....Hello again Shooter !
from what I see regarding your Asus laptop....you may want to avoid sinking any further serious money into upgrades for it, as it is getting a little " long in the tooth", compared to current machines that are much more powerful and cost less new, than yours did. Several issues : Windows 7 home premium is limited to 16 GB system memory...Windows 8.1 has no PRACTICAL limit....my asus g750 now has 24GB, which my testing has shown to really improve performance with certain operations. Next, even though you probably have two internal HDD bays....your machine MAY be limited to SATA II drive speed....not SATA III. So, if you put a quality SSD in each bay, you would NOT get the full speed benefit........they would each do between 150 MB/sec and 200 MB/ sec, instead of 450 to 500 MB/sec of SATA III speed. 1366 x768 is not enough resolution to properly show the entire PPro interface.....you need to connect an external 1920 x 1080 monitor with an HDMI cable....it should work fine.....I've been doing it for years.
So, to improve performance with your current machine you want to max out the memory to 16 GB,then, install a QUALITY SSD for OS, Programs and windows page file. A SECOND SSD to put ALL else on would help performance, but, costwise, it would be best to use a quality 7200 rpm.....not the crappy 5400 rpm drive asus supplies !....in the second bay for all your footage and program files. Use your external USB 3 port for either a USB 3 dock,or, the HIGH SPEED PNY USB 3 thumbdrive that Bill and I are using for previews and all media cache files!.....it reads at 190 MB/sec !!!! AND the 128 GB drive is less than fifty bucks ! I also use the dock...plugging in SSDs or HDDs as needed...like cartridges ! My old laptop was a G73JW....I had 14 GB of memory, an SSD in each bay, and a 460m Nvidia GPU. Although it worked, my newer Haswell Asus G750 JWjust blows it away because of 3 factors : higher CPU clockspeed under load...it goes to 3.5 Ghz, instead of the old 2.4 Ghz. More system memory. THEN...a much better video card....your card MAY have DDR 3 in it...two versions of the 555m were made...DDR 3 and DDR 5....3 is BAD if you happen to have it...hopefully not. Also, using a Crucial SATA III SSD in each bay gives DOUBLE the speed of SATA II and eliminates any potential drive speed bottleneck. My new laptop was purchased refurbished at $850...MUCH less than the $1400 for the old laptop, when it was new. I DID have to up the memory from 8 to 24 GB and provide the two SSDS....but, it was WELL WORTH IT !!! It must also be said that recent improvements in PPro CC 2014 ITSELF have provided significant performance increases over previous versions. Put the cache files and previews on the external USB 3 device.....that thumb drive works great !
