Upgrade for a T6600

I was wondering if it would be worth doing a CPU upgrade in my Packard Bell TJ-65, which has a T6600 CPU, 4GB RAM and a GT240m VGA. Are there any faster CPU's than the T6600 that are compatible? Would it be worth the money or should I wait and buy a new laptop in a year or so?

 

CPU upgrades are almost never worth the cost or effort in my experience. A SSD is more likely to seem noticeable. Plus you can move the SSD to any new machine you buy down the road.

 

you'll benefit from a cpu upgrade only if you often use heavy processing applications such as rendering or video encoding software. For general use the T6600 is a very capable CPU.

Assuming you need the upgrade, install CPUz and check which chipset you have. If you have the GL40 the most powerfull cpu you can install in your laptop is the t9500. Some members will tell you that the best value for money is the T8300. In your case it is pointless to upgrade to a T8300 since it is only 0.2GHz faster than the T6600.

If your chipset is the GM45 or PM45 the most powerful CPU is the T9900. It current ebay price is between £100 and £150.

 

Thanks a lot for your feedbacks guys. Would a 100-150pound investment be worth in terms a performance? And one last question,because I like the SSD idea, the SSD surely fits my laptop or it has different dimensions?

 

Something similar to this will give you the performance boost you're looking for:
Corsair CSSD-F120GB3-BK Force Series 3 120GB Solid State Drive - Read 550MB/s, Write 510MB/s: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories
Go for Crucial,Intel,Kingston or Corsair but avoid any OCZ drives. 2.5" SATA drives will fit your laptop.

 

You might be able to upgrade your graphics.
Packard bell is owned by Acer who used MXM.

 

Ok I will look into the SSD drive, thanks guys.
Now for the VGA I was thinking of it, but I am not sure if the GT240m is MXM, I saw somewhere in the forum that an upgrade with a 5870 is possible!

 

Depending on what you're doing with your notebook, an SSD could give you the wrong kind of 'performance' increase (it will mostly make your system 'snappier', not 'faster' or more 'productive' in almost all usage scenarios).

A 'last gen', budget cpu like the i3 380M will be around 50% faster than your current system and a current gen, budget i3 2410M will be more than twice as fast as what you have currently.

No SSD will give you that kind of real performance gains (snap, yes, not a faster (more productive) system though...).

See:
PassMark CPU Lookup

See:
PassMark CPU Lookup



I agree about not upgrading your cpu (as a waste of time and $$$); you should be upgrading your platform instead (as the numbers above clearly show).

So... What do you do with your system?

 

If you plan to spend £150, you might be better off selling your laptop, adding the £150 to it and buy a newer one. You'll be able to buy a second hand laptop with a first generation core i5 from ebay for about £350 to £400. A second hand laptop with a second generation core i5 is for £400+.

Edit:
the T9900 is about as powerful as a Core i5-430M, or i5-520M

 

This is what people notice more as typical notebook usage does not require a lot of CPU usage.

 

Thanks for your replies. I use my laptop for a little of gaming, and then the typical as browsing, music etc.
I would not like to change platform yet, but I would like the idea of the T9900.
T9900 + New VGA would probably give a nice boost, not sure if it is worth the money though.

 

T9900 is more than enough for the typical use cases. I have been using it for 2+ years and could not be happier.


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You will stop posting nonsense like this. I'm calling you out publicly for the record. What you posted above is sensationalist and misleading. Your own bias against SSDs, for whatever wrong they caused you (I don't care what it was), is ridiculous. You'll be banned next time I see statements like the above. Get a life.

SSDs are a reality. In a CPU-only scenario of course they will not help (why state the obvious?). However in my experience, the majority of typical computer use benefits from a faster storage medium. Storage medium is the slowest component of any computer, even those with SSDs by a factor of a thousand or more at the minimum. There is no way an SSD will not help overall performance. Period. Class dismissed.

 

With your usage pattern you will hardly benefit from a faster CPU.

An SSD will improve boot and load times and make your system feel snappier.

You may also want to consider Seagate XT. It's what I use. For your usage pattern it performs close to an SSD at a much lower price.

 

It is not worth it. If we consider a T9900 for £150 and a mid range graphics card for £100, that's already £250, £260 if you have to replace your AC adapter too.
Your current platform is surely worth more than £200. So basically as it stand you have £450 to £500 to play with. A £450 second hand laptop is more powerful than your current laptop even after upgrade.

 

+1 naton's comments. It would be worth PLL pinmodding your CPU to overclock it from 2.2Ghz to 2.93Ghz. Otherwise I'd recommend you consider a system upgrade. There's Sandy Bridge systems in my sig available in the US starting at $380. In the UK the Vostro/Probook/Edge can be had starting at $450. They also come with new HDDs plus an expresscard slot, so can add a DIY eGPU if need gaming level graphics.