Which one? Very hard choice

[Fzang]

Should I sacrifice 200 GB extra space (which I probably won't ever use) and $ 100 more so I can upgrade the CPU from
Intel® Core™ Duo T3200 - 2,00GHz - 1MB Cache
to
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8400 - 2,26GHz - 3MB Cache

How would that be performance-, heat- and energywise in a 15,4" laptop?

[aeronotix]

To be honest, I don't think much will be gained from such a small step-up.

On the other hand if you're not going to use that space anyway, you might as well.

[Fzang]

$ 100 is still quite a bit though

[Kevbert]

It's probably not worth it, better to max out your RAM.

[jespdj]

It's almost impossible to give you a meaningful answer, because it depends on what you do with your computer (which you didn't tell us).

Is the performance of the computer a problem? If yes, then do you know what the bottleneck is? If the bottleneck is not the processor, then upgrading the processor will make no sense, ofcourse.

There is a difference between a T3200 and P8400, but the difference is not that big for normal computer usage - you most likely won't notice much difference for web browsing, text editing, etc.

If you do heavy gaming then it might be worth it, otherwise I wouldn't spend money on upgrading.

[Fzang]

Hmm yeah... I probably won't try to max out Crysis..

Can RAM bottleneck the CPU...? Also the card is *copypaste*

NVIDIA® Geforce 9600M GT 512MB

Will it run too hot/become a heavy beast if I get a stronger CPU? Or should I just forget it?

[Kevbert]

RAM is the best way of speeding up PC performance, but if you don't use many memory hungry applications you won't see that much improvement. Is the current laptop slow ? What do you use it for ? How much memory does the laptop have at present ? Are you using Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu ? Kubuntu is the slowest of the three, Xubuntu the fastest. Low memory resources can drastically slow down the PC.