Noticeable difference between C2D 1.66ghz and 2.0ghz?

I ordered this laptop today:

14.1" WXGA+ skärm 1440x900
NVIDIA® 8600M GT 512MB
1,66GHz Intel® Core™2 DUO T5450
1024MB DDR2 667MHz/PC5300 Ram
120GB 7200rpm. SATA hårddisk
Zepto Z-pro 300Mbit BGN Wlan
Samsung DVD-RW DL brännare

And for the most part I'm happy with the specs. However, I'm low on cash and can only afford the 1.66ghz C2D right now. If I spend the money I have carefull then I can barely afford the 2.0ghz, but is the difference big enough to justify spending another 70 usd on this one? I have a Turion X2 1.86ghz in this one.

Is the Turion at 1.86ghz better than the C2D at 1.66ghz? What should I do?

 

What do you use your computer for?

The 1.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo should be fine unless you run CPU intensive applications.
I wouldn't spend 70 USD on that.

 

Well. I don't play games that often really. I do intend to bring it with me to LAN parties to play games such as Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, UT2k4 and possibly Doom3. I might try Crysis later. These should be CPU intensive apps.

Honestly, I'll mostly use the computer for multimedia, internet, chatting etc. But it's nice to have some power for when you want to play a game too.

 

Games are more GPU intensive than CPU.
The C2D 1.66GHz should be fine for what you plan to do. It's the processor I have in my machine (see my profile) and it does the job fine. I've played Battlefield 2142 & Bioshock on this computer.

A RAM upgrade (to 2GB) would be a better upgrade than the CPU upgrade. You probably won't notice a difference between a 2.0GHz and a 1.66GHz processor, but you'd notice a improvement from 2GB of RAM over 1GB.
If you do plan to upgrade your RAM, you're better off buying it from another source and putting it in yourself (computer manufacturers always overprice it).

 

I think this is a wise spec when you are under budget pressures. Ofcourse there is a diff btwn [email protected] and [email protected]. Not only the 7250 is faster in clock and FSB but also does it support Virtualization Technology--smthg you may not feel unless you use a lot virtualization. These 2 cpu share the same size of L2 cache, which is 2M. Actually I am more curious about the diff btwn T7250 and T7300, where only the cache size is different. If you just use this computer for normal use, then adding another 1G ram rather than changing to T7250 is absolutely a brilliant idea when your budget is tight, esp. if you use MACROSOFT vista

About your last question, you can use some testing software to find the answer. However, I think the turion can hardly beat c2d...

 

wow, Seems like i was too slow. I started my reply while there was none, whahahaha

 

You definetly need to add more RAM if you're planning to use Vista.

I do a lot of photo editing, and thankfully, all photo manipulation software are multithreaded, so I do feel the power of C2D 2.2GHz...

But in normal day to day use, you wouldn't feel the difference.

gen.fengle; Du sgu da dansker

 

Hm, if I'm lucky I'll be able to afford the 2.0ghz one. Now that I think about it, it seems to be the wisest decision to shoot for the 2.0 since I'm gonna use this new laptop for a very long time. I'll see what I can do. As for the RAM, I am aware of that. I'm running Vista on this one and I know you NEED 2gb RAM, else it won't run very well. Thanks for the answers!

Still gotta ask tho, any idea how a Turion X2 1.8ghz stacks up to that C2D? I mean, the 1.6ghz one.

EDIT: Ey. And one more thing: Tjena, har ni det bra?

 

For the long run mb you should get 7250~ and order another 1G ram elsewhere when you got $~~

Actually, the AMD X2 cpu was built to compete with the intel core duo, not core 2 duo. And even at that time, the same speed core duo can beat X2, so you can guess the result~

Hope you are satisfied with you new laptop, and hope you can post some reviews in the near future~ ~especially make some statistics on HEAT temperature

n0elia: Jeg lever i Danmark men jeg er ikke dansker. og jeg kan ikke tale danish

 

Well, that's good to hear. I don't have the new laptop yet, but I have ordered it. Chances are I might cancel the order or have them put that 2.0ghz cpu in it tho. Anyhow, I think that's enough info. There are reviews here for it already, but I wouldn't mind telling people about it. Anyhow, thanks for your help!

Gen: Nåväl, du verkar ju kunna lite i alla fall. =P

 

It is a little dated, but this Tom's Hardware article compares Intel and AMD mobile CPUs.

As already suggested, increasing the RAM (I suggest 3GB) will give more overall benefit than having a faster CPU. Your CPU will spend most of its time on minimum speed waiting for something to do.

John

 

You sure you can put 3GB ram in this thing if you use Vista Home Premium? Also, what I now know after reading that article is that even some of the slowest Core Duos are faster than the TL-56. Which bodes well for the C2D at 1.6ghz, still, I want that 2.0 AND lots of RAM. At the moment I have a 512mb stick of RAM at home, so I'll have to live with 1.5gb RAM until next month.

 

101% sure! See the attached for my 6024W.

John

 

I would like to know if there is noticeable difference between C2D 2.0GHz 2MB Cache and 2.2/2.4GHz 4MB Cache?

CreX

 

Thanks Ratsey, chances are I might actually upgrade to 3GB next month. I just called Zepto and changed the CPU to a 2.0ghz one. Now I just have to wait 8 days for it, and I have no computer to go online with while I wait. 'tis gonna be torture. XP

 

Again, I'm not sure why you want a 2.0GHz C2D so much. You really won't notice much of a difference for what you do. Then again, it's really up to you and if you sleep better at night knowing you have a 2.0GHz C2D, go for it.

Again, this depends on what applications you will run. The average user who uses his notebook for web browsing, instant messaging and other simple applications probably wouldn't notice a difference.

 

I don't think you'll notice the difference, unless you benchmark? The extra cache gives about 5-10% performance increase, and that's not even in all apps

 

ThiBault, well, I am sure I will sleep better at night. =P I just want the best CPU they can offer for this thing, I'm gonna use it for a long time and even if it isn't much the extra power will help I'm sure. I wish I could've gotten the 250gb HD, but ah well, you can't have everything.

 

I wouldn't worry about the HDD. Down the road, if you need more storage you can simply buy an external HDD.
In my opinion, you're better off with a smaller and faster HDD in the computer with a larger external one for extra storage than a large HDD in your computer. You'll get better performance.

 

Good to hear. Seems like I made the right decision then, I do have a 320gb external HD with backups of pretty much everything. So once the new notebook gets here I'll just send it all back. Wheee.

 

Regarding the 3G ram suggested by John, this is something i've been thinking. I want to buy a 6224w maybe within a month from now. And i think the price of adding 1g extra ram from zepto is even a little more expensive than ordering a 2g ddr2 pc5300 kingston value from elsewhere. And for the long run, after 1 yr for instance, i can throw away the 1g ram and get another 2g to make a dual channel of 4g ram~ BTW, is using two different brand ram problematic? Can i enable dual channel with two same size but different brand or whatsoever rams?

PS: i think Crex also has the question i wondered about. Maybe the 4mb l2 cache gives more heat and power consumption rather than bringing significant performance promotion?

WiseDuck: were you speaking swedish to me......hahaha

 

oh, one thing about the harddrive: i wouldn't go for the 250 or 320g under 5400rpm, rather, i'd like to have 160g 7200rpm one, and later i'll buy a few external hd 500g to compensate for the lack of storage room.

I suffered a lot while file transfering, winrar, and gaming at the same time, so i'd need a faster hd.

 

The price of buying (from somewhere else) and adding your RAM yourself will be much much less than buying it from your notebook's manufacturer (like you noted above). Installing RAM is also very easy to do. You can get great deals on RAM and boost your performance for a reasonable price.

I wouldn't worry about dual channel. Dual channel nowadays barely gives any performance increase (2-3%) for current systems. If you buy the same size RAM with the same Bus clock it shouldn't be a problem to enable dual channel, I don't think so anyway.
When you buy RAM, brand is not important (most RAM has the same memory chip manufacturers anyway). Just make sure that the RAM you buy has a lifetime warranty.
One more important thing to remember, after you install your RAM be sure to test it for instabilities or errors. Read the MemTest86+ Guide for instructions on how to do that.
Have a look at the RAM Deals topic.

On the subject of getting 4GB of RAM, make sure you have a 64bit OS if you want to use all of it. 32bit OS's support 2^32 bytes (or 4GB of memory max). Even if you put 4GB of RAM in, you can't use it all because the system has to use some of that 2^32 bytes of addresses for system hardware. You'll only get about 3.25-3.5GB of RAM available.

I'm not really sure about that. The extra heat and power consumption is probably very small, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. And you'd only notice a performance increase if you use CPU intensive applications, most people would never be able to tell the difference between a C2D 2.0GHz 2MB Cache and 2.2/2.4GHz 4MB Cache.

 

3GB works fine as asymmetric dual channel. See this thread for some test results.

Mixing modules from different sources shouldn't cause problems.

John

 

Hi Thibault and John, thank you very much for bringing these useful information and references. Love to learn more about the truth~