Core Duo or Core 2 Duo?

hi, i am currently looking at refurbished Macbook Pro's, and they have a few Core Duo's. is there a significant difference with Core Duo compared with Core2Duo?

You might find this thread helpful:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54593

The major deltas are:

1/ Core Duo is 32 bit
2/ Core 2 Duo is 64 bit
3/ Core 2 Duo performs up to 40 % better, clock for clock, but the average is about 10% to 15%

Since Leopard is going to include full 64 bit support, there is at least a hand waving argument that says that the Core 2 Duo machine will run Leopard faster. Of course we will not know until the software is out and the numbers are in!

No way are Core 2 Duos 40% faster :black:

You might see a very slight improvement in some tasks, but there's not that much difference.

Agreed Alexis. Intel says "up to 40% faster", but from what I have read, the actual experienced result is more like 10%.

Well it all depends on what you plan to do with your mac. If you are into video and photo editing as well as making DVD's, that sort of stuff, then you will see a difference between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo. Core 2 Duo would deffinately process information faster, but the difference will not be that big. Maybe a few seconds or half a minute deppending on how much information is being processed. If you are only into typing up reports, surfing the internet, and so on it really doesn't matter which one you go for. If I were you I would go for the Core 2 Duo since you are at this fork of the road. You never know, you might end up liking video and photo editing. For that reason alone you might as well get the Core 2 Duo while you have the chance.

Core 2s also have twice the cache, good for tasks like vid editing and 3d.

Exactly, good point dimagex20. That larger cache is one of the reasons that Intels says it should be faster.

But the 1.83 model has 2MB of cache also. Just the 2.0 models have 4MB

Also the core 2 duo can be udgraded to wireless "n" with firmware update, and I don't think the core duos can.