Introduction

Thinking upgrading that Dell XPS M1710 to the latest Intel Core 2 Duo mobile CPU down the road? We experiment with our Core 2 Duo in the M1710 to see what’s possible.

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Last week, among the flurry of Core 2 Duo announcement articles and news bits, we were the only site to have tested the Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 mobile CPU in an Asus Z96JS laptop. In that article we ran into a few issues with running the T7400 in the Asus Z96JS laptop notably from the power management department. This shouldn’t be a surprise since the Merom CPU has higher voltage and will require an updated BIOS at least, if not a completely different laptop motherboard.

While there are outstanding issues, it doesn’t stop us from experimenting with the T7400 CPU. Today we’re going to try to get a Dell XPS M1710 laptop running with the T7400. BE WARNED!!! The benchmarks you’re about to see should not be considered as final results, rather as part of an investigation.

Editor’s Note: (Aug 2nd, 7:45p EST)

These test results are not based on any official hardware configuration. Dell has communicated to us that Core 2 Duo notebooks will be available at the end of August.

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Opening Up the XPS M1710

One of the nice things about the XPS M1710 is the relative ease at which you can disassemble it to upgrade the CPU. I will not do a step-by-step procedure since anyone willing to tinker with the innards of a laptop can generally figure this stuff out without me telling them. However, just so you have an idea, you unscrew bolts from the base of the laptop, detach the display and cables, and remove the casing.

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The heatpipe is easily taken out by undoing seven screws holding the mechanism to the motherboard. Our T7400 plops right into the socket and locks into place. A little dab of Artic Silver 5 and we’re back in business!

Booting up the XPS M1710 with a Core 2 Duo T7400 for the first time is almost anticlimatic. Unlike the Asus Z96JS that warns of a bad CPU micro-code, the M1710 boots without a complaint or problem.

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From the BIOS screen capture above, you can see that the M1710 has no problem identifying the new Core 2 Duo CPU, but shows the cache size as 0 KB which isn’t correct.

So without any problems we were able to jump into testing the Core 2 Duo T7400 in the M1710 without delay.

Page 2 – Test Configuration

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