$160 to upgrade from C2D T6600 to C2D T9600. Worth it?

Do you think it's worth upgrading? I'm not an enthusiast by any mean, just play Starcraft 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Civ 5, watch video, browse online, torrent, things like that. My GPU is a ATI Mobility 4650.

Should I instead opt to upgrade to a T9400 for $100?

The T6600 I have is 2.2Ghz with a 2MB L2 Cache, the T9400 is a 2.53Ghz with a 6MB L2 Cache and the T9600 is a 2.8Ghz with a 6MB L2 Cache.

Will the T9600 be atleast somewhat comparable to an i5 in terms of gaming?

Thank you for your advice guys.


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Here are the benchmarks...

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

The T9600 is # 31 in the above link, the T9400 is # 49 and the T6600 is # 93. There's also a whole slew of i5 to choose from. And once selected, the restrict button will show the benchmark results for just those.

 

I don't think you're bottlenecked by your T6600. I don't think you'll see a significant increase in framerate going to a T9600. A T9600 will be comparable to an i5 in this situation in that that nether will bottleneck your GPU either.

 

Thank you. That's one vote to stick with the T6600.

I'm reconsidering doing the upgrade. If I won't get much performance benefit, I might as well not waste time and money and risk messing something up in the process of opening up my laptop.

 

Id not upgrade not for that much.

Your ether in the normal user market in where the T6600 will do you just fine, or your on the other side of the fence using applications and programs that are very demanding and on that side you would be using a quad core cpu.

There really is no place to be on the fence, or rather you should not be on the fence. Go one or the other.

 

I personally would wait till sandy bridge release, Q1 2011

 

intel P8800 2.66GHz SLGLR CPU - eBay (item 150505019157 end time Oct-17-10 09:05:44 PDT)

You'll see a nice boost in L4D2.

 

A nice high-end C2D and a 4650.... They're like a match made in heaven.

 

The T6600 is not a bad cpu, I doubt you will see any real difference if you upgrade to an T9600, put your $160 towards an SSD if you dont have one.

 

Thank you guys.

Isn't the P8800 strictly inferior to both the T9400 and T9600? Because that ebay listing costs more than either the 9400 or 9600 would cost me.

 

So that's a yes vote I take it?

 

If you want to check the performance of different cpu , you can use the website below, but really you will see very little difference.

I had the T6600 and it was a great value/perfomance cpu.

PassMark - CPU Benchmarks - List of Benchmarked CPUs

 

I agree with one poster above, sandy bridge and the new ATI HD6000 cards are just around the corner, save your upgrade cost and wait until they are available, should be Q1 2011, not that far now.

As for your T6600, just overclock it all the way!

 

How do you overclock a Sony Vaio laptop?

Is that safe to do or would that generate too much heat and burn through the battery?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Agreed. Whoever said he'd get a great boost in L4D2 is giving some terrible advice.

Save your money OP.

 

I have a t9600 there are benches in my signature its as good as an e8400 or 520m. BTW you will get better results because I have a GT 240m

 

Use Setfsb to overclock your T6600 to get more performance out of it, to make it work, you gotta find the clock generator of your CPU, where you can find inside laptop. You can alternatively ask people in the Sony forum Sony Laptop Forums - Sony Notebook Computer Discussions , they are more experienced in this area than us without a sony laptop.

Overclocking will generate more heat, but it's generally manageable if you don't do something silly like overclock it by 30% or above, you will be fine as long as it stays under 75 C, use hardware monitor to check your CPU temp. And it will do nothing to your battery, no need to worry about that.

 

Thank you. I appreciate it.

 

X9100 + Throttlestop (unlocked multipliers) is worth the $$ upgrade if found cheap. Otherwise worth waiting for Sandy Bridge platform notebooks to do a whole system upgrade.

 

Get one on ebay. I goy a T6670 on ebay for 50 bucks

 

The T9400 is goo enough... get that.. it already is a super upgrade... Had one and nver was slow.

 

Whao. I just realize I asked this an year ago!

Still want to hear your input. Thank you.

 

If you have not found a reason to upgrade or realize you need to after this length of time, then you most likely don’t need to upgrade. Any computer is worth something, and it cost to invest in any of them, old or new. So I would just do the upgrade to the CPU, unless you can sell what you have and then buy the i5/i7 for the cost of your CPU upgrade. The only difference I see in the T9500 that I had and the i5 I have now, is that I can burn, search the web, and work in CS5 all at the same time without slowdowns. With my T9500, I was pretty much slowed down from doing other things once I started burning a DVD. As far as just overall performance, I don’t really think there’s too much of a difference.