Is the bump up to 2.16GHz worth it?

I am planning to buy a Dell XPS M1210 with at least the 2.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo, but I'm wondering whether the upgrade to 2.16Ghz would make that much difference in performance and battery life. Thanks a lot, first laptop purchase here

 

Nope. The performance will be not noticeable unless you will be crunching numbers 24/7. The t7200 is the sweet spot between price and performance,, you get 4MB of cache . As far as battery life is concerned, there will be no difference. All the chips are based on the same design (65nm)-if there was a little variation at the maximum speed step (12x) it would be minimal (read: non-existent) and would also be not important because 90% (or more) of the time your computer will be clocked down to 1GHz(6x).

To be non-technical, no there will be no difference in performance or battery life.

Welcome to the forums!

 

it depends on what you do with the computer, but the answer is almost always no.

note that on a notebook computer, CPUs run at half speed most of the time to reduce heat and/or reduce battery usage. it will clock up when necessary, but why pay for a more expensive CPU when most of the time, it's going to run at the same speed as a cheaper one?

 

Excellent! Looks like I'll be going with the 2.0 Ghz after all.
Thanks a lot, looks like next time I'll skip the tireless google searching and just go straight to The Forum. Long time reader but first time poster, glad to be on board! (pun intended)

 

oh yeah, welcome

 

I went with the T7200 also. With that being said, in the new year, Intel is going to release its next round of mobile processors. I am hoping that the T7400 and T7600 will drop in price accordingly. Depending on the price, I might scoop up a T7600 at that time and go for the upgrade.

 

Yeah, the T7200 is the sweet spot of C2D notebook processors. Stick with that.

 

Unless you're like me and really, really want to do SuperPi to 2 million places in less than a minute for some unfathomable reason. And do 3D rendering, but that's not a bragging point

The 2GHz will be very, very fast for you. Get 2GB of RAM or a speedier hard drive with that money instead of the 2.16GHz processor, though, it'll give you more bang for your buck.

 

People don't realize that they are ALL the SAME chips! What you are really paying for is the privilege to buy the small fraction of chips that came out of the die-making and cutting process undamaged* enough to run at those speeds. So is it worth it to pay twice as much for a slightly higher quality chip that runs modestly faster than its peers? Up to you...though if you were George Steinbrenner it'd be "yes" in a heartbeat.

*Might be too harsh of a word. Open to suggestions for another word choice.

 

We must never forget the "coolness factor". If you get the T7400, that makes you inherently better than anyone who owns less. They could run triathalons every weekend (which is, of course, a sign of brain damage.<grin>), or be or date a supermodel, but they'll never be as good as you.... unless they should go out and buy a T7400 themselves. That would make them as cool as you - but wait! You had it first, you're still on top! You're number one! You're number one! You're number... aww, you get the idea.

 

^ That is quite some way to put it...

 

If you have the T7200 now, I think that would be quite a bit of money to lay down for some pretty small performance increases.

 

YES YOU CAN DO IT!!!