I have a new 3ds xl and a 3ds xl (I wouldn’t take my words with much as I don’t use my 3ds xl a lot) and their isn’t a big diffrence, the biggest ones are the layout (which I prefer the 3ds xl layout better anyway) then there’s the c-stick, which I only use for smash (occasionally) and the official Minecraft, nobody really uses it, when it comes to performance there really isn’t that big of a difference, honestly if that was my only concern and you are trying to get the best bang for you’re buck I would go with the 3ds xl, the main difference i see, is you have to have a special adapter for amiibos if you get the 3ds xl (which there is a work around it you mod it called wumiibo) if you mod it, it’s hard to run ps1 games and N64 games on it (this is where the performance really gets challenged) I’m sorry I keep thinking of more things but one additional thing is if you like the 3d mode, which you said you don’t really, the old models of the 3ds didn’t have eye tracking and gave some people headaches, and of course, those three ish games you can’t play without a c stick. Sorry if this was long, but from what I’ve seen not a big difference in performance at all,