Laptop Processor Questions

Lord_Chris

paintshop pro is much less taxing on your processor than photoshop. (should have mentioned that, oops)

stockwellphotography

Yay
I've managed to secure myself a Summer job, plus I've got some money coming my way tomorrow, any my Birthday's on the 31st - great :-)
Therefore, I can expand my budget upto £600.
Now, I'm into the new range of Intel Centrino (Solo + Duo Core) and could do with some advice:
I understand the difference - Solo has one processor, Duo has two processors - what effect does this have on:
- Heat
- Battery Life
- Weight
- Multitasking
- Overall Speed

If you have a dual core processor at 1.6Ghz, and a Solo at 1.8Ghz, would I be right in thinking that the Duo Core is going to be going at a total of 3.2Ghz, versus the 1.8Ghz? Or am I on the wrong track..

Also, I'd be interested to see some speed comparisons between Solo at 1.8 and Duo at 1.6

Cheers, and if you can chime in with any laptops other than the Inspiron 6400 (as that's the current choice) with some revised specs:
- Solo / Duo processor (whichever comes out on top from the above questions)
- 15 / 15.4" screen
- 80GB HDD
- 512 / 1024mb RAM

it'd be appreciated.

Thanks all!!

SB

nickmack

Duo Core is a processor with a dual core as opposed to single. These independent execution units in simple terms could be thought of as two processors in one. Although physically they are a single CPU, so we're not talking dual CPU here.

For dual core, there is no significant extra power required, in fact Intel's new processors in many cases consume less power. This means no extra weight or drain on batteries. By it's design it is optimised for multi-threaded applications and multitasking with supported applications.

If using supported applications they are faster than similarly specified single core CPU's but certainly not twice as fast. With unsupported applications, they are no faster than single core, in fact for single threaded examples such as current games, it can be slower than single core P4's.

stockwellphotography

Would Dual Core be the same as Hyper Threading, or have I got totally confuzzled now?
It all kinda falls into place, so, with non-duo core software (WinXP, I assume?) no difference will be noticed.
I'm not a gamer, thus Solo being a better option?
Sam

nickmack

Simply put, think of Hyperthreading as 'Virtual' Dual Core.

It appears to the Operating System and Applications as having two cores, but in fact only has one.

With HT, when a processor is in a wait state, say for a packet to be delivered, it could do something else, ie. work on another thread.

Go for Dual Core over HT. Remember that next week 'Dual Core 2' (Conroe) is released, so watch for price changes in the near future.

stockwellphotography

Righty-ho, so waiting till next week will see price drops on Duo and Solo Core?
Sam

Kilty_2

The performance difference between a 1.6ghz Celeron-M and a 1.6ghz Pentium-M depend on a few things.

Some laptops (such as the Dell Inspiron 1300) run the Pentium-M at 400mhz FSB, if that is the case then performance compared with the Celeron-M is going to be very similar, OK it has 2MB l2 cache as opposed to 1MB but a Pentium-M (Centrino) is supposed to run at a 533 FSB, not 400 with a larger multiplier.

I run a Celeron-M 1.5Ghz and it is faster than my ageing and very expensive in its day Pentium 4 2.0Ghz. To be honest, if you are using PSP, the main thing it would require would be a decent amount of memory, 512mb the minimum I would reccomend (BUT bear in mind laptop memory is cheap and easy to fit, especially to Dells).

Sooo if you would like to save money, Celeron-M is definately a nice path to go down, nothing wrong with it and seems to still have the stereotype that older Celerons had in some peoples minds, this is no longer the case.

I can work with 5MP images in Photoshop with my Celeron with ease, whilst running other programs at the same time, and I only currently have 256mb of RAM (money is a bit tight at the moment).

BTW, as for 15" vs 15.4", in my opinion 15.4" widescreen is a pleasure on the eyes and would opt for it if it was an option.

As for weight, most Dell laptops are rather heavy, the one I have weighs in at 3KG but I do think the higher end ones are a bit lighter.

Hope this insane rambling helps somehow