help me choose a faster machine than my thinkpad t400

Hi

I have a thinkpad T400 (type 6474-19G, intel core 2 duo), with Ubuntu installed. But now I am virtualizing windows 7 to use big softwares for my job (translation and speech recognition) and my T400 is not powerful enough for the speech recognition to be flawless and fluent.
So I 'm thinkpad about getting a new machine from the used market in Europe.

I see that the T430 (or T430s) with an Intel core i5 is maybe not really faster than mine as it only has 2 cores. The version with an i7 is rare and is it worth it?

Maybe switch to another brand like Alienware to be loaded in performance...I don't know.

I can speed around 500 to 700 euros which is the price of a T430 "as new".

Can you help me choose ?

Thank you

 

Welcome to the forum!

Have you done any upgrades to your T400? With a bit more RAM than stock 2GB and a SSD, it should run W7 natively fine, and while I'm no expert on the software applications that you're utilizing I really don't see that a properly set up late-model-C2D machine should have an issue with them...

 

The cores are much faster. You can expect 1.5-3x raw CPU performance from Ivy Bridge i5-s compared to similarly clocked old Core Duos. Dual core i7, in contrast, is not going to be much faster than i5.

I'd suggest getting a T430/T430s, with an i5 (like 3230M), and at least 8GB RAM if you plan to run any VMs. Current laptop CPUs don't offer performance much higher than that anyway.

 

I think you will notice a step up in performance with the current gen ThinkPads compared to your T400. I have a T420 with Core i5-2520M processor and noticed increased responsiveness compared to my trusty T61 with a T9300 Core 2 Duo on most applications, both which have SSD's as the main drive. I wouldn't really bother going for the Dual Core i7's as they offer little gain in performance over the Core i5's despite the price premium.

 

Like what Hearst said, there's no reason to spend on a dual-core i7 (basically, a slightly overclocked i5 chip, but the price-per-performance ratio isn't as good).

I'd go with ajkula's advise and consider buying a very good SSD with your budget (even half that budget). Going from any mechanical drive to a solid-state will be the best bang-for-your-buck as far as a performance boost would go; SSDs will make your read/write, random access, and I/O speeds stupid fast. Top it off with maxing out your T400's RAM, and you should still be good for at least a year or two where you can save up more for a better-performing laptop.

 

FYI,

My wife's machines was the T400. Changing the HDD to a SSD was a MAJOR improvement.

 

Only if seek time was the major problem before, and not the CPU computation power.

T400 4GB RAM limit isn't helping when running VMs either. If T400 currently has 2GB RAM, I'd try upgrading that to 4GB and see if it helps. If it does not, any further upgrades, including SSD, are unlikely to help either, aside from saving a few seconds on cold boots.

Also, in a year time, laptops with Haswell will not be much faster CPU wise. There is, however, a big speed difference between i5s and 4 years old Core Duos.

 

About 99.9% sure the max RAM limit for the T400 is 8gb

 

The original poster just wanted a recommendation on a T430. I only have experience with the T430s so I can't make one. But given the original request stated requirements, a T430 should be able to handle the job and 8GB of RAM should be sufficient for a single VM and the host OS.

 

I work on an X301 with a C2D and there is a T410s in my office with an I5 arrandale CPU. Performance is night and day.

 

Make that 8GB since that's what I had in my last one...

Yes and no.

On paper, most definitely.

Everything really depends on what the machine is used for - that's why I previously stated that I had no experience with software in question, but would be quite surprised if this machine (in a slightly upgraded version) couldn't pull it off...at 1/4 of the price of a new T430 at the most...

 

Or the opposite On paper they're the same: 2 cores, Core-something-or-other, 2-something Ghz, why bother. However, in anything CPU intensive the difference is there, and it's huge. And SSD, while it does make the machine "feel" more responsive, and is always a good upgrade, often does not help much once all needed data and applications have loaded into memory/cache (provided there is enough RAM).

Of course, all depends on the applications, but AFAIK voice recognition apps are quite CPU heavy, plus the VM handicap (which can be significant depending on the virtualization software and settings, especially for CPU intensive applications).

 

What I meant by "on paper" are benchmark scores where a Core CPU will roughly get double from an equivalently clocked C2D...for many users/applications, it's meaningless. They wouldn't notice the difference. I'm not saying that it would - or that it wouldn't - be the case in OP's particular environment/set of requirements.

My point was to offer an alternative upgrade path for a significantly less of an investment...

Which is exactly why I stated that I'm not familiar with software in question...and left the final judgment to the OP...

 

The problem is that upgrading the HDD and RAM is going to run some money. It might more sense to divert those funds to a new machine with a warranty at this point.

My wife's T400 is worn out.

 

Hi

thank you all for your responses!!

Indeed, I forgot to mention that I updgraded the RAM to 5GB on my T400.
I am going to take on of your two advices:
1. go for T430 with and i5 and SSD disk
or
2. up my RAM to 8GB and buy an SSD disk

thank you very much for you appreciated help.
great forum!