Duo 2.53 vs quad 2.00

[tysonseppoh]

Am trying to decide which 2 laptops would be better for me; they both have the exact same options except their processors are different.

Duo with 2.53 Ghz and 3mb cache
- http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9366615&type=product&id=1218092150740

or

quad with 2.00Ghz and 6mb cache
- http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9382553&type=product&id=1218095770874

This computer would be for college I am planning on majoring in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering. For some that don't know what it is, I'll be designing anything that: moves fast, needs to be aerodynamic, flies in air/space, deals with gravity changes, or projectile; like building a airplane, a scram jet engine, or just design a car for an example. So I will have multiple of computer programs; some have heavy graphics rendering and some needs a lot of memory. I am also a major music fanatic usually like 90% of the time the computer is on it will be playing or downloading music (also kind of thinking of wanting to be a songwriter but I don't think that will actually happen, but I'll definitely do that for a new hobby). Sometimes I play games too but not that often. And of course I'll want to be running virus / security protection software too.

I am thinking that the quad would be better but I don't know the "noticeable difference" .53 GHz is and if that noticeable difference would make the duo better.


Thank you for any input!

 

[Maziar]

Well the 2.5GHZ model will give u better performance in most of todays apps because its 500MHZ faster and 500MHZ is a noticeable difference,however if u do lots of encoding then go for the QuadCore model because u will take advantage of those extra cores,but in normal apps the Core2Duo model will be better