Processor discrepancy in 1720

Hello,

I have a question about something unusual on my Inspiron 1720. I had ordered the t5850 2.16 ghz core 2 duo processor and that's what I think is in it now, but when I recently ran HWMonitor on my laptop, the processor shows up as "Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo T7400." Are these the same processors or did dell make a mistake? Or is the HWMonitor the one at fault?

Thanks

 

Go to your system properties and see what your processor says. That will be the real truth. I know in xp you can right click my computer and hit properties.
If hwmonitor was correct, you are one lucky ba**ard! Awesome!

 

Ok in properties it says t5850. I looked up some info on the t7400 and found out it has exactly the same clock speed as t5850. Does HWMonitor have a library or something to refer to for clock speeds and that it hasn't updated to include the t 5850?

 

The T5850 is the same as the T7400, except that the T5850 has half of the cache as the T7400 (2 MB instead of 4 MB), and is Socket P instead of Socket M (meaning it's possible to upgrade it to a faster processor than if you had the T7400). So it's a mixed bag. It's not as good as the T7400 in itself due to the lower cache (though it's close), but upgrade possibilities are better both performance-wise and price-wise.

HWMonitor probably hasn't been updated yet to recognize the difference between the two, given their identical clock speed and front side bus speed. Intel has a ton of slightly different models, some of which (perhaps including the T5850) only appear on certain manufacturer's computers, and it's difficult to keep up with them all. Even Wikipedia falls behind sometimes.

 

Thanks for the explanation Apollo13!