[Decision] Turion TL-66 vs Core 2 Duo T7400

Hey all,
I'm new to notebooks so bare with me , im looking to get a new notebook at a price around $1300-$1400.
I am primarily going to use this notebook as a mobile replacement for my tower, so i can take it to and from my parents places at ease.
I for the most part do alot of programing and mainly gaming.

I know as most people have said, intels new chips are significantly better than amd's line. I for one prefer AMD processors because of the low cost + still good efficiency.

Basically I have picked out 2 machines:
Both have identical spec's except processor.

• Ram: 1024MB(1024MB X1) DDR2-667 PC5300
• Graphics: Mobility™ 256MB Nvidia GeForece 7600 PCI-Express 3D Video
• Hard Drive: 80 GB 7200rpm Serial-ATA-150 (i have an external already with lots of space so this i'd rather save money and down the size but up the speed for preformance)
• Both will be running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

The difference would be the processor + case (case is not v. important):

• Intel® Core 2 Duo Mobile T7400 Dual-Core Processor (2x 2.16GHz/4MB Cache/667FSB)
• Mobile AMD® Turion™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor TL-66 [2.3GHz, 1MB L2 Cache] w/Hyper Transport Technology

The one with the Intel Processor costs: $1,400
The one with the AMD Processor costs: $1,310

What I'm questioning is how much really is the core 2 better than the amd? How much would it effect gaming if i got the amd as appose to the intell?
Is AMD's best Turion this year (TL-66) that much worse than intel's 4th best T7***? Is the TL-66 Crap?

If anyone has any benchmarks or comments on how their machine runs (if it has similar spec's) I'd like to know if I cheaped out and got the turion, if i would suffer.

Suggestions + Comments would be greatly appreciated .

Thanks,
Gif

 

Meh, the price gap isn't too much, so I'd basically say go with the Intel.If the gap was ~200ish, I'd maybe go for the AMD, but for the most part, they should be about the same in the end, as I'm thinking your bottleneck is your video card.

 

Doing general apps and standard apps on your computer, you won't notice the difference between the Intel and AMD processors.

Is there anything else the Intel machine has vs. the AMD one? Maybe you could give us links to both machines and let us take a look. Alternatively, you could complete the FAQ in the What Should I Buy forum and we could offer suggestions.

 

The Core will me more powerful outright, but I have heard tell that the AMD has a more effective memory controller and can handle large amounts of ram better.

Personally I'd take the AMD, both would be more than powerful enough for me.

 

I don't know much about the performance differences, but the one thing that sticks out to me is the huge difference in cache size. It seems like that should make a big difference, and based on that, I would go with Intel.