DV7-2XXX: Upgrade CPU to Q9100

[crackxda]

Hello,

I basically have the same question as covered previously in this question: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Upgrade-CPU-to-Q9100/td-p/6923...

I've got a HP Pavilion dv7-2035eg with C2D P8600

BIOS F.46 08/25/2011

Mainboard HP3624 rev18.51

I am looking to upgrade the CPU and my options are either an X9100 Dual Core or a Q9100 quad core. Accoring to the previously mentioned post and the manual, the Q9100 should work but it doesn't?

In a different thread I saw that you'll have to isolate 5 pins for the Quad core to work properly (see image below), is that correct?

Would a Q9100 give me a performance boost over a (possibly overclocked) X9100? I mostly just use Office, watch movies and edit photos in Adobe lightroom - which is the most resource hungry of the mentioned. If the Quad isn't that much better, the safer bet would probably be to just stay with a dual core... Would either of the two CPUs have a significant speed impact  when comparing it to my current P8600? (I also currently purchased 8GB of RAM and a new SSD which I will both install together with the new CPU).

Thanks a lot!

[Huffer]

You do not want to rely on overclocking. Here is the Manual:

Manual 

The Q9100 supposedly is compatible but as you have seen in that older post at least one person has had trouble getting it to work. Software is either optimized for 4 cores or not. Much of it is not. Many games, for example. General internet and Office type apps generally use only 2 cores. Recent versions of Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom are compatible with 4 (or more) cores but it only makes a real difference if you are doing large batch processing. If software can take advantage of 4 cores then yes 4 cores makes a big difference. Otherwise if it is not, then its all about clock speed and cache when comparing processors with similar architecture. You have a P8600 at 2.4 ghz right now. The X9100 dual core Extreme is not listed as compatible. I seem to recall seeing someone report success with it but cannot guarantee. Not sure why people over look the T9800 at 2.93 ghz. Its a beast of a processor. And in this case its listed as compatible and I can think of no reason you cannot go from one C2D to another. With the T9800 you would add .53ghz and double the L2 cache from 3 to 6 megs so I am thiking you get a 30-40% bump in floating point performance. 

Let us know how this works out for you.