T2300 or T5600

fatherdougal · 3 Mar 2008 at 17:47

I'm thinking of upgrading my laptop's processor at the moment. Seen quite a few second-hand ones and I'm thinking of getting either a T5600 or a T7200 (or quicker). I know that the T5*** will definitely work with my Samsung laptop while I'm only pretty sure that T7*** will.
I think that I'm right in saying that the T5*** will be more power efficient than my T2300 and also that the architecture is improved?
Anyone able to tell me whether this will be a worthwhile upgrade?

Emlyn_Dewar · 6 Mar 2008 at 10:15

I think the Merom cores have a slightly higher TDP than the Yonah, but only by a couple of watts so battery life might be worse by a couple of minutes...
You'd notice small improvements over the T2300 as there is the clock speed boost and the architecture change. Wouldn't be an absolutely massive difference though, encoding would see the biggest gains (if I remember right), games would see a small boost due to the clock difference. The T7200 would be a nice (but more expensive upgrade) due to the 2.0ghz speed and 4mb L2. So long as you've got the most recent bios and the laptop's using a 945 chipset I don't see why it wouldn't work.

fatherdougal · 6 Mar 2008 at 22:29

Update;

Just shoved a T5600 (second hand for £30) into it. Not really looked to see if it makes any of the encoding that I do any quicker, as dismantling the laptop and then putting it back together has taken 'a while'.

Might stick with this now and then change to a T7200 or similar when there prices fall a little more. Wouldn't want to have to take my laptop to bits very often though.

Emlyn_Dewar · 7 Mar 2008 at 10:19

Good price on the T5600, I might have to look around for one if they're at those prices.

Would have a faster fsb than my T2350 and would be the magical merom core...

Have you noticed any difference speed-wise?

fatherdougal · 8 Mar 2008 at 22:10

Definitely noticeable speed-boost when doing stuff like ripping DVD's into AVI's. I kept the laptop pretty snappy anyway and now seems even more so. I'm also glad about getting a good opportunity to get inside my laptop and work out how things fit together.