T7700 upgrade

[alastorx]

i'm looking to upgrade my T61 from a T7300 to a T7700 just looking for a cheap upgrade, will it be worth it? i cant afford a T9300/T9500 any time soon and for 24$ i can get this CPU,

[Cigarguy]

There's only a 400 MHz difference between the old chip vs the T7700. You'll notice it if you are constantly using a lot of CPU power otherwise you won't notice much difference. I've upgrade mine from a T7300 to T9300 and hardly notice the difference. The biggest benefit for me though was that the T9300 runs quite cool, however the T7700 is significantly hotter than a T7300.

Personally I'd save up and wait for a T9300. But before that, if you have not done so, upgrade the memory to 4 GB and add a nice SSD. The SSD will be the biggest improvement in the overall computing experience.

[TuuS]

If you have a Penryn capable board and want a cheap upgrade I'd consider the T8100. Although only marginally faster in clock speed, it's penryn core and more advanced instruction set make it perform better then a T7500, probably about the same as a T7700 more/less and it will do this using less power and producing less heat. Also consider that under prolonged heavy use the T7xxx series is more likely to enter thermal throttling that drastically slows down your system to prevent damage while the T8xxx can continue much longer, so just think about the proverb of the tortoise and the hare for a minute and you'll understand.

I'd also consider the source of where you're getting your cpu chips. If you buy the cheapest option available, you're likely getting chips pulled from dead, abused, smashed and sometimes even burned computers. I don't subscribe to the opinion that any chip that will boot your system up is equally good. I do know that Intel designed these chips to be pretty tough and I believe you can probably burn out many of the 400million+ transistors and still have a functional (for the most part) cpu, but I prefer to source all my chips from complete fully working laptops. They cost me a bit more this way, but since you can't see inside one of these chips and it's the single most important part of your computer, I feel spending a few dollars extra is money well spent, but if you don't have the funds, then that settles that argument.

The T8100 is probably the single most underrated cpu ever made and being that it runs so cool, it's one of my personal favorites when building an economy/performance laptop. If your system won't support a penryn there is always the middleton bios patch, it won't add support for the penryn's more advanced digital sensors, but it will prevent the boot error and you'll still get most of the advantages and all the performance.

Good Luck

[tipo33]

Hmm.. I'm going to try a T8100 for myself now. Thanks TuuS!

[TonyJZX]

i think this is a waste of time as well

i have one with a T8300 and another with that T7200 age cpu

if the CPU is cheap, you may as well do it... you can find cpus on ebay for <$20 but i dont think there's a night and day difference

i'm in win7 on a 2.0ghz t61 and its running 25% cpu with some minor stuff up

it is what it is, an old laptop