qx9300 worth the upgrade from T9600, the dual core?

My W700ds has T9600 (dual, at 2.8ghz).
if I upgrade it to QX9300 quadcore at 2.53ghz, will I see an improved gaming performance? especially Alice:madness and the future games? I like to keep my notebook for another 2 years or so...

thanks!

 

If the game has support for more than 2 cores than you will even on two cores you will W/ an OC, but I don't see anything about Alice having Quadcore support. The upgrade is worth it because you can OC the QX9300 to almost 3.5ghz. which is faster than the T9600. I would say get the QX9300 for the right price look for ES/QS chips on Ebay. What other games do you play?

 

If the game is CPU bound AND uses all 4 cores then it will run faster. If not the latter then the QX9300 will be slower than your T9600. EDIT: unless you overclock it with Throttlestop as advised above.

There was talk of running a GTX280M vbios on a FX3700M on this forum. Suggest find that discussion and/or info on overclocking the gpu to yield better FPS.

Consider too eGPU solutions in my sig. During the last few weeks it was possible to get a i5-2410m notebook ($450, Lenovo E420) + GTX460-1GB eGPU ($210), total of $660. Such sales regularly reappear and will outperform your setup. No dual-screen hi-res though.

 

You will only see an improvement in GTA IV and very few other games because the biggest bottleneck is still the GPU. You will pay a premium for the QX9300 Vs the Q9200 as well.

 

What is his GPU? He never listed it.

 

I'm assuming he has a Nvidia Quadro FX 3700

 

Ahh didn't see the W700ds. NVM

 

yup. it's got 3700m in it. (used to have 2700m but upgraded to 3700m few days ago.) besides the fact that it's running a bit too hot (at 96 deg. after running msi kombuster stress test for 6 hrs), it runs great. never had a stability issues so far...

i'm thinking about opening it up again to do the repasting thermal grease and i'm deciding whether to upgrade to QX9300 at the same time or not...

it's about 300~400 bucks on ebay. doesn't really make financial sense but i really like this notebook with dual screen and all (kinda rare breed...)

 

Yah, I get what you are saying. If it has heat issues IDK how far you can OC the QX9300. Maybe to about 3.0 GHZ. All speculation though. You just have to weight the performance to price increase. Check out a Q9200 that has unlocked multipliers and can be OC as well. They are between $200-230.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-INTEL-CORE-...32?pt=CPUs&hash=item4aa5d23ca8#ht_2846wt_1163
http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Intel-Core2...53?pt=CPUs&hash=item4157587ec5#ht_1197wt_1163
http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Core2-QUA...14?pt=CPUs&hash=item20b53ad1fe#ht_2424wt_1163
http://cgi.ebay.com/INTEL-CORE-QUAD...22?pt=CPUs&hash=item256467067e#ht_5219wt_1163

 

It's definitely worth it, though I recommend getting the Q9200 (twice as cheap and you can easily overclock it to QX9300 speeds with Throttlestop). I have Mass effect 1 and and Crysis 1 and 2, now, and all of them run faster on the quad core.

The bottleneck is still the video card for me, but all the cores are fully loaded on either processor, and it is definitely faster (Crysis 2 is smooth on the quad core at High and 1440x900 - on the dual core, the load times are much longer and there is occasional stuttering in some areas).

I recommend undervolting the nVidia card (as well as the processor itself) - mine dropped about 10 degrees at full load, while still being able to overclock slightly.

 

For games and programs that support quads, the upgrade would be worth it, but I would rather upgrade to Q9200 with an unlocked multiplier since the QX9300 is nothing but an unnecessary premium by comparison.

Also, I'd go with natekron and undervolt your gpu if you can.
That would be able to reduce the temps by 10 degrees C if not 15 (depends) on stock clocks.
UV-ing the cpu is also possible.
Which means that you can realistically gain about 15 degrees C of overall drop in temps under load (and still get away with a specific % of OC-ing).