Thinkpads Forum

The low voltage Core 2 Duo processors have been released so expect them in X60s soon and the tablet as well.
The problem is Clock rate of L7200 is 1.33 GHz vs T7200 is 2.0 GHz. What gives?

dfumento wrote:The problem is Clock rate of L7200 is 1.33 GHz vs T7200 is 2.0 GHz. What gives?

Isn't that what enables it to consume much less power?

Isn't that the always/often the case?

That the LV and ULV versions are clocked lower. The reason for this is probably marketing - just to make up the quite steep price for them.

Although the difference were quite big this time, that makes me believe that they have a big problem producing them. First that it took them so long to do that and secondly because of that low frequency. Hope they get it sorted out and glad I didn't wait for them.

Compare it for the L2400 for instance (which my x60s uses).

L7200
1.33 GHz
17W TDP

L2400
1.66 GHz
15W TDP

I'd imagine that the L2400 would perform quite a bit better than the L7200 (relatively) - also if one relies on the TDP values (which one maybe shouldn't) it also consumes less power. Although as said I wouldn't rely on them.

Anyway, the real difference seems to be better performance for L2400 but 64 bit support for L7200, and I don't think that 64 bit is going to help the L7200 that much.

Sure I'm speculating here and I have no idea about prices. But since it is labeled L7200 it's probably going to cost atleast as much as the T7200.

So if I'm right maybe lenovo won't use them at all for a while, or they might fall for the marketing advantage of a core 2 duo and use them anyway.

Not thrilled by the looks of this...

edit:
They do have 4 mb cache though.
So the L7400 with 1.5 GHz should be the best LV CPU but I can imagine that it will cost a bit too.

luckily, my L2400 1.66Ghz hasn't phased out yet...

Remember they are Core 2 Duo and should perform slightly faster clock for clock. However, I doubt that even the 1.5Ghz L7500 will keep up with the L2500 1.83GHz. They say that the performance of Core 2 over Core(1) is about 10-12% so if true it might be comparable to a 1.66GHz Core(1).


I don't use very processor intensive apps on my laptop so if the battery life is significantly better on the L7500 I am inclined to get the new L7500 unless they really drop prices on the L2500 models (which I doubt).

If battery life on the L7500 is no better than on the L2500, I wouldn't hesitate to order the L2500.

pianowizard wrote:

dfumento wrote:The problem is Clock rate of L7200 is 1.33 GHz vs T7200 is 2.0 GHz. What gives?

Isn't that what enables it to consume much less power?

Remember the L2500 is also low voltage and clocked lower than the regular voltage processors. These are just clocked even lower because they probably expect that the new Core 2 architecture makes up for the clock speed drop. To be sure these new processors won't increase performance over what we currently have.

I don't imagine that the 330MHz will account for much difference. If you need performance, maybe a non-s X60 or even a T60 is better for you.
Besides, I'll bet that the 4MB cache and the 64-bit enhancements will make up for the 330MHz loss (and then some, perhaps).

At the same clock speed, a mobile Core 2 Duo (with 4MB cache) will probably be 15% faster on CPU-intensive tasks than a mobile Core Duo. It's the same architecture, but enough tweaks to get some more speed out. Anandtech benchmarks here:
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2808

That should mean that the L7400 (1.5 GHz) should perform somewhat better than the L2400 (1.67 GHz), and the L7200 should be only 5-10% slower.

I currently have Core 2 Duo 2 GHz, but I'm thinking of getting a X60 tablet when they get the Core 2 Duo's but I think they will come with the low voltage variants L7200 and L7400.

It kinna stinks that the X60's have the CPUs soldered in. I would really have liked to be able to just buy a C2D chip for it.

It really doesn't make a huge performance difference -- the only thing is that you would gain the 64-bit capability.