Intel Core 2 Duo ‘Merom’ Notebooks
 

The performance difference between the top end Merom and the lower end Merom is quite marked however – over three minutes in PhotoShop Elements for example, which is frankly enormous. The message straight away is clear. If performance is a priority then spending the extra really is worth it in this case. If the price differential is too great for your budget then the mid-range 2.0GHz should be a great sweet-spot, as this is the lowest clocked chip to feature that huge 4MB of Level 2 cache.