Core 2 Duo processor differences?

[Jefferson]

I am beginning the research process for the my next laptop, prematurely perhaps, perhaps not........[ warranty is up on this one in March, and it's showing signs of fatigue...... Leaning towards the HP dv9000. The "drop me" warranty is always an attractive feature for me, as well the combo of features vs. price. A bonus will be increased battery life, around 125% increase of what I see now and less weight to lug around. I have seen them up close and the quality build seems to have improved. Also a plus.

the questions I have are about processor speeds of the new Intel Core 2 Duo chips vs. one another. the fastest chip available for this machine is the T7200 (2.0 GHz). Intel has a faster processor available, 2.33 Ghz. Intel's spec sheet;

http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/chart/core2duo.htm

shows the key numbers as I interpret them to be nearly identical and I cannot seem to find information to the contrary. I was hoping someone might know just how much I'd be giving up with the 2.0 vs. the 2.33? There isn't any indication that HP is going to offer the faster processor anytime soon, so far anyway......

[Brad Elliott]

Jeff,
The speed is proportional on the chips so it's a little more than 10% faster. More important at that point is memory and graphics card. IE a faster chip with a lesser graphics card or less memory will be slower. Unless its a cheap add or gets you the better system I don't pay to get faster.

[Jefferson]

Hey Brad -

Thanks for the reply. I guess 10% would be tolerable, hopefully, or hardly noticeable, depending upon your perspective. I would replicate the 2 Gigs of RAM I currently run and the 256MB video card, the best offered, and think that those components would run things pretty well. We just tend to want the best available it seems, especially considering how quickly things become outdated.