loading time, but other then that nothing much.
I'm not sure that a ram upgrade would do much, considering that you won't really be able to do any gaming that would benefit from more than 4GB with that APU. I have a laptop with the same E12100 and both cores get maxed out just from opening more than 3 tabs at a time in Chrome. What exactly are you trying to use the laptop for? I installed Linux on mine to mess around and get used to it, and use it for light internet browsing when I'm out or want to lay in bed. That's about all it can manage.
The slow load times are definitely from the E2100, so an SSD would probably not help too much in regular use unfortunately. Just check out the task manager and see what things are under the most pressure when doing something that slows it down. I guarantee it will be the CPU.