Fallen behind on my Core 2 Duos

[quidpro]

I've got a 2+ yr old laptop with a T7300, 2.0 4MB CPU that has bad video and am looking to replace it the whole laptop.

I'm not seeing any C2Ds with 4MB L2 anymore.
Is a newer T6400 with 2MB or 3MB L2 going to be a significant performance decrease compared to my older T7300?

I checked Anandtech's Bench page but the CPUs in question don't seem to be added yet.

 

[fffblackmage]

Depends on the application and what you mean by performance decrease. Are we talking about gaming? encoding video? or just web surfing? watching youtube videos? etc....

e6300 vs e6320 vs e6400 vs e6420
Assuming the mobile counterparts are similar to these desktop CPUs, then the difference in cache isn't that significant. Also, keep in mind the newer C2Ds are 45nm which has some improvements like power consumption, heat output, performance, etc.

 

[Denithor]

Actually that's the wrong benchmark to consider.

You want to look at Conroe versus Penryn benchmarks. The newer 45nm chips with 3MB typically outperform the older 65nm chips with 4MB by a small margin due to manufacturing refinements and minor architectural improvements.

fffblackmage is right on one critical point - these chips consume less power and run considerably cooler than the older generation (both significant for laptops).

EDIT: This comparison from Bench is pretty close to what I've said above. Note the newer e7500 has a slight clockspeed disadvantage versus the older e6850 (2.93GHz vs 3.0GHz) but still manages to win in several of the benchmarks.

 

[quidpro]

Thanks. I understand the points being made in regard to use. Other than occasional audio post-production I use it for average browsing/email/watching-video-in-bed. I was more concerned with value and didn't want to inadvertently "downgrade" the experience I was accustomed to. Seems like all the laptops (or the ones I am interested in) are starting with t6400s with upgrades from there and I wasn't taking into account the 45nm vs 65nm advantage.

After posting I found that Intel has their own online spec tool for chips. Useful for features but not benchmarks. Also, no side-by-side functionality that I can find.

One other difference I noticed is that the t7300 supports virtualization, and the newer, more efficient t6400 does not. Not a big deal, but it has come up recently with the release of Windows 7 (which I've been running since beta) and its support for virtual XP machines. I haven't booted into XP in ages, but interesting to know anyway.

Turns out that Dell is sending me a box and will replace the faulty Nvidia video at no charge. (How do they do that anyway? Are they really replacing the on-board chips, or are they just swapping out entire motherboards?) We'll see if I get it back...