cpu: t7700 vs. t9300

[halfcard1]

is the extra cost of the t9300 worth it? they seem to be twice as much as the t7700.


http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core ... 095.0.html


http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core ... 538.0.html



i think this shows both

http://ark.intel.com/compare/33917,29762

[TuuS]

It depends on your perspective. You're not going to get twice the performance, but you are going to get a better designed chip with better thermal control when you opt for the t9300, but if upfront cost is the most important thing, then there are less expensive options. I'd also consider what you plan to do with the computer too, if battery life and effeciency is more important then raw speed, then consider the t8300 or t8100, or if cost is primary then consider the t7300 which are available for $9. There are many options.

[halfcard1]

not going to get twice the performance, but you are going to get a better designed chip with better thermal control when you opt for the t9300

interesting

yes im planning to replace a t7300 in this case.

[ajkula66]

Honestly, CPU is the last thing I'd be upgrading on a T61/p.

SSD and more RAM will make a more noticeable difference than going from T7300 to T7700.

[halfcard1]

Honestly, CPU is the last thing I'd be upgrading on a T61/p.

SSD and more RAM will make a more noticeable difference than going from T7300 to T7700.

cool, i'm getting those ready too. i guess the effect of a faster cpu will mostly be in my imagination

[Cigarguy]

I've upgraded a couple of T61 from a T7500 to T9300. Both were upgraded to 4 GB RAM and a SSD. Did not notice any speed difference when I upgraded the CPU. The thermal efficiency was noticeable. Biggest overall computing experience was the SSD upgrade.

[Radioguy]

I do think I got a bump in speed when doing multimedia file conversion by upping to the T9300, but the lower temps, and reduced fan use because of it, was what sold me.

[TuuS]

You'll get even better thermal efficiency and better performance with a T8100 chip, it's the least expensive and coolest running of the penryn class chips.

Also consider that your T7300 based system may not have support for penryn cpu chips, so you'll either need to stick with a merom chip or use a modified bios to suppress the thermal errors during boot. If you want to know if your board has penryn support look for the fru numbers either under the battery or ram modules. You can also look at the date code on the bottom of the laptop, if it starts with 07 (meaning 2007), then it won't have penryn support. If it was made in 2008, it could have either penryn or merom board regardless of the cpu installed at the factory.

[miro_gt]

cool, i'm getting those ready too. i guess the effect of a faster cpu will mostly be in my imagination

well that depends on what you do.

A T7300 is a pretty weak chip, it will get stuffed even at watching a 1080p video from youtube. IMO you'll see lots of improvement from T7300 to T9300, I'd upgrade without questioning.

dont bother with T7700, it runs hot.

[halfcard1]

great, thanks for replies.

[Failure]

I've got a CPU related question that's not really worth it's own thread. I know that 1066 MHz C2Ds won't work with an 800 MHz FSB, but I've seen some people implying that it's possible to use them in T6*'s that have received the PLL hardmod. Has anyone ever tested this to confirm? And if it doesn't work, is there an actual hardware reason why it doesn't work, or is it just a minor BIOS hack to add support? It would be pretty great if they do work, considering that the X9100 goes for less than half the price of the X9000.

[miro_gt]

you can make it work with a socket mod (the easier method, as there's another). What this does is it requests 200MHz clock from the chipset, which in turn thinks the CPU uses 800MHz FSB so all works fine. The X9100 starts with lower speed (2.4GHz) , which you increase once windows boots up with programs like ThrottleStop. It's just a matter of connecting two holes on the CPU socket to do that. If you're that interested then I can dig up picture of which holes exactly. If you dont do it, the chipset will lock the maximum multiplier of the CPU, i.e. it will top at 6x 266MHz = 1.6Ghz

however, keep in mind that once you start going over 3.0GHz the CPU itself starts to heat too much, i.e. above the 90 deg C mark. I think 3.2 is the maximum somewhat usable speed that you can get (that would top out at about 95 deg C), anything beyond that will cause thermal shutdown after little bit of continues usage.

I'm running my T9500 at 2.8GHz (easy done via software) all the time and that's about max I'm comfortable going, as my nVidia GPU also sits on the same heatsink thus it needs to be able to cool both. I could compromise a little more speed in my intel T61 but it is still out of my comfortable temperature range.

so the X9_00 chips run hot. There is however one option that will be worth getting, and that's a X9100 chip with E0 stepping. Those are considerably hard to get, and most on sale are engineering samples. The majority of X9100 chips are with C0 stepping. What E0 offers is lower temperatures at high speed, so with a chip like that you'd be able to get somewhere in the 3.5GHz range with temperatures that would be normal for regular CPU running at 2.6 to 2.8 GHz. I tried to find me chip like that but ended at overpriced offerings only, like way overpriced. An engineering sample of the E0 chip you can find for about 150 USD these days.

anyhow, what I'm trying to say is that it's not worth getting into all that mess only to find out the end result will be not much better than getting regular T9300/T9500. If you're up for records though then get X9100 with E0 stepping.

and no, quad core CPUs dont work, people have already tried.

[Failure]

Awesome, thanks for the help. How do you feel about the P9600? It's affordable if not particularly cheap, very fast at 2.66 GHz, and the 25w TDP makes it (theoretically) one of the coolest running socketed Core 2 processors.

Also, do we know the engineering reason why the quad cores don't work or is it just wizardry?

[fleming164]

I've just upgraded from a T7300 to a T9300 C2D it runs so much cooler! My fan literally isn't on at all, even watching 1080p youtube (Around 70% CPU)!

I haven't noticed any changes in battery life as I've only had it in the laptop for a few hours but the estimation Ubuntu gives me seems to have gone up.

As for performance, like others have said you probably won't notice a difference unless you do anything particularly CPU demanding, but I have noticed that Chrome seems to open quicker as before this used to max out my CPU for a good 4 seconds (it's now down to around 2).