Intel C2D T9300/9500 or Intel C2E X7800/X7900?

[Mihael Keehl]

I am choosing to upgrade my laptop and upon receiving my recent purchase of a T9500 to be DOA, I am again scouring ebay in attempts to find something useful. Before you guys make the call, it's best you should know what I use my laptop primarily for. Mostly, it's I use Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop/Dreamweaver), iTunes and Microsoft Office 2007 on a regular basis as well as Google Chrome to surf the web. I have various applications working in the background such as Norton 360, Windows Sidebar and LogMeIn. Occasionally, I'll go ahead and watch movies and tv shows, but I delete the files after I'm done watching them because I am pretty space-conscious.

Which processor would be a better fit for me? I don't really understand the big deal about Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Duo, I saw that a T7800/X7800 have pretty much the exact same specifications (2.6 GHz/4MB Cache/800MHz). However, I heard that the T7700 and T7800 has given some people problems with overheating, I would like to avoid that. Probably the sole reason why I am considering the X7800/X7900 and the T9300/T9500. Also, is there that much of a difference between 4MB and 6MB L2 Cache?

Here are my laptop specifications:

Dell Inspiron 1520 | Midnight Blue
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T5250 @ 1.5 GHz 2MB L2 Cache
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium SP2
Hard Drive: Seagate SATA 500GB @ 7200 RPM
BIOS: Dell Inc. 07/11/2008
Memory (RAM): 4GB
Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
Network: Dell Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card

I am not a gamer of any kind, the most games I play here are on facebook, I just find it easier to use my PS3 for games than my laptop. I recently upraded both my RAM and Hard Drive and I would like to pull out a few more years (about 2-3) from my laptop before I retire it from at the very least my work by getting a new one.

Thank you for helping me out!

 

[tweakboy]

Now since Photoshop uses your GPU

your performance will suffer with a 8400 ,,

 

[Mihael Keehl]

I just bought the 8600M GT, I don't think I can exceed that with my current laptop but processor wise I'm still stumped.

 

[Herald85]

x7800 is 65nm and 44w TDP vs the 45nm and 35w TDP of the t9300. Performance should be more or less equal so get the t9300, less power draw and heat