Laptop Processor Questions

[Igottago]

Hi guys..I'm in the market for a new laptop, and I'm a little confused as to processor speeds/performance. There seems to be a lot of different models of chips out there right now than when I bought my last computer 5 years ago.

For example, I'm looking at a couple of budget level laptops, one is a Pentium dual core t3200 2.0 ghz, and another is dual core 2 duo t5800 2.0 ghz..
obviously the latter would be the higher end chip because its a little more expensive but what is the real impact on performance?

What about Centrino or AMD chips?

Also, ive noticed a lot of computers starting to come with blu-ray now. Is blu-ray going to be used for more than just movies? Would it be worth getting a blu-ray drive to "future proof" myself a little bit?

Thanks for any feedback.

[Bobblehead]

2 things to know when starting off looking.

1) Intel kick's AMD's butt in the laptop processors

2) Centrino is a marketing term from Intel. For a laptop maker to use to term Centrino, the laptop must include an Intel processor, Intel chipset, and Intel WiFi. So 2 laptops could be identical except for the WiFi circuitry, and only one would be able to use the term Centrino.

The difference between the T3200 & T5800 is Front side bus (667MHz vs 800MHz) and L2 cache (1MB vs 2MB). So the T5800 is better, but not by very much. Probably not worth paying extra.

[Igottago]

Thanks for the response.

What about the Ghz? Is that the true indicator of chip performance and speed? Is there kind of a minimum Ghz I should be looking at in this day and age?

[CubicleGeek]

At this stage I'd only get Blu-ray if I plan to watch movies of that format on the laptop. If the intent is not for movies, you're really not future proofing against anything because there is:

1. no support outside of movies for Blu-ray
2. hardware is expensive and slow (especially for writers)
3. blank media is prohibitively expensive

So by the time it hits mainstream, like DVD is now, all costs in general would have dropped enough that doing an upgrade at that time probably won't be a stretch.

[I_H8_Crawford]

Originally Posted by Igottago

Thanks for the response.

What about the Ghz? Is that the true indicator of chip performance and speed? Is there kind of a minimum Ghz I should be looking at in this day and age?

What are you going to do with your laptop?

If you are going to do video editing, hard core gaming, etc. it will work nicer if you have a higher speed for your cores, but if you are just using it for web browsing, document editing, etc. then a dual core with 2.0 GHz should be fine.

Just make sure if you are running Vista that you have 3 - 4 GBs of RAM in the system.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Igottago

Thanks for the response.

What about the Ghz? Is that the true indicator of chip performance and speed? Is there kind of a minimum Ghz I should be looking at in this day and age?

Depends upon what you are doing.

Unless you are running programs that need as much CPU as they can get (Photoshop, ripping lots of DVDs, newer Games (although usually the bottleneck there will be the video)) then I doubt chip speed will be critical to you.

If you can get a chip twice as fast for $30 more, for sure, do it. But if you are wondering if $150 to go from 2.5 to 3 GHz is worth it for you, it probably isn't.

If you are the average person who wants to surf, email, do documents, your taxes, watch some movies, etc, probably almost anything will suit your purposes.

Set your budget, go out and look at the best machine you can get. I think with laptops you really should pay attention to build quality. I see hinges and cases break while the inside circuitry is still perfectly viable. So build quality is probably the most important thing, then look at what you want to run on the machine and find the best one in that range.

I'm a Thinkpad fan, generally because their build quality is usually a bit better than many others. But if I saw a good deal, I would google the model to look for reviews and then make a decision.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by CubicleGeek

At this stage I'd only get Blu-ray if I plan to watch movies of that format on the laptop. If the intent is not for movies, you're really not future proofing against anything because there is:

1. no support outside of movies for Blu-ray
2. hardware is expensive and slow (especially for writers)
3. blank media is prohibitively expensive

So by the time it hits mainstream, like DVD is now, all costs in general would have dropped enough that doing an upgrade at that time probably won't be a stretch.

I agree. Other than movie studio releases, blu-ray is a non-starter. Flash drives have plummeted in price and are a better option for large/portable storage options.

[Igottago]

Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford

What are you going to do with your laptop?

If you are going to do video editing, hard core gaming, etc. it will work nicer if you have a higher speed for your cores, but if you are just using it for web browsing, document editing, etc. then a dual core with 2.0 GHz should be fine.

Just make sure if you are running Vista that you have 3 - 4 GBs of RAM in the system.

Basically I'll be managing all my media (mp3's, DivX videos), but I will also be using it for multitrack audio recording and editing...no graphic editing or gaming though.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Igottago

Basically I'll be managing all my media (mp3's, DivX videos), but I will also be using it for multitrack audio recording and editing...no graphic editing or gaming though.

Define "managing"
Is that simply storing, or are you talking encoding?

If you want this for lots of video encoding, get the biggest mofo processor you can find.

There are others on here with way more knowledge about upper end audio recording software, so I'll defer to them on tech requirements for that stuff.

[Igottago]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

Define "managing"
Is that simply storing, or are you talking encoding?

If you want this for lots of video encoding, get the biggest mofo processor you can find.

There are others on here with way more knowledge about upper end audio recording software, so I'll defer to them on tech requirements for that stuff.

Yeah pretty much storage, cant see myself encoding much video.

As for the audio editing I'll probably be using something like Cubase.

[llama64]

Assuming you're getting Vista, you'll want something in this range:

- Dual Core 2.0 or 2.2 gHz (multi track audio would benifit from the 2 cores). If you can find it, a quad core would be even better. gHz doesn't matter as much anymore (at least in your case).
- 4GB of Ram (it's cheap, makes your laptop a lot faster)

Anything past that is basically irrelevant to relative speed. If you're going to be doing a lot of disk writting I'd suggest getting a higher speed hard drive (7200 rpm or greater).

You'll probably be happy with anything in the 1000-1400$ range, depending on features.

[Igottago]

I was looking at something like this

http://www.futureshop.ca/marketing/v...gon=&langid=EN

The price range is right, and as far as I know, it'll work for me...I'd don't wanna spend over $1000...but, if I'm going to end up being frustrated with speeds and performance when I'm editing audio, I'd can move a bit closer to the $1000 mark and save myself the frustration.

[Bobblehead]

Looks fine.

You may want to keep an eye on the Dell deals this week (check the Dell thread for the link). They have a system identical to that Sony for the same price, but probably much easier to "tweak" (I can't see Future Shop allowing you to change options like Dell does). Looking at the Dell one, you could put in another GB of Ram, a faster HD (probably one of the best things you can do to make your laptop "feel" faster), and a better sound card for less than your cut off.