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    Is is worth swapping over a t7300 to a t8300?

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by great1, Mar 21, 2008.

  1. great1

    great1 Notebook Enthusiast

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    hey guys and girls.

    basically, the situation is that i have 2 vostro 1700s in my possession. one is mine, and the other is one from my dads office. the office one is new and has come with the t8300 cpu. my dad said i can swap over any bits i want as the office laptop doesnt have to be so great.

    i thought i could swipe a RAM module out of it but i didnt know i could only have 2 in at a time. so i thought changing the cpu would be a good idea.

    having looked into it, it looks like a big job (have to rip appart the display and teh palm rest). but what im asking is whether it is worth it in terms of performance boost? i know the cache is down from 4mb to 3mb, but it is 2.4ghz compared to my existing 2.0ghz.

    can it even be done? is it another chipset?? this is where i need the expertise of you fine people.

    thanks very much

    great1
     
  2. nizzy1115

    nizzy1115 Notebook Prophet

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    It can be done, but i wouldn't bother. Its a lot of work, and you wouldn't want to damage his computer doing it. If it was like a 2.0-3.0ghz then i would say go for it, but it wont be a noticeable day to day difference. I don't care what benchmarks say, day to day differences will be next to nothing.
     
  3. scythie

    scythie I died for your sins.

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    Personally I don't think it's worth it. Maybe if you really need the little performance boost it will give or the few extra minutes it will give your battery, you can consider it. Otherwise, it's just not worth the trouble IMO.
     
  4. great1

    great1 Notebook Enthusiast

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    wow, thanks for th quick response. i dont quite understand (being a noob :)
    are you saying that its not a huge step up from 2 - 2.4? i thought it would be. or does the reduction in cache balance it out?
     
  5. scythie

    scythie I died for your sins.

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    If you're doing CPU intensive tasks [video encoding, photoshop, etc.] then it will show noticeable performance increase. Otherwise, if you're just doing "normal tasks" [internet, word, e-mail, etc.], or even when gaming [depends on the game; RTS in particular are a bit CPU intensive], the increase in performance won't be noticeable.
     
  6. nizzy1115

    nizzy1115 Notebook Prophet

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    If he has a 7200rpm hard drive and you have a 5400rpm one, it might be worth it to swap hard drives...But i would not bother with the processor.
     
  7. Jakpro

    Jakpro Notebook Evangelist

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    Swapping the processors may void the warranty on both machines--if it makes any difference.