According to PCMark 2005, there isn't a massive difference between the three processors. The Core 2 Duo was around 5 per cent quicker, which isn't worth writing home about. Cinebench 9.5 showed more of a difference -- the top-spec Core 2 Duo machine was 11 per cent faster than the Core Duo system in our single CPU test, and 8.5 per cent faster in the multi-CPU test.
Unsurprisingly, we didn't spot much difference between the three processors during 3D gaming tests. They returned a nearly identical score in 3DMark 2005 and pretty much the same frame rates in F.E.A.R. As expected, the major bottleneck here is the graphics card. The Core 2 Duo processor is likely to be better than the Core Duo at running CPU-intensive games (such as those that display large numbers of non-playable characters on a screen simultaneously), but in most gaming situations the two CPUs are very similar.
The all-important battery life figures make for interesting reading. All three laptops lasted pretty much the same amount of time when playing a DVD movie and they ran out of juice within a couple of minutes of each other when browsing the Web using Wi-Fi. We can only conclude that this is a good thing, as the Core 2 Duo gives better performance without losing any battery life.
Ultimately, we have to conclude that the performance delta between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo is relatively small in most cases, but there are noticeable differences when running CPU-intensive applications. When using your laptop for simple everyday tasks like writing Word documents you'll notice zero advantage with a Core 2 Duo. However, the new CPUs come into their own when performing more demanding tasks such as 3D rendering. Here it outperforms its predecessor by a notable, if hardly mind-blowing margin.
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