what is the most powerful processor i can stick in an inspiron 1525

Hi,

So my mum has an inspiron 1525 with a pentium dual core T2390 1.86GHz. Im thinking of upgrading it a bit after the warranty comes to an end as it has never left her desk so its in mint condition and i reckon it could be of service for a few more years- especially since it has a HDMI port and came with a remote it would make a sweet media pc.

I'm curious as to which is the fastest chip i can put in it.

thanks in advance

 

Almost certainly T9500. If Extremes work (which I doubt), you might be able to use an X9100... but considering the size of the 1525 cooling solution, that's probably a bad idea even if it works.

Either way, T8100 or T8300 is a much better value.

 

hmm prices are not as low as i expected them to be. i think i'll wait till they become a little more obsolete before upgrading

in a year or two an upgrade to a T9500, 4gb ram, and a hybrid drive (or maybe a 80GB ssd?) would give it a nice boost to last quite a while.

 

Chucking an 80GB SSD into my dad's Inspiron 6400 (T2300 1.66Ghz, 1GB RAM) improved responsiveness of the system a lot.

Things like Flash and YouTube can occasionally still slow the system down, but it's a lot better for general stuff most likely because the original hard disk was 30MB/s and because it's always paging because there isn't much RAM.

 

Inspiron 1525 has a GM965 chipset. Some were shipped with T4200 CPUs. The highest rated CPU for this chipset is a T9500-2.6 or X9000. Both of which are pricey.

A T8300-2.4 can be had on ebay for ~$50 and your Dell can run dual-IDA so it would run at 2.6Ghz. That's the best bang-per-buck upgrade for your system.

 

The T4500 and T6600 are another viable option.

PassMark scores are:
T4500 --- 1547
T6600 --- 1553
T8300 --- 1536

 

Are another option but unless are substantially cheaper than a T8300 I'd suggest avoid. Those passmark results are not an accurate reflection of performance. A T6600-2.2 with 2MB of cache isn't going to outperform a T8300-2.4 with 3MB of cache.

The T8300 also has SuperLFM and IDA which the T4xx/T6xx cpus don't. Dell doesn't lock EIST so can get another 200Mhz out of a T8300 using Throttlestop's dual-IDA mode. SuperLFM mode allows the cpu to be significantly undervolted for longer battery life and/or cooler running temps.

A T8300 is a more feature packed and a higher performer than a T4xx/T6xx.

 

I just upgraded my moms 1525 to a T4400 2.1GHz 1MB 800MHz. Up from a t3200.

CPU ------ Passmark

T4300 $10 - 1410
T8300 $45 - 1536
T4500 $35 - 1547
T6600 $25 - 1553

You can see why I chose the T4300

Very cheap, decent performance.

 

i have a dell inspiron 1525 with intel celeron m 540 socket 479mPGA with chipset PM965

mb model # is 0wp007 bios a17

cpu-z and speccy both say i have a 479m. so my socket is an 478M correct? or is cpu-z and speecy wrong?

trying to upgrade to something faster to make vm ware player go read the other threads but got confused.

so what options are available to me? thanks in advance!

 

Look for a Socket P CPU (800MHz FSB?)

 

Then maybe upgrading the RAM would be a more worthwhile upgrade?

 

Not in my case as the hard drive was a clear bottleneck by itself.

 

so your saying a p socket with fsb 800mhz even though the cpu-z and speecy say its a 479m? thats where im getting all confused. so the programs are reading it wrong?

 

looking at the t9300 and the t8300 the 9300 is only like $25 more on ebay. so a t9300 for 75 sounds good to me. would you go with used a top rated seller that is selling refurb with 15 day warrenty or go with a person with good feedback 100% positive free expited shipping w/tracking and used but guaranteeing a working part.

 

478 and 479 are just the number of pins, pm965 is the chipset which is important.

woah woah...

First of all, you know everything sold as working on Ebay has a 30 day warranty, right?
Second, pretty much no one has 100%, there are plenty of dumb reasons why sellers get negative feedback occasionally.
But free shippingand tracking? This makes NO sense and isn't related. Ok, guaranteeing a working part? REALLY, that goes without saying, doesn't it....?