E6600 vs T7700

So basically I'm stuck b/w the NP5790 and NP9260-V Elite.

Really the only difference is the processors.

NP5790
Intel® Core™2 Duo T7700 2.4GHz w/4MB L2 On-die cache - 800MHz FSB

NP9260-V Elite
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz w/ 4MB L2 Cache - 1066MHz FSB

The 9260 is about $150 more w/ all the same specs other than the processor. So is it worth it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated thanks

 

e6600 is a desktop processor, not too good for power consumption/battery life. It is slightly faster tho, thanks to faster FSB.

 

graphics card the same? considering the E6600 is in a desktop platform, then it might have a better graphics solution, even if they have the same numbers, the desktop version of graphics cards are usually a lot better than their mobile counterparts.

 

actually its not a desktop platform.

its still a laptop, just using a desktop cpu. the graphics card is still going to be a mobility gpu.

i would not even consider getting a laptop with a desktop processor. the performance increase in games will be nominal at best, and you will be basically tethered to the wall socket.

 

I would get the T7700 because less heat, better battery life and save $150. Real world unlikey to see the difference only in a few specific apps and then I personaly would not care.

 

depends on your needs

if you're doing lots of media editing and don't mind poor battery life, go for the e6600

if all you do is game, then go for the t7700

 

The 9260 uses a desktop processor and chipset. You will be basically tethered to the wall socket. Also, the 9260 is bigger and heavier than the 5790.

 

I'm going out on a limb here so if I'm wrong let me have it!

A 2.4Ghz 4MB is the same speed at 800 FSB or 1066. With CPU intensive apps where the CPU has to carry the load in theory should work the same, same speed. So now getting the info to the CPU in say video editing, the hard drive is going to slow the delivery to the CPU whether 800Mhz or 1066Mhz. A HDD is not going to overload the RAM or FSB even 800Mhz. So my question is where does the performance increase come from?

 

They have the same clock speed, therefore they'll process information equally fast (in theory, I assume this is relatively true). However the higher FSB allows the CPU to receive more information faster from the mobo, so in cases where you have alot of information going through the CPU quickly, with not very intensive calculations, then the FSB would boost your performance. That's all speculative really, I think it's basically right but I wouldn't stake anything I didn't want to loose on it.

 

actually you see a bigger performance from the bus increase than you would with a notch or two clockspeed increase on these processors. they are really efficient at crunching out data, and they are bandwidth hungry a large portion of the time.

what you are overlooking is that the hdd isn't directly feeding the cpu. that would be the ram. the hdd loads all the working data into the ram. once its there, the hdd is no longer in use. hdd is not a bottleneck in video editing at all.

 

How does FSB effect RAM, doesn't RAM have it's own speed? This is a question I don't know.

It does all go back to the HDD even if it does not come directly from there.

 

The RAM feeds it's information through it's connector to the mobo, which then travels throught the CPU socket into the CPU. Currently RAM is fast enough so that it's connector doesn't really bottleneck the CPU on modern mobo's, so the limiting link is how fast the CPU can take in information, hence it's FSB.

 

OK so speed and bandwidth are different, kind of like voltage and amperage.
I still think difference is minimul, and with what is being said a faster CPU say a 2.6Ghz would not help on the 800Mhz because the CPU is already being starved? Think about it, can't have it both way.

 

It all depends on the kind of application you're doing. If you're performing alot of high-level computations on a very small data set, a higher speed will help you more than a higher FSB. If you're performing a lot of low-level calculations on a large data-set, FSB will help more. Both raising the FSB and raising the internal multiplier can increase performance, but on modern processors raising the FSB seems to provide a greater performance boost in most applications.

 

Thanks odin243.
Do you think that I am correct in thinking real world will not be noticable? In video editing HDD will be the weak link?

 

I've never done very much video editing, so I can't really say there. However, the HDD can only be the weak link when you're writing to/reading from the HDD. I guess if you're editing a long video and constantly reading and writing, then the HDD would be a weak link. For rendering and such, the CPU would be the weak link, and in cases like that, the difference would be noticeable. However, most people don't use applications where the CPU is the weak link, most of the time.

 

Alright thanks for the help everyone, I'll go w/ the 5790.

 

if your hdd were directly feeding data to the cpu, you would have no reason for dual core cpu's or anything. the hdd is so limiting that processors from several years ago would basically max out what we could do with a pc.

so the ram sort of acts like a buffer.

the importance of the ram is that it can transfer data around at about 5 GB/s, where as the hard drive can do about 150 MB/s.

the ram is barely able to keep up with the cpu as is.

trust me- the hdd is not involved in bottlenecking your cpu. after loading up the data on the ram, its just not being used for video editing. its possible that if you are dealing with a long movie that your hdd will have to keep spinning to load the data from the movie, but the real work being done is the cpu-ram passing data back and forth. the movie might be a few gigs total, loaded over a long period of time (hours?) whereas you are pushing a similar amount of data around between cpu-ram every second.