Looking for a second opinion on Mobile CPUs

[FreedomEclipse]

I currently have an old T2300 in my laptop. However I would like to get a few more years out of my laptop.Due to complications with driver support for my aged hardware I have had my hand forced into looking for a new processor which will give my laptop a bit more life and a bit more muscle for everyday use.

Here are 4 processors which are compatible with my laptop



I want to upgrade to a T7400 at least, but im worried that the cooling inside my laptop is insufficient to keep the 'new' processor cool.

If i can get away with it, Id put the T7600 in but, i know for a fact that, that would cause some serious overheating issues.

the voltages of the Yonah and Merom chips are a little different. but from my experience, faster CPUs = more heat. so theres the CPU freq to take into consideration aswell as the CPUs TDP.

Whats do you guys think. I know its sort of a complicated question, and i probably didnt make no sense what so ever. but I will try and answer any questions you might have

[bogmali]

I used to have a T2300 in my lappy and upgraded to a T7200 and never looked back. 31W is what you currently have in there so jumping to 34W (T7200, T7400,and T7200) should not be an issue I would think.

[Kursah]

Honestly I'd like to know what laptop you have and it's specs. If you have the ability to upgrade the memory with an extra slot or can go buy higher density memory, I think that'd be the biggest change you could make. I recently upgraded an old tower with a Celeron 3ghz single core from 512mb ram to 2gb and the difference was just amazing. It was like a different machine....it runs in Win7 with ease now...where it was a slow nightmare before.

The procs in that picture have a TDP of 34W which means your cooling should be sufficient under factory set speeds, along with that and a TJ of 100C means you should be ok if you keep your intakes clear on that lappy.

What do you use your laptop for? Again specs? What version of Windows? Honestly I don't really see the point of this upgrade without knowing more info.

[Fourstaff]

3w is not going to cause a lot of problem imo, but if your laptop's cooling is on its last legs (ie your laptop keeps on overheating etc), then I would think twice again. That said, you can always pull the clock down to 2ghz, and then try to boot with the least voltage to be on the safe side.

Off topic: what is the difference clock for clock between Merom and Yonah cores?

[FreedomEclipse]

Originally Posted by Kursah

Honestly I'd like to know what laptop you have and it's specs. If you have the ability to upgrade the memory with an extra slot or can go buy higher density memory, I think that'd be the biggest change you could make. I recently upgraded an old tower with a Celeron 3ghz single core from 512mb ram to 2gb and the difference was just amazing. It was like a different machine....it runs in Win7 with ease now...where it was a slow nightmare before.

The procs in that picture have a TDP of 34W which means your cooling should be sufficient under factory set speeds, along with that and a TJ of 100C means you should be ok if you keep your intakes clear on that lappy.

What do you use your laptop for? Again specs? What version of Windows? Honestly I don't really see the point of this upgrade without knowing more info.

Brand: BenQ (Hong Kong import )
CPU: T2300@1.66Ghz
Ram: 2Gb DDR2 667Mhz (upgraded from 1Gb)
GPU: X1600M (Driver support was dropped by ATi when Vista came out -- I used MobilityModder to mod desktop drivers for it)
Chipset: Intel 945
OS: W7 32bit

pointless putting 4Gb ram on it at the moment as the CPU only supports 32bit processing


I use my laptop for everything, its like a little desktop pc it games, it wordprocesses and it surfs the internets.

I wanted to upgrade the CPU because for some reason. the X1600 stopped accelerating HD videos -- modded driver has something to do with it. So I have been using CoreAV to use the CPU to do all the 1080p decoding but the CPU is getting swamped, Hence the need to upgrade.

[FreedomEclipse]

Originally Posted by Fourstaff

Off topic: what is the difference clock for clock between Merom and Yonah cores?

Clock for clock Meroms are faster.

[Fourstaff]

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/core...-off-49283370/

Found this. Apparently, they said that the difference between the merom and yonah is not that big (clock for clock), so the only advantage is the higher clockspeed (which will be negated if you are forced to downclock).

[FreedomEclipse]

well, I can buy a T7500 for under £40 right now.

[erocker]

Originally Posted by FreedomEclipse

well, I can buy a T7500 for under £40 right now.

I'd jump on that.

[dhdude]

Don't go with the T7500, its a socket P CPU, the number of pins are the same but its a different and incompatible pin layout to socket M, which your current core duo uses and the T7600, T7400 and T7200 use. The mobile 945 chipset is socket M and supports up to 667mhz fsb, they introduced socket P with up to 800hz fsb on the mobile 965 chipset a year later with the T7100, T7300 and T7500.
Hope that helps, its a tricky situation learning the differences between the two, and the Intel ark is unhelpful as it just desribes the number of pins for mobile CPUs.

PS I was in a similar scenario upgrading my old Lenovo thinkpad from a t2300 to a T7400 a few years ago, so talking from experience.

[FreedomEclipse]

Originally Posted by dhdude

Don't go with the T7500, its a socket P CPU, the number of pins are the same but its a different and incompatible pin layout to socket M, which your current core duo uses and the T7600, T7400 and T7200 use. The mobile 945 chipset is socket M and supports up to 667mhz fsb, they introduced socket P with up to 800hz fsb on the mobile 965 chipset a year later with the T7100, T7300 and T7500.
Hope that helps, its a tricky situation learning the differences between the two, and the Intel ark is unhelpful as it just desribes the number of pins for mobile CPUs.

PS I was in a similar scenario upgrading my old Lenovo thinkpad from a t2300 to a T7400 a few years ago, so talking from experience.

LOL -- I cant believe i Missed the whole chipset thing. I remember being on intels website a few weeks ago and checking what processors my chipset supported and the T7500 and T7600 popped up under the 945 chipset (weird)

bah. the T7400 is harder to get

[dhdude]

Originally Posted by FreedomEclipse

LOL -- I cant believe i Missed the whole chipset thing. I remember being on intels website a few weeks ago and checking what processors my chipset supported and the T7500 and T7600 popped up under the 945 chipset (weird)

bah. the T7400 is harder to get

I'm pretty sure the 945 socket m chipsets dont support the T7500 but I could be wrong, its been a couple of years since I researched all this.

Edit: either way the difference in FSB with T7500 would make me wary, as the Mobile 945 doesn't officially support 800mhz fsb AFAIK.

Edit 2: Obviously another thing to be wary of is that the BIOS may not recognise some of these CPUs and therefore may not run them at the correct speed, I saw this happen a few times with Pentium M based laptops. Best thing to do would be to look up what CPUs your model of laptop shipped with and work from there, if you haven't already that is

[FreedomEclipse]

to add to the confusion... check this out

Its a 945 chipset using a T7500. I think the the CPU will just clock to the lower FSB. And im still using 667Mhz ram anyway

[dhdude]

I reckon they've got that wrong because it lists the chipset as 945GME then states its got X3100 graphics, which came along with the 965 chipsets

edit: think about the multiplier too, if the fsb of the t7500 were to be downclocked from 800 to 667, the actual CPU clockspeed would go with it, possibly negating the performance increase from the upgrade.

[FreedomEclipse]

well if you check the list of compatible processors for that chipset here. it lists the T7600 with a 667 FSB

[dhdude]

Yeah I know man, but I'm talking about the T7500, its the only one out of the CPUs listed that has an 800mhz fsb instead of 667, you see where I'm coming from?

Edit: essentially I think the t7500 is too risky, the better choices would be either the t7400 or the t7600.

[FreedomEclipse]

Oh yeah... I get you. My bad, i thought the T7600 was 800fsb too!!

Anyhoo I guess i'l have to think about it. I think the T7600 might overheat and die -- that CPU is still too pricey. and T7400s are rare.

[dhdude]

Sure, well best of luck either way bro, hope I've helped in some way

[FreedomEclipse]

It might be a case of just stepping it up to a T7200. putting 4Gb ram in and calling it a day, a T7600 still goes for £100+ on ebay, and im not willing to pay that much.

T7200's are pretty easy to get

[Eric_On_Web]

I dont know much about mobbile cpus and intel ones moreover but why the 7600 is way over the price but has a fsb of 667 compared to the cheaper 7500 wh ohas a fsb of 800 and embedded soluiton ?
If it was a desktop cpu i would take the 7500 because of the faster fsb and in my opinon a 800fsb vs 667fsb is easy to chose for a gain only of 0.11 gig.

[FreedomEclipse]

its all good getting a processor with the faster FSB but its no good if your chipset doesnt support it.

[unclewebb]

The T7600G is a monster. These were used in Dell laptops and they come from Intel with an unlocked multiplier and unlocked VID voltage setting similar to any Extreme CPU. ThrottleStop lets you overclock them on any motherboard that supports the 667 MHz System Bus and you can run them at over 3 GHz and beyond by simply increasing the multiplier.

A suicide run at 3823 MHz is lots of fun.

http://i.imgur.com/FcsKS.jpg

Here's some more info.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=90936

[FreedomEclipse]

thanks. Ive heard about the T7600G's already but they demand a price premium if you manage to find one. a standard T7600 is already over £100.

My laptop is only 14.1" so i dont think running it at such a high freq would be healthy

[xenocide]

I would say just get a T7200, I feel like the difference between that an a T7400 is minimal as it is, and with the T7200 it's quite positive that it will work. I'd be willing to say grab another stick of RAM and a T7200 over getting just a T7400.