In a straight head-to-head in PCMark05 there was nothing to choose between the two processors, which is much as you'd expect. The Penryn processor has only a tiny advantage in this benchmark as it is a couple of years old and doesn’t use SSE 4. It was a similar story in 3DMark06 which is, of course, a graphics test. The overall score was the same for both processors, although the CPU element was very slightly better for the Penryn.
PCMark05 Results
Longer bars are better
3DMark06 Results
Longer bars are better
The POV-Ray graphics rendering test showed Penryn in a better light as the new core is more efficient than Merom, but it’s unlikely that many people will use their Rock laptop to render pro graphics.
POV-Ray 3.7 Beta 25 Results
Time in Seconds
Shorter bars are better
These three tests show the highest increase in performance you're going to get in games, which are typically limited more by the GPU than the CPU. So, yes, you'll get a higher framerate with the T9500 than the T7800, but not a significantly higher one.
COMMENTS
Re: @Rik
Who would shell out that much cash for a gaming laptop at all? For that much you could get an exceptionally ridiculous amount of gaming desktop. Have you ever tried loading levels off a raid 1+0 of 15krpm SAS drives on a really high end controller? You could get that kind of hardware, plus all the crazy video cards and a quad core for the price of this laptop.
Or you could pay probably 1/4 the amount of the laptop to get a desktop with similar specs.
Portables and games just don't go together. Doesn't make any sense.
@Rik
...a point which I thought was well made in the article when it was pointed out that the CPU was hammered in testing and you could probably double the battery life figures for less intense use.
More pertinent might be to wonder who on Earth would shell out the thick end of two grand on a gaming laptop to run office apps on though?
Surely
CPUs are generally idle more than they are busy when people are doing office work, so it would have been better to measure battery life under such conditions.
