I'll be buying a laptop soon and am trying to decide whether I should get one running a Centrino or a Turion. Does anyone know what kind of battery life I can expect from an AMD-powered machine?

Also, does anyone have specific machines you can suggest? I'll want 1 GB of RAM minimum, mid- to lower-end graphics capability and reasonably small size and low weight. I'd like to spend no more than $1,200, and preferably less than that.

Thanks, all.

That a tricky one.

See are factors of a laptop that give you the battery life.

1 The higher the mAh The longer the batterys will Run. mAh 4400 vers mAh 6600 the 6600 will have the laptop run longer.
2 Knowing what is running on the laptop. What type of software and hardware.
3 Slower cpus= Longer battery life. 1.66ghz 1 to 4 hours
4 Setting on the cpu. Like my Centreno duo can run full Power 1.66 ghz and can drop to 800mhz for 3 hour battery life.
5 Brightness of the screen.

Here what I have for my Centreno duo. When it running battery power it lowest power setting. Dim screen. Turn off hardware I dont need.

I heard the Amd laptops use alot more battery power and are not as fast as Intel base laptops.

The Core 2 and Turion are both 64 bit. Centreno duo is only 32 bit. Also It depends on the maker of the laptop if they are vista ready.

Now the system I am getting is Alainware m5550 Which starts at $999 But got the geforece go 7600 free. Cost around $1800. If fedx ships on saturday I will have a new toy today.

Intel® Core 2 T7600 2.33GHz 4MB Cache 512mb of ram Which will be upgraded to 2gb in a week. 256MB NVidia GeForce Go 7600, 60GB hard disk. windows xp pro. free upgrade to vista.

You could go for the low end alainware. and upgrade the ram to 1gb
$1,189.00 Alainware m5550. Intel® Core 2 Duo Processor T5500 1.66GHz 2MB Cache. Which I heard about 10% faster then centreno duo 1.66GHz.

One thing I like about Alainware is you can upgrade grapics card and ram and hard disk with out voiding the warrintee as long as you talk to there tech and buy from them. And prices are about the same as vendors that supply ram and hard drive for laptops. Most laptop companys will not let u do that.

The Turion is a far better CPU than a Pentium-M and is 64 bit.
I would recommend the Turion.

Thanks for the comment. How does the Turion compare to the Merom? Also, you say the Turion is "better." How so, and how does the Turion's power managed features compare to those of Merom or Pentium M?

well, there is a long shot between a Pentium-M and a Merom CPU, you are talking about a completely different animal.

A family tree would look like this
Pentium-M
Core Duo (Yonah)
Core 2 Duo (Merom)

The Turion will not compare well as the Turion is a single core and the Merom is a dual core. The one thing it probably will do within reason is gaming because games primarily use one core right now. Turion has lower power usage than the Pentium M but higher than the Merom. Intel really kicked the stops out on making the Merom mobility friendly.

Power management overall is handled by the notebook software. The actual CPU power managemtnof the CPU is a horse a piece by Intel or AMD.

Okay, I guess what I'm asking is: how long might I expect my battery to last in laptops powered by a) a Turion, b) a Merom and c) a Pentium M?

I'm not going to be playing games, just using it for Web surfing, email, word processing and playing music.

It's hard to say because there are different cell counts and battery sizes.

The CPU has very little to do with the battery usage in a notebook, the main culprate of power drain is the LCD. A dual lamp 17" Quasimo with the most effecient CPU in the world is going to eat a 6 cell battery fater than a 14.1" 9 cell Kodachi tunning a T7600 2.33 Ghz Core 2 Duo.

A close secondis going to be the GPU, from what you stated you are going to use it for the GPU can be an integrated GPU like a 950 INtel or something, so that part of the equation will be equal throughout the notebooks you are looking at.

If your main concern is battery life then you need to shift your focus from the CPU to the battery itself.

Geez, this is harder than I thought it would be.

All I really want to know is, what's a decent-priced laptop that will give me 3 to 4 hours of battery life? Extra points if said laptop has an AMD chip in it.

3 to 4 hours battery life, it isn't going to happen in a cheap notebook. They will tell you it is, but it isn't. You need a big ace battery for that, and that adds too much to the cost for the normal mass marketed cheap-o's to even offer.

Alright, then I'll spend more. What are my options?

Well what sytems are you looking at? I mean, I know what I offer, but I don't have any idea what else is out there.

killernotebook I think you need to stop acting like a amd Fanboy and give dang0001 the info he can use. I do like amd. I use there computers for years as well as Intel. But what I did was research I try to find what best at the time.

Question killernotebook how many hours you get out of your laptop and what is your laptop? For me depending on what I do. Like dang0001 I have a laptop that use for trips. Acer Travelmate.

My Pro-star Intel p4 3.4ghz extream edtion about 1.5 Hours per battery pack. But with 2 80gb hard disk. It a desktop replacement. I dont expect it to be great on battery life. But it great when power out. With 6600mAh and a spare 6600mAh Battery.

Acer Travelmate Centreno 1.66ghz shared ram. 100gb hard disk. 1 4000mAh battery pack 3.5 to 4 hours battery life. 6.6 lb

Alainware Area 51 t7600 2.33 ghz is my gaming laptop. Right now it only has 512mb of ram and the best video card for it and a 4400mAh Which I heard give around 1.5 to 1.7 hours at the most. Upgrading to the 6600mAh battery pack I should get a about 2.5 hours. But like Pro star. I wanted speed not battery life in my laptop. About 7lb

To dang0001 any low end cpu will do what you want Intel or amd If you dont want 15.4 inch monitor and go for a 14 inch. They tend to be around 2.5 to 4lb But what you lose is screen size and keyboard size. One other thing you can look at is a power inverter. Basicly if you Plug it in the cigaret lighter in the car. And it will charge the computer or run the computer.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127021/article.html

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2808

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/0 [...] index.html

http://www.laptop-batteries-guide. [...] -life.html

ROFL - Acting like an AMD FanBoy?

99% of the systems I sell are Intel dude.
Almost 100% of my CPU inventory: 16 Core 2 Duo's and 1 TL-60 X2 is Intel.
I have extensively tested AMD chips, Turion ML and MT as well as TL X2 dual core's
I have extensively tested Intel's Pentium-M, Core Duo and Core 2 Duo chips
I have tested several 5xx and 6xx Intel desktop chips
I have tested several Athlon, X2 Dual core series desktop chips

I don't understand the question.
Do you mean," How many hours of battery life do I get out of my notebook?" Well my friend, my notebook has a 7950 GTX with 512 MB of video memory, a T7600 2.33 Ghz Core 2 Duo, and 2 - 100 gig 7,200 rpm hard drives in a RAID0 array... I wasn't really concerned with battery life when I built it.

I do have a 14.1" Kodachi system which IS Intel that has a 9 cell 7200 mAh battery that will outlast just about anything that is unpluged on the face of the Earth.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? He already stated he didn't want anything like that because he is going to use it for roundhouse kicks. That's just the kicks you use around the house... nothing fancy. He wants to flip the dog over and teach him a lesson when he's barking, do a little internet, some office apps, said he wasn't going to be gaming with it. If that's what you call a "desktop replacement", I'd hate to see your desktop. I guess that is to desktop replacement what your "gaming laptop" is to mobile gaming systems.

512 MB of RAM... O-k. Oh, by the way, for those of you reading this, the "best video card for it"is an nVidia 7600 GPU. So we have a T7600 2.33 Ghz CPU mated to an nVidia 7600 GPU, what do you see wrong with this picture? Whatever, that right there is just home grown goodness, but I don't get what this has to do with anything.
:?: I want to buy an economy car to get me to work that has good gas mileage, any idea?
Yea, I have a Ferrari F-40 and... oh yea, I have a horse drawn carriage...

You're gonna get 4 hours of battery life out of a 4000 MAh battery? What are you a notebook battery rep? LOL That's crazy talk.

What does the system weight have to do with his question Atol? You're entire post is shoe horning what you want to say into, well, what YOU want to say. His question is about battery life between a Centrino and a Turion, you're all over the place about 2 lb. 15.4" notebooks that don't exsist, gaming notebooks, desktop replacements, calling me an AMD fanboy and delivering what looks like complete speculation on your part.

When I said AMD is better at the low end of dual core's, say the TL-50 vs to Core 2 Duo 5xxx series there is a reason for that, that I posted. I am not being an AMD fan boy. A Turion single core WILL outperform a Pentium_M and does use less wattage, it's right there in black and white in the spec's. A TL-50 has an onboard controller chip for the memory that is factored into the power usage of the chip while Intel offloads the memory controller and it sucks its own gas! Why don't you add the two power drains together, shuckin' every memory read and write off to the Northbridge controller then to the RAM and back to come up with the real total power consumption.

Atol,
:?: In this postyou are talking about buying laptops and tearing them apart, voiding the warranty and upgrading every component to have some half-assed system for like $500 less then a full blown rockin' system with a warranty.

:!: In this post you're saying don't use a battery unless you need it, then... use it, and that you don't even have a freaking steady supply of electricity to wherever you live!

In this postyou have the next BIG idea for the notebook market you are going to patent - what ever happened to that? Are your evil scientist works sprawled out in their parchment glory under your candelabra lit drawing board while wax drips as you wring your hands together and deliver your maniacle laugh? Shouldn't you be getting back to that?

What in the heck is that laptop battery guide link you posted? Did you even check the WhoIs information on that? It looks like... well, it looks like whatever Atol.

After reading the very informative article links you posted, and your comments in other threads I realized you are right Atol, I am and AMD fanboy and you are a very informed individual.

Let's not forget to give Atol his hugs...

intresting turn of events on the subject...............


I have a sony T series Laptop with the Centrino chip. When it was new I could get 3-4 hours Wide open(web browseing) and 7 hours in Super Econo Mode. That was on the factory Batt.

I bought it brand new at Office Max for 1100ish usd.

I had thought about buying a second batt To give it a resnable 8 hour work shift with full brightness of the screen, Then I found out that Sony has a diffrent unit that has a better batt system. You can get an after market batt that will last 10 hours. I might have been the S series lappy, not really sure.


Either way , Like the Above posters I jumped ship to the Desktop like Units. I have a sager 8960 that gets somewere around 40 mins , and a Sager 5760 that gets around 2 hours. I long for the day I can get higher end performance out of a 5 hour laptop