T60 v. T61

Just lost what i thought was a T61 I purchased - http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2630053#post2630053

And now considering alternative and found a good deal on a T60.

What is the major difference between T60 and T61 - is it just the faster chip? How noticable would a difference be between a T60 Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66GHz, Bluetooth, 1GB DDR2, 120GB HDD, and a T61 T7300 2.0 Ghz 1GB DDR2 120gb HDD?

 

T61 series is a new motherboard/chipset (Santa Rosa) and the associated processors. I have both and while I do notice my T61p is faster, it should be, as it has a faster processor. The 5000 series intel chips are a different line of processors, still very capable, but not quite as fast. My 60p has a T2600 2.17Ghz Core Duo, the 61p is a 2.4 T7600 Core2 Duo. My Vista experience scores are 4.3 (60p) and I think 4.8 (61p).

 

the t60 doesn't have the so called 'roll cage'

also there's a huge diff in the processors since the t7300 has a 4mb bus versus a 2mb. I would say a 25% difference in speed

 

Not sure where you're getting your info, but I'm pretty sure it's not correct.

1.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXMAL-lWQBM

It does appear to have a rollcage.

2.) 4MB Cache vs 2MB Cache--not GB, not bus speed, L2 cache and do you have benchmarks to back up 25%?

 

That T60 looks like a great machine and that's a pretty good price.

Many of my colleagues have the T60 and it's much more solid than my T61.

Common to both:
- Bowed screen (ie. you can see the well known crack at the back between the LCD and the case when the lid is closed: it's a "feature" not a problem)

Worse on T61:
- Left screen latch is very loose, many people have reported this.
- Palm rest near the firewire port is not really attached to the case (at least on 14" Wide model)

YMMV.

 

I guess it does have a rollcage

whoops..meant to write mb instead of gb...changed that..and l2 cache

superpi scores..not the official benchmark method, but probably the most accurate

34.671 Sekunden | - | Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo T5500 @ 1672Mhz |

24.882 Sekunden | - | Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 1995Mhz |

24.882/34.671= the t5500 running at 71.7% of a t7300

so it's greater than 25%!

 

how did you get a wxga+ with cam? i never saw it listed anywhere on the site

 

Both the T60 and T61 have a rollcage in the bottom but the T61 has one in the lid too, while the 15/15.4" T60's lid is only plastic (CFRP).

And David, your "evidence" made me LOL....

 

I think huge might be a bit of a stretch. If you are doing Office and Internet the performance difference is marginal if any.

 

ah..i knew something about the 'roll cage' was missing in the t60, not sure what it was. thanks

from the calculations..i would say a 29% increase is pretty significant..also remember the double l2 cache

 

The WXGA+ and Webcam were still available as a combo on the T61 14" back in the good old days (July/August.) After that Lenovo had huge supply issues and I guess they haven't put back the option.

As for CPU speed, I'd have no problem going with the T60, at least for the stuff I do (web, Word.) Even with Vista, CPU utilization seems to be incredibly low and my 2GHz processor seems to be overkill.

 

I am aware of the doubling of the l2 cache, but I think you are missing the point. When you are doing things like Office and Internet, the CPU is not the limiting factor. Now if if you are coding video, it will make a difference, but even then I would not define it as huge. If coding a video takes 5 minutes the old way and is 25% faster, then it would 4 minutes on the new tech.

 

You can't just put it in encoding terms. Overall, it makes the system snappier, loads quicker, launches programs more quickly, etc.

 

I would disagree. The biggest factor with load times is the hard drive speed assuming you have sufficient memory.

 

How would you explain a 25s boot time versus a 45s boot time with all other aspects being the same (same rpm and size HD, same type and amount of ram, same program load). The only thing that was different was a Core 2 Duo processor running at 1.8 versus a quad core extreme processor? If all things are same, except the processor, why is there such a big difference in boot time?

Either you are being very ignorant on the topic of processors....or you have repressed all such notion of a faster processor means a snappier system

These boot times were calculated from one of my friend's system who also happpens to be a computer hardware designer

 

Yeah - they're also extremely different processors: 1.66 vs 2.0 GHz - that's the major performance issue - not the 4MB to 2MB L2 cache.

Compare apples to apples. Set both processors to the same multiplier and FSB speed. Use the same hard drive, memory, and motherboard. Change nothing except the physical processor, and make sure both run at equivalent speeds. I bet the 45s to 25s time drops to a much much much lower number(I'm even willing to bet it falls within the limits of testing error.) Core 2 Extreme can run up to 1333 MHz FSB, where Core 2 Duo runs at 800 or 1066. This'll cause some slowdown in terms of boot time. Also, if the drives were loaded differently, or booted a different number of times(prefetching, etc)

In terms of general performance, Core 2 Quad or Core 2 Duo won't make a spot in a hill of beans in most users cases. Core 2 Duo vs Core Duo won't even make a huge difference to most users. Anything dual-core vs anything single-core(older Pentium-M, etc) and a computer literate user should be able to see a difference. In terms of performance on a laptop, however, as long as you're dual core >= 1.6GHz, I'd recommend going w/more RAM(up to 2GB on 32 bit machines, 4GB on 64 once they clear out the T61 + 4GB problem) and a 7200RPM HDD.

So ultimately, yes, the Core 2 Duo T7300 > Core 2 Duo T5500 by a significant margin. Would the OP notice this change? Maybe. Maybe not. I'd say this case all comes down to price... but that's my opinion.

 

Well I obviously can't argue what you witnessed since I wasn't there. This argument is pointless. I have my opinion and you have yours, wrong as it may be.

 

Hey man...this was never an argument. I don't know why you see it that way. All I'm saying that a processor does have to do with speed, very minor as it may be

 

If for every second you can make a dollar, then 25 versus 49 would be a huge different...
Seriously, if no heave tasks is done, systems will run with the speed unnoticeable...Even my old thinkpad sometimes boots up real quick..

Cheers.