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Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

T60/T61 Series
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fefrie
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Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#1 Post by fefrie » Sat Jun 23, 2018 8:45 pm

It's only .16 increase in cpu power, but when I watch youtube videos on chrome, it easily pegs at max cpu even on 480.

$10 isn't that big of a deal, and a 7600 doesn't seem worth it at $40.

I can put the 7200 into the backup t60 that has the 1.86cpu.....
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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#2 Post by TPFanatic » Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:36 pm

Maybe look into overclocking.

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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#3 Post by Sweater Fish Deluxe » Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:46 pm

I'd be pretty surprised if upgrading from a T7200 to a T7400 made any noticeable difference. Of course, it's dirt cheap, so you might as well give it a try, but the solution to your problem is probably to dump Chrome at least for Youtube. I use PaleMoon and have no trouble playing anything up to 720p.

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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#4 Post by fefrie » Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:12 am

That's the easiest thing to do I guess.

I just wish that there was one browser that did it all.

Juggling between 3 browsers is a bit of a pain....
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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#5 Post by Sweater Fish Deluxe » Sun Jun 24, 2018 1:43 am

I do everything in PaleMoon. It's a pretty complete browser. The only thing I keep Chrome around for is access to Chrome Remote Desktop.

I just checked Youtube in Chrome, though, and performance was about the same as in PaleMoon. 480 and 720p videos played fine, 1080p maxed out the CPU with occasional stutters. If you're getting worse performance, it might be due some of your settings. Could also be the OS environment. I'm using a ver lightweight Ubuntu-based Linux.

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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#6 Post by dr_st » Sun Jun 24, 2018 2:18 am

Sweater Fish Deluxe wrote:
Sun Jun 24, 2018 1:43 am
I do everything in PaleMoon. It's a pretty complete browser. The only thing I keep Chrome around for is access to Chrome Remote Desktop.
Pale Moon is pretty complete, but as it is based on rather old Mozilla code, it has some compatibility problems and limitations in certain websites, that will only get worse with time. The Pale Moon team's solution to this problem is to develop the Basilisk browser, forked off newer Firefox code. Basilisk runs on Windows 7 or later only, although I have a personal version that runs on Vista, and someone managed to get it to run even on XP.
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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#7 Post by RealBlackStuff » Sun Jun 24, 2018 5:40 am

OT: how good is Basilisk compared to Pale Moon?

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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#8 Post by Sweater Fish Deluxe » Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:14 pm

My understanding is that Basilisk is the development build of PaleMoon and that once its code base is considered stable, it will be the basis for a major version update of Palemoon. At least that was the original plan and I haven't heard that anything has changed.

I did try out Basilisk a few months ago and it seemed plenty stable to use on a daily basis. Honestly, aside from the user interface that follows a more recent FireFox style (but not the most recent), it seemed very similar to PaleMoon to me. All the same extensions that I usually use worked (though I think supposedly even more should) and I didn't experience any rendering issues (I also haven't ever come across them in PaleMoon, either, so my browsing habits may just not be very demanding). Memory use seemed to scale up a tiny bit faster as you open tabs, but it was still really good compared to just about any other modern browser. Also like PaleMoon, it exists as a single process in memory, which could either be good or bad depending on how you think of it.

I ended up uninstalling it and sticking with PaleMoon just because my goal on this laptop is to run as absolutely efficiently as possible without sacrificing features and there is that couple hundred extra MB of memory use without anything new that I feel I need. I do think that when the current Basilisk becomes a new PaleMoon update, I'll probably install it, though.

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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#9 Post by storm-chaser » Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:16 pm

If this is a T61, why not go for a T9300 or T9500? A T9300 is only about $24 shipped on eBay. If it's an older T61 then go ahead and run the Middleton BIOS upgrade before you swap CPUs.

You could also upgrade to a Solid State Drive. This will really boost system performance across the board although most likely won't help with your playback issues.

Generally, you really want an SSD and a T9XX processor in your T61 to handle the workload of today's world wide web.
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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#10 Post by Screamer » Sun Jun 24, 2018 2:01 pm

Does a T7600G sound alright to you? It has a nominal overclock success rate at about 2.66GHz/2.83GHz, it should not choke on 1080p videos for sure. Sadly, the price for the T7600G usually floats around $70 which is insane.
storm-chaser wrote:
Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:16 pm
If this is a T61, why not go for a T9300 or T9500? A T9300 is only about $24 shipped on eBay. If it's an older T61 then go ahead and run the Middleton BIOS upgrade before you swap CPUs.
All T61 models do not accept Socket M processors, so this is definitely not a T61. Most likely an T60/R60.

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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#11 Post by ziemeck » Sun Jun 24, 2018 4:56 pm

Youtube streams x264 movies. After I switched from T5600 to T7400 I have no problems with 1080p x264 (32 bit winXP, firefox + some plugin that allows FF to play yt without flash). However, aside from yt the 1080p video encoded with x265 (HEVC) is unwatchable (except for low bitrate parts).

Switching to T7400 should add you the CPU power you need, but I saw several x264 1080p videos that had too high bitrate for T7400 or T7600.
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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#12 Post by TonyJZX » Wed Jun 27, 2018 9:45 pm

I feel you are wasting your time unless you want a learning experience.

I think I went from a T7700 to a T9300 and it didnt seem like a huge boost.

You can see on ebay that there's a few CPUs for like $10 or so and its worth a gamble to go to a higher speed cpu like a T8000/9000 series if you love your laptop.

I have one working T61 left so mine if full of decent parts in working order.

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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#13 Post by Shredder11 » Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:43 pm

The T7600 in my Z61p (same as T60p) machine can play 1080p but only 25fps, and even then not perfectly smooth and high CPU usage.

So I have a Broadcom BCM970015 card installed and I can play pretty much anything now (obviously not 4K :lol: ).

Up until mid 2015 I could also watch YouTube 1080p videos with this card, but when support for Flash was dropped by them I could no longer do this.

I made a quick video to show the before and after of adding this card, and the benefits of having it. https://youtu.be/Fr8SfUB2UaA
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fefrie
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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#14 Post by fefrie » Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:57 pm

I've looked online,

Where the heck do I plug this thing in on a t60?

Do I have to get a case to plug it into one of the two pci slots on the side? Or do I have to remove something internal to make this fit? Because I don't remember seeing any space inside on the motherboard to put this thing in.

But I am intrigued.

The stuttering with videos is only with youtube videos. I can play any downloaded video fine.

It's the streaming I have issues with.
IBM Thinkpad T23 1.13 2647-9LU 640MB Ram 40GB hard drive SOLD!
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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#15 Post by Shredder11 » Wed Jun 27, 2018 11:39 pm

The videos playing on my two laptops were from a file on the hard drive, and it was a 50fps 1080p file. Before YouTube stopped supporting Flash, the 1080p were totally smooth as well. Inside the Z61p I had to unplug the WiFi card to use the slot, because the WWAN slot refused to work with the Broadcom from what I remember. So I now have a WiFi USB dongle to restore that functionality. I also use a Broadcom card in my X61 machine although that does work in the WWAN slot.
Z61p x3 (C2D T7600, 3GB, 500GB SSD, BCM70015, Advanced Dock x1, Mini Dock x2)
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Re: Time to upgrade the cpu from t7200 to t7400

#16 Post by axur-delmeria » Thu Jun 28, 2018 12:45 am

Main problem with the Broadcom cards is limited software support. Even recent Linux versions dropped it because no one wanted to maintain the code.

I wanted one back when I had an X61, but realized I was better off upgrading to a newer Thinkpad instead.
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