Have a dell labtop, can the prosessor be upgraded?

[owlface]

I have a Dell labtop, which is a great labtop, but i bought it right before dual core processors came out. Can I upgrade it to dual core?

 

[Brainonska511]

What laptop?

If it has the 915 chipset, you cannot upgrade to a dual-core. If it has the 945 chipset, then it came out at the same time as mobile, dual-core processors (so you would be able to upgrade to a Yonah, Core Duo chip).

 

[owlface]

How do I determine which chipset if came with?

 

[Brainonska511]

What laptop do you have? If you just gave us that, we could easily tell you if you can upgrade or not.

You could probably use a program like CPU-Z to find out what chipset you have running.

 

[owlface]

It is a Dell Inspiron 9300 with a Centrinp processor

 

[Brainonska511]

According to the owner's manual (link: http://support.dell.com/suppor...#printed_documentation ), the Inspiron 9300 uses the 915PM chipset. You can only use up to the fastest, single-core Pentium M "Dothan" in your system. There are no compatible dual-core chips for your system.

 

[owlface]

Ohh ok thanks, is there any other way to make it faster?

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: owlface
Ohh ok thanks, is there any other way to make it faster?

Upgrade the RAM to 2GB; put in the fastest PATA hard drive (I think it's a 200GB Western Digital 2.5" 5400RPM PATA drive); put the fastest Dothan Pentium M into it, but this is probably the thing where you'll see the least performance gain (but that depends on what you have right now).

 

[Rottie]

or you can sell your notebook and you can buy dual core notebook for less than 600.00 depending on what you are doing with notebook for?