Thinkpads Forum

OK, so I decided that my T60 (1952-AS2) with intel graphics is going to stay. I'm going to put in a 7200rpm 360Gb HDD, 3Gb RAM, and upgrade the CPU. It currently has a 1.8GHz core duo (not a core 2 duo). What's the fastest CPU I can put in there (I'm guessing they would be pretty reasonable right now)?

Thanks

Not sure if it's the fastest, but I've read of others who have put a T7600 in their T60. Probably the T7200 would be a more reasonable upgrade though.

Thanks Neil. Yes, the T7600 (2.33GHz, 4Mb cache) is a possibility. They run about $100. Alternatives are the T7400 (2.16GHz, 4Mb cache) at about $60 or the T2600 (2.16GHz, 2Mb cache) for about $30.00. I currently have the T2400 (1.83GHz, 2Mb cache) and my experience in the past has been that you need a bigger increase in speed and/or abigger cache to make a noticeable difference.

I guess my question is: Has anybody switched out for a 2.16 GHz with or without the larger cache and seen a significant difference?

The Core 2 Duos (T5500, T5600, T7200, T7400 & T7600) not only support 64-bit OS's, but were also considerably faster than Core Duos (T2300, T2400, T2500, T2600 & T2700) at the same clock speed. They also ran cooler.

I'd stick to the Core 2 Duos for upgrades. The T7200's are a very good value (sub-$40). The T7600's have been in the $100 range for a long time.

I would just mention for typical usage, the hard drive speed will be a more noticeable difference. Perhaps a small SSD in the main bay as a boot drive and a hard drive in the modular caddy for storage might be worth consideration. The SXGA+ LCD is worth considering too.

In my book, T7200 is the best value for the money right now. Once the time comes to upgrade my boys' R60F(rankenPad) from its current T2500, that's the CPU I'll be looking for...

You should only look for a T7200/T7400/T7600 CPU, not the T5500/T5600 series, they only have 2MB cache so it will be a very small upgrade.

I strongly advise you to consider a SSD instead of a harddrive, this will feel like a bigger performance increase than a T7600. It will feel like you upgraded to a 3Ghz CPU

sktn77a wrote:OK, so I decided that my T60 (1952-AS2) with intel graphics is going to stay. I'm going to put in a 7200rpm 360Gb HDD, 3Gb RAM, and upgrade the CPU. It currently has a 1.8GHz core duo (not a core 2 duo). What's the fastest CPU I can put in there (I'm guessing they would be pretty reasonable right now)?

Keith: Your T60 T60 (1952-AS2) has the following (stock) configuration:

ThinkPad T60 (1952-AS2)
Based on 1952-43U: T2400(1.83GHz), 2GB RAM, 60GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1024x768 LCD, Intel 950, CDRW/DVD, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, 6c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

... and the CPU hence being the Core Duo T2400. I agree with the other posters in this thread that you will certainly benefit most from upgrading the (slow!) mechanical harddrive to a (fast!) SSD... any 2.5" SATA-I SSD will work (as T60's will not support SATA-II or SATA-III speeds, you won't benefit anything in speed from getting an e.g. SATA-III SSD, but newer SATA-II and SATA-III drives are of course prefereed over the old SATA-I SSD's because of improved reliability, lower price, longer warranty etc.).

If you also upgrade your OS from XP (which I assume you are using now?) to Windows 7 you will have even better performance (especially if using a SSD which support TRIM, such as e.g. the Intel 320-series, which comes with an impressive, industry-leading five-year warranty). In this relation, notice that Microsoft will terminate Win XP SP3 support on April 8, 2014. If, however, you need the vast space (360 GB), then a mechanical HDD is obviously far cheaper... but if you put a small SSD in the main HDD bay, holding the OS and your programs, and a huge mechanical HDD in the UltraBay, then you would end up with a fast laptop with vast storage (you would obviously in such case sacrifice the built-in CD/DVD-reader/writer capability).

I suggest you see the thread Need advice on CPU upgrade for T60 2623-D6U and in particular this post and the threads linked to therein for information about the actual benefit from upgrading a CPU. Faster CPU's will obviously consume more power which will make your fan run more often, and which will also drain your battery faster... Notice that (as far as I have read) a CPU upgrade wil require your motherboard to be Rev. 3 - use the free program CPU-Z to check this before buying parts.

The bottom question for me would me: What do you actually seek to accomplish by your planned upgrade; I mean what tasks is the laptop intended for, and when/where would you benefit from a faster CPU rather than a faster "harddrive"? How large built-in storage is needed... perhaps you have access to large, external storage at home, and need not carry around with a, say, 320 GB storage capacity?

Johan

I have a t60, I believe it is the same model. I have done the following upgrades in this order.
1. switched fro t2400 to t7200
2. went from xp to win7 pro x64
2a. 4gb (2 x 2) ram from 1gb (512 x 2) Actually at the same time with the os.
4. switched to ssd drive

Of the changes I made the cpu was the least noticeable, but I needed to do it for the other changes. The biggest difference was from a standard hard drive to ssd.

Scott

I've swapped my t2400 to a t7200 and installed win7 64-bit. Now I can't boot, safe mode freezes on drive.sys. tried boot repair from dvd but it didn't help. And I couldn't run "sfc /scannow" as I was prompted to reboot first.
Well, if reinstalling won't help I shall switch back to 32-bit.

edit: strange, it has just booted fine.

OK, I'm completely dumb - I reset BIOS to factory defaults after changing CPU and didn't think about security chip being turned on again. T60:me 1:0