possible to upgrade CPU

i have a sz-160p with a core duo 1.83 (t2400) processor. i've recently upgraded the ram to 2 gigs of ddr2 667mhz and will do the HD soon with a 120gb 7200rpm drive.

i did some research and found out that the new core 2 duo processors can actually drop in the motherboard. can i purchase say a t7200 2gig core 2 duo and drop it in? i've read that a bios reflash is required and getting one from sony is not possible but reflashing with asus's general bios will do the trick. what if i stayed in the same core duo family and just went with a 2.33 t2700? would the bios flash still be needed?

in case anyone is wondering why i'm doing these upgrades. i'm a photographer and will be going on a 4 month trip throughout southeast asia, mostly back packing. i need the faster speed to process large images on the road.

thanks!

 

Yes, you can drop a C2D processor in, but I don't think it is worth it.

I think you are better off investing in more RAM, especially if you are at 1GB. If you have 2GB, then there isn't much else you need to do.

 

yeah i agree with Gautam.you probaly wont notice the difference between the t2400 and the T7200 unless you do really cpu intensive. and a t2700 would probaly be overkill for the price. If you find that your laptop is getting "slower" it could be becuase you have alot of useless processes/programs that are running in the background or that you might be infected by virus/adware ect.

 

good to know i can drop a core 2 duo processor in there without complications. i am currently at 2 gigs of ram. how do you feel about upgrading the hard driver to 7200rpm? is the performance benifit more than the extra drain on the battery?

image editing is highly memory and processor intensive especially when with with large .raw/.nef/.psd/.tiff files. a few seconds from each photos adds to hours when i have to batch process a few hundred from a shoot especially when converting from .raw/.nef to .tiff/.jpg. based on this, do you think a processor upgrade will help me out?

i want to do a clean install with XP pro but am weary because i've read a lot of issues of people getting drivers to work and such. i found the entire list of device drivers on sony's esupport, but it still seems much more involved than reformatting desktops.

suggestions?

 

It's possible: ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/PUB/OS/VistaUpgrade/BIOS/SZ3/R0094N0/R0094N0.zip

This bios update will allow you to use a Core 2 Duo without any problems.

BTW do you mind telling me where you've read that an Asus bios would work?

 

thanks for the link. i noticed that the link is for sz3 and also for vista. does that make a difference for what i want to do?

can the 07/26/06 bios upgrade on vaio's support site work as well?

as for the asus bios, it was speculation made by several members on a different forum. since the mobo is made by asus, a flash with asus's general bios for that mobo should "unlock" bios features disabled by sony. appearantly no one has tried it on a vaio, but similar flashes have worked without problems on several dell laptops.

 

The 94N0 update is the most recent available online and it works on the SZ1 series. Don't worry about where it's placed; Sony just decided to place it there when they released their Vista drivers and utilities.

The SZ motherboard is manufactured in Japan and not by Asus, so whatever you'd read in that other forum is wrong.

 

appreciate the help! i just placed an order on new egg for a t7600 processor and should get here in a couple of days.