Why do people think memory has anything to do with their low framerates....
Probably because that's the way it is with virtually all other games, partially due to how little RAM people often run. Minecraft is quite the oddball.
It can still have an impact though, under rare circumstances. I highly doubt this is one of those.
Really? That's actually cool. Ill be getting a new laptop soon, and those are my choices
I have to ask, as it will make a huge difference in things: Are you sure you need a laptop? Just making sure, because you will be paying quite a bit more, for something quite a bit less powerful versus a desktop.
Though I don't think there will be much of a difference between the dual and the quad since Turbo brings them up to within 300MHz of each other. I'm more interested in whether or not Minecraft would benefit from a larger cache but don't know how you would determine that.
Unfortunately, since the OP is talking about a laptop atm, I don't know how much they will actually see those turbo speeds. Turbo is just an automatic OC based on temperatures, and temperature is something most laptops have problems with.
OP: What laptop exactly are you looking at? There's a lot more than just those 3 processors out there.
Also, a word of caution: If it's a macbook pro, I can tell you you will probably never see any Turbo speeds. I have one, and those things get warm to hot very fast...even on a surface like glass. The exhaust is the hinge in the back for some reason, so you also have to keep it fully open, or it gets hot even faster.
Now, back to those CPUs: Ohming, do you ever have anything else running when you play Minecraft? While MC itself doesn't use multiple cores, all of the OSes do. As such, I usually recommend a quad core, so that whatever game you are playing has its own core or 2. The OS runs on another one. Then, everything else you do has their own as well. Dual core, you are looking at OS on one, and everything else on the other.
However, as you may notice, the dual core in the 3 you mentioned is substantially faster non-turbo than the quad. As long as you don't run anything else that uses much CPU, the dual core will be better for Minecraft. If you play any other games, it probably won't cut it, and it is certainly not "future-proof".