T9600 + 4Gbs DDR3 vs P8700 + 6GBs DDR3

The normal config is P8700 with 4GBs of ram. Now i have an option to upgrade either ram or cpu with 150$ and 100$ for ram. Can someone tell me what would the heat be like when idle and load and also the battery ( Im getting extended 7500 mAh battery). I will be getting Sony CW guys
Advices are greatly appreciated

 

Heat...idle pretty much the same.
Under load the T9600 will be hotter than a P8700.

However - what do you want to use the laptop for?
There may be no need for either a T9600 or 6GB of RAM.

 

get the T9600 and 4GB DDR3... although T9600 runs hotter , with a simple amount of undervolting , battery life will be a little less compared to P8700 ... also it gives better performance... if u can , upgrade the RAM to 6Gb ... after all it is $100 more for a 4GB module instead of 2GB one in one of ur laptops slots... upgrading urself is going to be more expensive..

 

I intend to use my laptop to replace my dekstop; photoshop,FL studio,games,sufing net,MS word, IM,
is 6 gbs more than enough , a guy told me this

 

Unless you have a particular program that will be using 100% CPU (video encoding, certain calculation software, etc), stick with the P8700. $150 is not worth it.

Going above 4GB of RAM is a waste of money for probably 99% of people out there. Unless you're running multiple VMs at the same time or are using certain RAM-intensive number-crunching programs (you would know it if you are), then there is no point.

If you really want to blow more money for performance, I would suggest going for a quality SSD - that will give you much, much more noticeable performance improvements.

 

Hmm. can I overclock P8700 to2.7ghz without reducing its life span, I heard CW has a really good heatsink

 

If you do really heavy photoshop 6GB can be useful - else 4GB is enough.
(And yes you can use that!)

Processor - depending on what you do, if your HDRs aren't GPU accelerated and you merge Photographs then a faster CPU can help, a faster CPU helps with RAW to JPEG conversion too.

So for really heavy use the i7 is possibly better, for light use - the P8700 does the trick.
For really heavy use 6GB is better, else 4GB will do the trick.

 

t9600 for sure. i have had this processor for over a year now and it absolutely eats up anything i throw at it. i've never noticed lag in my system doing anything.

i also use photoshop, play some games and never once have i noticed lag or anything like that. as for ram, my 4gb has been good enough for me... at the most, playing unreal 3, it goes up to about 60% utilization. still got plenty left for photoshop

ps, i've ran vista for a year and recently install win 7 x64. performance has gotten better with win 7. i have noticed my machine running quicker for certain tasks.

 

I had both P8700 and T9600, and the P8700 idles a lot higher than T9600 (40/25), but the load is much higher on the T9600 (60/72), overall i didnt see much difference, the P8700 is decent OCer, some have taken it to 3.1 stable, so i would probably save the money and just stick with the P8700 and 4gb of ram, but if you want to spend it go for for the CPU, unused ram is just wasted $$$, i personally would probably skip either upgrade and save for an SSD will give you a more tangible feel of an upgrade.

 

You can't overclock the CPU on most laptops. You should check if overclocking the Sony CW is possible before assuming it is. Generally Asus, Sager, Clevo, and especially MSI are most likely to be overclocking-friendly; more common brands vary quite a bit.

At those prices, I'd save your money and not get either upgrade. The processors are just over 10% difference in speed for $150 - not worth it for most people. Similarly, 4 GB is more than enough for most people, and I think it would be for your tasks as well (my university has 3 GB total in its Photoshop/media-editing labs, for instance, and I've never heard of anyone complain that it was too little). The cost to upgrade to 6 GB will also fall with time. $100 for that upgrade isn't actually that bad, assuming the laptop is a 2-DIMM laptop as 99% of current ones are (HP Envy being the only exception I know of), but you could almost certainly do better later. If it is a 4-DIMM laptop like the HP Envy, you could definitely do better buying it with the minimum now and upgrading aftermarket as needed, even if you do need more now.

 

The only way you can attempt to overclock a Sony is using software - the BIOS is very locked down - to enable AHCI on the old model you need to read the settings out of the BIOS and write new ones with a DOS based medium... so overclocking via the BIOS is a no go.

 

I saw the benchmark the other day, it stated that T9600 is 19xx and P8700 is 17xx points and I saw P8800 has 19xx points ,very confusing. I've been looking at this guy on ebay "computerupgradeking" he offers P9600 and P9700, are they sufficient in performance,heat and battery ?

Btw Arrandale is launching in January, wondering if Sony adds those new chips in . Id love to have i7 620m in CW