For AMD FanBoys and Girls NOT INTEL fanfreaks

Intel, like a lot of companies is capitalizing on their Core 2 Duo success, and you need to be careful what you are buying. What I mean by that is a company get a product, they have success and get notoriety from it, then all sorts of other products are released that SOUND like they are the same thing, but really aren't.

Case in point. nVidia has the 7900 class GPU's, before that was the 7800 class real simple, but you will notice a company will release the best stuff first. Like the 7900 GTX, after it has accreditation, they then release the 7900 GS, this has to be good too right? Well, specifically in that case, "No." The 7900 GS isn't as good as a 7800 GTX in anything except voltage used. The 7900 GS uses less power, which is great, but the card also COSTS more than a 7800GTX, and performs about 7-10% slower.

Now that I defined that, let me go on to the question.
With AMD, it's just that. AMD.
You get one flavor of Turion X2 Dual core, it's the TL model and for all intents and purposes, the entire line, from low end to highest performing is the same save for the clock speed. yes, there is a TL-50 that has a 256 Kb instead of a 512 Kb cache but with AMD how they utilize the cache it is a non-issue.

With Intel there are "levels" of Core 2 Duo processors. The T7xxx series has 4 MB cache the T5xxx series has 2 Mb cache. The cache is how Intel overcomes the drawback they have of not having the on board memory controller like AMD.

I haven't tested this theory (because I don't deal in low end parts), but I am going to present it anyway. I bet the Turion X2 Dual Core TL series can beat a Core 2 Duo 5xxx series of the same clock speed. I may be wrong, but I bet if I am it would be real close.

To answer your question, would I return the TL-50 machine you have? Not if you like it, or unless you can get better components like the T7xxx CPU with more clocks.

Clocks are like cubic inches in an engine, it is tough to beat pure size unless you have other things like superchargers, turbochargers or NoS making up the difference.

Oh yea, I also wouldn't count on being able to put some totally awesome new chip in either platforms current designs. The chip industry has ramped up their timelines so fast that the rest of the industry is going to slow them down because I don't think they are going to be able to keep up. Look at the May release of the Turion X2 and how long it took to see notebooks to actually utilize the chip, like 2 months AT LEAST, and another month to get ones with decent GPU's in them.