Help Choosing CPU Upgrade for HP dv9830us Pavilion Notebook

Hi there,

I have a HP Pavilion dv9380 Notebook for which I want to upgrade the CPU. *The original processor is an Intel T5550 Core 2 Duo, 1.83 GHZ 667Mhz FSB Socket P. *It has the PM965 Chipset. *

My intention is to use VirtualBox and the OS I want to setup requires VT-x support which my T5550 unfortunately lacks.

Could someone please tell me which CPU would be a okay/good/great choice?*

I was looking at the T5600 which gives VT-x support but no gain in performance. *the T7600 and Core 2 Extreme X9000? What do you think?

Can I use the 800FSB CPU's? *The T5550 has a 667mhz FSB. Would using the 800mhz FSB damage the memory, or Motherboard, etc? I cannot seem to find a positive answer anywhere to this? *Also, I wonder if I would run into problems with the BIOS not supporting VT-x on my dv9830us?

My trade is electronics engineer so installing the CPU will be fine.

Any help would be extremely appreciated.
Thank you, *
Mark.

 

In general that sort of upgrade on a note big is not worth it. Whenever you upgrade the CPU you normally upgrade the motherboard at the same time. If you dont upgrade the motherboard you serverely limit your upgrade options and the cost outways the benefit. As you cant upgrade the MB on a notebook upgrading the CPU is generally pointless however you seem to be after a specific function of the CPU.

Im not familiar with that function but it is worth checking whether you need you MB to also support that technology and whether your MB does

 

I agree. Notebooks were never designed to be upgraded in this fashion. Assuming you could find a more powerful CPU supported by that motherboard, notebook power supplies are not chosen to support more power hungry upgrades. Nor is the notebook cooling.

My advice, upgrade your RAM first (if not maxed out already).