Hey Guys,

Have a question concerning Intel capabilities and laptops in general and I'm hoping that you knowledgable Intel and laptop users can help me out. I have no idea and I mean NO IDEA of Intel processor capabilities at the current time and with this being said, I am helping my friend,which insists on an Intel, buy a laptop. I told her that it would be hard for me to help her find the performance she wants because I am clueless to Intel processor preformance now-a-days. She is looking for a laptop that would in-turn let her do the following:

-Store plenty of files (mp3, excel, word .doc, etc.)
-Video and Picture editing capabilities (not too extreme! i.e.>7800GTX)
-Not lag up too much

See, simple enough. Not looking into Dual Processor multi-tasking capabilities, however, I am looking for her laptop to be mid-upper-mediocre profiled. As far as screen resolution, once again not extreme but noticiable and make of the laptop - anything that doesnt "suck". Also, was looking for something not too extreme in price but thats not my problem, she was initially looking in BEST BUY! Anyways, Thanks in Advance

Marcus

Look for a Pentium-M equipped model, Dothan core, about 2.0G with 533 MHz FSB....these are quite fast, but the faster 2.13 and 2.26 GHz models are usually a large price jump up for the extra 5-10% core clock speed...(Try to get one with 533 MHz FSB, they are a bit faster than the 400 MHz FSB models, i.e. I'd much rather have a 2.0/533 than a 2.1/400)

(Note: all "Centrino" marked systems should have a Pentium- M Processor, and be wireless capable as is, etc.; there should be no dealers calling a Celeron-M based rig a "Centrino Technology" system....

(THe Pentium -M's are about as fast as an Athlon 64/Turion 64's on a clock-clock basis..., but the A64 models from HP are also quite nice; I have a nice 15.4" widescreen, 3000+, which I got on sale 8 months ago for $999; that is a good sale price even today...

Try to find a laptop with at LEAST 512 mb of DDR, and 1 gb is ideal....; 40-60 GB for the internal drive is plenty for most users, IMO; beyond that and one can always purchase an external USB 2.0 drive cheaply for additional storage.....


If not into 3d gaming on a laptop, the Intel Extreme Graphics 2 solution found on many laptops is more than enough for business and work....; I've even played old Q3 and the first Call of Duty Game on my 2nd laptop so equipped, and it is only a Celeron-M!

I would agree that the AMD64s / Turion 64s are very nice.

Why is she insisting on Intel? Intel doesn't offer much and in many cases AMD destroys it.

When it comes to moblie chips it is a completely different story.
Intel beats or gets beaten by a little by AMD Moblie chips in benchmarks.
Read the comparsions in the mobility section of tomshardware.

Forgot who it was, but the person who said get the processor with the 533MHz FSB is correct. I've 1.5GHz 533Mhz and my friend has the 400MHz. There is a CLEAR and notable difference in speed.

Loading a C&C generals Lan game, i generally beat him by 2-4 seconds.

I've a Althon 64 Venice 3500+ desktop w/1 Gig ram
and a laptop 1.5Ghz with 768 Ram.
Graphics wise I get destroyed (diferent vid cards), but
for a CPU intensive game like C&C Generals,
my laptop holds up against the althon. Losing by a 3-5 second margin when loading. (Laptop runs game at 800x600 resolution and desktop runs at 1280X1024 resolution).

i agree in this case. normally i would defend amd's processors. but i am looking for a laptop right now, and in my opinion intel offers the best performance and battery life in the mobile market right now. pentium m's are excellent chips.

It depends, if you run AMD64 optimized software the AMDs will come out of top

Intel was busted optimizing for their CPUs and unoptimizing for AMD CPUs and recently got sued over it.

All MFGs cheat on benchmarks btw, especially synthetic benchmarks which is why I prefer real world / application specific benchmarks.

Thanks man,

Well Appreciated and in a timely manner on top of that. Kudos.

I got an Acer 5502 with Pentium M 740, Duel Layer DVD+-R, Gig of RAM, ATI X700 video. A VERY fast computer (Halflife-2 with all max setting for example)
Not to mention built in WiFi, bluetooth, multi-flash card reader, S-Video out, etc. 14" wide screen, slim.
A lot of computer for US$ 1200
The only "problelms" I had is the screen is very relective.
The DVD drive is very sensitve to recording media (get a firmware update if you can)
The battery is small for a notebook with this much power.

I don't advertise for Acer, but this notebook is golden.
I got mine in Bangkok, but I hope it's available in the USA soon.

Yeah I agree with mdd1963's info and it makes sense. I have a dell 9300 widescreen with the pentium M and it is very nice. Haven't had a single problem with it yet and I've had it now for about 7-8 months and it gets used alot. They say the pentium M's outperform the AMD chips. I would'nt know as I don't own a laptop with an AMD.

when building/customizing/buying a laptop, some things should be taken into consideration:
-AMD64 is the only 64 bit option.
-Make SURE the memory speed is AT LEAST pc3200! Many Pentium M's use pc2700 which is just crap that chokes the CPU of bandwidth. I would recommend a Pentium M 2+ ghz. Considering a lot of the newer Pentium's use DDR2 533/667, this shouldn't be a big issue.
-Keep in mind, the more memory you have, the better battery life you have. Memory means data can be moved faster and without as large a file to be moving back and forth on the hard drive, which takes a lot more wattage. 2 gigabytes might not be a bad investment, and remember-don't buy high performance laptop ram as you can't adjust memory timings in a laptop BIOS.
-A warranty is always a good thing considering how easy laptops break, I have a thinkpad T41 and although it is supposedly one of the toughest, mine gets annhilated after a few months and has to be reformatted every so often (this is with 8 hours of use a day in a school week, though)
-Unless she is gaming, intel extreme graphics could save a boatload of money. However-if she is-and even a little, get something else. intel extreme graphics fails miserably at any game setting.

I'm an AMD fanboy at the moment but I must agree with what I quoted. Intel is still king of the mobile market (just the desktops blow).

I agree

I agree with the PC3200 part, not so much with the DDR2 part. Many laptops use the cheapest RAM the MFG can which usually means PC2100 or PC2700. I have seen virtually all P4 and Pentium M laptops come with PC2100 or PC2700 and NOT PC3200. In fact sometimes the chipset is crippled and can't handle PC3200. The same is true for DDR2.

I agree :-D except for the intel extreme GFX it is anything BUT extreme!


I have had a P4 laptop before. Unfortunately I have not owned any AMD laptops but I have examined them very closely.

The P4 desktop replacement laptop I had sucked pretty bad even though it was quite expensive. Was very disappointed with its performance, it got really hot and ran out of battery in 45-60min, granted the Pentium M is a LOT better than the P4 for laptops but I would argue the AMDs have some great features and great performance.

Semper Fi Linux on!

I read somewhere that AMD compared its products to the Intel performance-equivalent unfairly because sure it gave the same or better performance than the pentium M, but it ran way hotter in comparison. Thus was not for the thin + light category of notebook, whereas the benefit of Intel's stuff, you can. In other words Intel's chips run cooler than AMD's... 8O :? That's not something you hear everyday...

u'r true man.

yeah intel is the king as of the moment in the laptop arena, with their duo cores.

if you want more power. try alienware ( alienware.com ) mobile workstation powered by AMD Fx /Opteron.. and that's what i call mobile power.

Software optimized for AMD64 will run a lot better and much faster. Thus if your software takes advantage of the AMD64 optimizations it will be faster than on Intel.