T400 Upgrade Path

Currently i'm using T400 w/ P9500. I'm thinking of getting a "CPU upgrade". Thinking of Q9200 or Q9100. Is that possible? I know both P9500 and Q9100/Q9200 are Socket P (in fact i already did an upgrade before from P8400 to P9500, but i need even more speed on laptop since i do lots of photoshop).

i wonder if anyone had tried it before? and I'm thinking of getting Q9200 QAVR/QAVS ES CPU, which I was told it's supposed to be good. anyone have any experience with it?

the Q9200 ES and the P9500 OEM CPU on eBay different is around $50, which to me if it works the performance increase would worth the work involved.

 

The quad core socket P's are 45 watt TDP processors, while the P-series processors are 25 watt TDP. Most likely your notebook won't have that kind of power going to the socket, unless that notebook actually could have been a CTO model with a quad. Sometimes you get lucky though, like I did with my CW. It accepted a Q9100, but it ran hotter and ate battery like you wouldn't believe, thats why I went back to a P8800. The Q9100 was a beast though. It chewed through pretty much anything I threw at it, and was just hungry for more.

 

Battery life isn't really a big issue, as I generally have power on the site i'm working at. and i have 2x 9-cell for it to chew for a whole day. I know the laptop was designed to take 35w TDP CPU in their config. (T9600)

but someone here did this before
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=454456
the X9100 is 44w TDP design. so i wonder if that's even possible to put Q9100 (which is slower clock but w/ 4 core instead of 2)

so.... i wonder should i try?

 

The Thinkpad T400 doesn't support quad cores - there's no BIOS support, so you'd somehow need to get past that, and even if you do, the heat output would probably be too much for the T400 to handle.

That user's screenshots are the only evidence I've ever seen that indicates that the T400 can use anything other than the 25W P-series and 35-W T-series Montevina processors. YMMV, and know that a CPU upgrade would void your warranty.

 

well, it's not like i hvn't void the warranty (upgrade from P8400 to P9500). would upgrading to SSD improve the speed and save battery? or... should i just sell my T400 and get a T410..... decision decision....

 

I can say SSDs (at least Intel... though I'd wager its the same for Indillix ones too at least) are very much worth it.

 

hmmmm.... which one is a good choice between performance and price.... i'm eyeing on OCZ vertex 120GB

 

Intel X25-M 160GB gets my recommendation. It comes at a price though.

 

this most probably doesn't support quads... dual cores are your best option... you don't need to use X9100 as you can't overclock it... so get T9900.... runs cooler and has same stock speed as X9100... also get intel G2 SSD... its a great upgrade and it will speed up your system a lot especially in boot up and other taks.

 

Yes, an SSD is a much more viable and worth-it upgrade. I have the Intel G2 80GB SSD and it's been fantastic.

 

Photoshop:
1- The more ram you have the faster it is

2- Photoshop swap file should be kept in a different harddrive when possible. Also it should be kept if the fastest harddrive if you have more then one. If you don't have a second harddrive like me you can use a usb stick to host photoshops' swap file (fastest option). Or you can host this swap file in a different partition than the one containing Windows' paging file.

 

looks like the 80G Intel G2 is my first move for now. actually it would not impact my HDD usage, as i already partition my current 500GB into 80GB+420GB split (just clone the current 80GB partition to G2 and merge the space from the 80GB on HDD into the 420GB partition).

for RAM-wise, right now i have 4GB, might go 6GB after the G2 upgrade.

 

your better off with 8GB RAM running in dual channel... anyways , a 8GB kit of DDR3 RAM isn't as expensive as it used to be... and selling the 4GB will allow u to get some money back..

 

well, will see, let me finish deciding whether to get Intel G2 or OCZ Vertex LE.....

 

Be careful with those LE's, there have been some reports of them bricking.

 

can you show me where i can find those reports?

 

Newegg customer reviews of the 200 GB version, and also, note from Anandtech that the Vertex LE is basically the (now defunct) Vertex 2 Pro, which unexpectedly bricked on them too. You do have a good warranty with them, so you'll be able to receive an equivalent replacement, but... make sure you have good backups.

 

get the intel G2... way more reliable than the OCZ one... literally 0% chance of bricking.

 

jump the gun, bite the bullet and got G2 80G, loving it and it's very fast (and waiting for the HDD tray for my exisiting HDD)... very impress with the fast start up and fast loading on big files, like loading up XP Mode app (which it loads the whole virtual PC image before loading up)