Should I buy e4200 with su9300 or su9400; Later upgrade to su9600?

at a significantly speedier 1.6ghz compared to 1.3 and 1.4 for the former two.

I can save app -80+ bucks going with the su9300 then upgrade later.

1. Is the upgrade easy?

2. What will su9600 cost? .. app/best guess.

thx

(sonystyle New tt is already offering the upgrade for only $50 from 9400 to 9600)
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This is one of 'those' questions...

The answer, as always, is buy now what you need now.

Are you buying a new E4200? If yes, have you looked at the Outlet? Dell should pay me a dime for every time I have pimped their Outlet sales. It's just such a darned good deal. My E4200 was $1300 with 3 year NBD warranty. Most have gotten the same specs for $900 in the sale last month.

As for your other questions. The difference between SU9300 and 9400 is nominal and I daresay, you won't be burning down any barns (to quote Engadget) along the way with the SU9600 either. It is also a very costly CPU, and I do not expect it to be under $350 in quantities of 1000 or more. The upgrade, I am not so sure about, you may want to post int he E4200 thread, one of the guys disassembled the entire unit to re-apply the thermal paste on the CPU so he can tell you more. Not sure if it is worth it. By the time you see the SU9600 trickle down in retail, the E4210 will be out, and well, you know how the wheel turns...

 

If the 9600 is going to cost $350 for only a nominal increase in performance-- I think I'll just get the 9400 now.

That's an absurd price for a processor relative to the Refurb Purchase price I'll be paying.

Thanks so much for your input. I think the decison is made.
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There's tons of e4200's in outlet now-- I only want a well outfitted 64gb Ultra
tho, so am searching $1000+ .. which still has about 50 well outfitted ones including some 128gbs.
Probably 100 or 200 more under $1000 with lesser configs and still many of those in the 950-1000 range with the 64gb ultra.

I don't need alot of storage - and like the speed.
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I'd like to point out also that the SU series chips use a BGA connector style, that is to say that they're directly soldiered onto the mobo. So, even if you wanted to, you couldn't switch them.

 

Yes, you are right, it is BGA packaging, which doesn't make the upgrade impossible but certainly much more difficult than a ZIF socket. I think there is some heat involved to melt certain somethings...

unmarc, if you want speed, don't spend the extra cash for the 'Ultra Performance' 64GB SSD, since we discovered in the thread that the difference between the MLC and SLC units in speed is moderate. However, SLC is more reliable (and may make you feel more comfortrable if you will be using the E4200 for more than 3 years). If all else is equal in term of the price, you should take the Ultra Performance version, but I think it goes for quite a bit more on the Outlet.

Let me make an amendment to my $350 estimate for the SU9600, this is assuming that there are no current price drops since the SU9400 is going at $262 in 1000+ quantities at the moment. The funny thing is that the SU9300 is at the same price! Just keep in mind that there is a significant overhead when you buy just one CPU so either way it isn't under $300 right now, but will probably drop in a (long) while. I just wanted to make this clear since it is not $350 but actually $289.

 

I'd say that the upgrade would be impossible without $100,000 machines. The reason is simple. Take this photo for instance: http://www.tcmagazine.com/images/news/Hardware/Intel_Core_i7_965_unbox_07.jpg (YES, I know this is a Core i7 CPU, but it is the only good photo I could find, and it is to illustrate a point). Note the insane amount of little contact points here. Unless you think you can soldier all of these to a mobo reliably (and I promise, you can't), It's not possible.

If you want a notebook with speed, the E4200 is just not for you. Look for the E4300, which you can get with a SP9400 @ 2.4ghz.

 

There are enough examples of BGA upgrades on the Internet. A perfect example is the infamous Sony UX upgrade form Core Solo to Core Duo. Let me see if I can dig it up, ahh here it is.

It can be done, but ya gotta have the gonads and mad skillz. And I doubt the dude was using $100K machinery However, he does mention that he used specialized equipment that isn't mainstream.

Also, there are services on the Internet that will do this for you. You just need to send them your unit (or mainboard). Not sure if this exists for the E4200 though.

 

Ok, specialized equipment and mad skills. Two things that most people (and me) don't have.

But point made. It IS possible.