Question about upgrading T2300 to T7600 in Dell E1405

I have a Dell Inspiron E1405 laptop with the T2300 CPU. It has the latest BIOS which is A10. I want to upgrade to a T7600. The question I have is will I have to get a different heatsink or will the current one be fine? Has anyone had issues with this upgrade? I also changed to 4GB of PC2-5300 667 Crucial memory, so I should be set there. Any input is appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

 

Upgraded mine from t2300 to t7200 (couldn't justify the 2-300 dollar price for the t7600) and am running the original heatsink with no issues. You should be fine.

Mine was extremely plug and play, just apply new thermal gunk and you're set. Take the time while it's apart to do a thorough dusting of your internals.

Question: You running 32 bit or 64 bit OS? Does yours let you have the full 4G of memory (mine seems hardware capped at 3.24G)?

 

Thanks for the quick reply. Right now, I'm on XP pro 32-bit. It see's 3.25 GB. I plan on upgrading to Win 7 (bypassed Vista as I only had 1 GB at the time). With a 64-bit OS you should see all 4GB not sure why you're not, it must be MB related then. As it is right now, the difference was huge upgrading from 1 to 4 GB. The laptop just seems snappier. How is Win 7 running on your system? I plan on giving it a good internal cleaning while I have it open. Thanks for the advice.

 

It is MOBO limited by the memory controller. Was just seeing if you had a different experience, maybe a later revision or something.

Edit to add: It sees all 4G, but reports like this: 4GB (3.24 G usable). It's lame.

7 runs awesome. Took some playing to get everything properly configured (drivers and such), but was pretty easy otherwise. Everything worked out of the box, but some things, like audio, lost functionality running on default Windows drivers. Primarily inhibited because Dell's offerings of 64 bit drivers for this system are limited, at best. Right now, for instance, the IDT audio thinks it is in an HP machine, but it works awesomely (and has a spectacular UI).

Let me know if you need any help getting this going. I live here...

Second edit: You might want to consider either the t7200 or t7400, they're both a lot cheaper than the 7600, with minimal performance differences. Unless you either already have the 7600, or have a good line on one. I got my 7200 for 80 bucks on ebay, for example, whereas the 7600's were all in the 200 neighborhood.

 

Jeremy, how does that t7200 run? You seem happy with it--thinking about doing this upgrade from a t2250 1.73ghz. Do you think it's worth it?

As far as memory...I bought two 2gb sticks. Since it only recognizes 3.25, is it worth installing 4gb? Maybe I should return one of the sticks and just go with 3gb total. It would save me 50$ and I doubt .25gb does much.

Any other suggestions for this upgrade? Never upgraded a CPU before so I'm a bit nervous. Are you using bios A10?

Any issues in Windows 7? I have a copy of 32-bit pro and wanted to try it out, but Dell doesn't list any drivers for it. Do the Vista drivers work?

Thanks,
Callow.

 

ps. does anyone know where to find a good list of all compatible processors with any particular model? i can't find anything like this on dell's site.

 

From the CPU's you guys are talking about you have 945 chipset, Napa platform. The chipset is 32bit limited. It is not a 64bit capable system even though the C2D are. This is not DeLL it is all 945 chipsets. This was an issue many were not happy with.

The TDP for T2300 is 31w vs 34w for the T7200&T7600 so I think you should be OK unless you currently have heat issues.

Your chipset means all socket M CPU's should physically fit. I do not know of a list I guess I could make one but Socket "M" kind of says it all.

 

Yes, my chipset is i945GM.
It's pretty limited and dated, so that is no surprise that it can't run a 64-bit OS. I would have gladly spent this (upgrading) money on a new laptop if I could find one on the market that I liked. I really cannot stand all the high gloss finger print magnets being sold these days, so upgrading this old matte beast is my only choice right now. Well, that or buy a Mac, and I'm not ready to drop $2500 for the specs I'd want.

 

No, it should be able to run a 64-bit OS (although drivers for an older machine like this could be an issue). The problem is the chipset memory controller, which is 32-bit. In fact, this chipset is commonly listed as only being able to support up to 2 GB of memory total. So you would be able to run a 64-bit OS, but you still wouldn't be able to see the full 4 GB.

 

My machine isn't that old. I think it's from May 2007. 3 years. Is that considered old? It's irritating that Dell doesn't update drivers for machines that are 3 years old. I understand why they do it, but it doesn't exactly make me want to buy their products...

 

Not to be rude but consider this proposition. Drivers are the basic communication between hardware and software. Hardware and OS if you want to call it that.

This great belief by many on the wonders of driver updates is misplaced. Driver updates correct issues, be they problems that are bad drivers to start or a new player. Drivers updates are not hardware or software improvements. They fix mistakes.

Why so many treat them or think they are better than the the newest flavor of Windows can only demonstrate the low expectations we all have. And the desperate attempt to improve. They can update X3100 drivers until the cows cows come home. The X3100 is an inferior piece of hardware. It was the day it came out.

I in no way think drivers could not improve. I mean come on it is Intel and that can screw up a wet dream. But ? I still see that thread coming up. For the Americans that is like saying "the south is gonna rise again, save your confederate money". It makes no sense.

I in three years they can't figure out how to write a driver you are correct. Maybe do not buy. But to think a company that is still writing drivers 3 years later is any better is a very serious misunderstanding of what a driver is.

/rant.

 

I understand what a driver is.

What bothers me is they didn't write Windows 7 drivers for a machine that is only 3 years old. So I have to cross my fingers that the Vista drivers "interact" with the hardware properly if I upgrade my OS.

Not sure what your rant is about, but that is my issue with Dell right now.