How much notice should I take to Mhz speed when buying a laptop??

MarkB1983_2

Hi everyone. I currently have a desktop PC, Pentium 4 3.0Ghz with 1GB of RAM. This is now over 3 years old now and when it comes to general usage its fine although a bit glitchy. Try running any games on it and its very slow, even after clearing much of my hard drive and defragging it etc etc..

Basically, my question is - How much should I pay attention to Ghz speed? I'm looking to buy a new Laptop, however I want to make sure its not as slow as what I run at the moment.

Two laptops that are around my budget tend to come with the AMD Turion 64x2 TL60 processor (around 2.0ghz), or the Core 2 Duo processor, which is the equivilant of around 1.5 Ghz. First of all, which is a better buy for around £400, the quicker Turion and the slower (but some say better) Core 2 Duo?

Also in comparison, how would my desktop Pentium 4 3.0Ghz with 1GB of RAM fair against either of the two laptops above, assuming both had 2GB RAM?

Sorry this is rather a long and confusing post, but any help/advice is greatly appreciated, thanks!

Mat_Lock

Depends what you want to do with the laptop. Most opinions would suggest the Intel Core 2 Duo as that is a remarkably good chip. Mhz doesn't make much difference these days. Hence the reason why Mhz hasn't changed much over the past few years.

I would look for the laptop with the most amount of System memory (RAM) as Windows Vista (presuming that's what is installed on the laptop) really requires as much RAM as possible. If it only has 1gb of memory, ask if they can upgrade the RAM for a small extra cost. Take it to 2gb minimum. That'll help more than a few more Mhz.

Mat_Lock

Ooh and if you are playing games, check that the laptops have dedicated graphics chips that won't eat in to main system memory too.

Mat_Lock

Hmm, don't think in your price range you will get a laptop with a dedicated graphics chip.

I found this Asus X51RL on Ebuyer though, it has 2gb of RAM

MarkB1983_2

Thanks for all of your advice! Yeah all the laptops for around £400 seem to have integrated graphics which is a shame. Would you recomend the Core 2 Duo over a AMD Turion 64 x 2 processor then? I had ordered a Vostro 1000 from Dell for £411 incl VAT and Delivery, 2GB RAM but cancelled it as they couldn't give a delivery date before xmas! I'll consider looking at the Core 2 processor if it's better.

Will use the laptop to play on Football Manager 2008, thats it. Use the XBox for anything challenging graphics wise!

BillScarab

You can only use MHz or GHz to compare processors from the same family, as differerent brands and processor families have totally different architecture. So a 2.4 GHz C2D is faster than a 2.0 GHz C2D. Your best bet is to look at sites like tomshardware where they do comparative tests of different processors so you can compare differerent brands and models.

However at the moment I think the Intel Core 2 Duos and Quads are the best around at the moment. The AMD Phenom range is also worth a look f they are in the shops yet.

Mat_Lock

I would, at the moment, go for Core 2 Duos.

Stephen_Leak

As above, go for a dual core CPU - the CPU would be complicated enough to upgrade on a desktop, so you do need to go for the best available at the time of purchase, in oder to "future-proof" your investment.

I wouldn't advise using a laptop as a "hard-core" gaming platform, altho' they are getting better.

For normal use (internet, digital photos, household records, letters, etc.), whilst faster is better, the question is, "How fast can you type?"

Mat_Lock

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

As above, go for a dual core CPU - the CPU would be complicated enough to upgrade on a desktop, so you do need to go for the best available at the time of purchase, in oder to "future-proof" your investment.

I wouldn't advise using a laptop as a "hard-core" gaming platform, altho' they are getting better.

For normal use (internet, digital photos, household records, letters, etc.), whilst faster is better, the question is, "How fast can you type?"

It's also how much junkware they put on the laptop before you've even fired it up.

One of my pet hates is having all that unnecesary software running. My dads Vaio came and I checked task manager on first boot up and it had like 75 processes running. Grrrr !!

I wiped XP and started again, Nicely down to 30 now.

m.r.davies

The main flaw with laptops is the hard drive speed
95% of laptops have 5400rpm hard driveswhere as desktops have 7200rpm hard drivesI have a 7200rpm in my laptop as i do a lot of file access stuff
Find out if your requirements are, CPU, Memory, or Hard drive intensive, and make sure you dont buy something you dont need..... i.e. i dont play games so pointless me getting a dell XPS with a fat graphics card!
If you go for a "core duo 2" (not core duo) you'll be ok
AMD Turions i've heard are pretty good too (stay away from celeron unless you just doing internet,email etc)they are powered lower nowdays so a 1.87ghz core duo 2 is a pretty quick machine.Get a least 1gb of ram or get an upgrade for somewhere like crucial memory (maybe cheaper that upgrading with dell etc)
Do your research and put some lightweight antivirus/spyware on.hth

m.r.davies

This one any good?

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/125136/dell-vostro-1500-notebook-2ghz-core/all/all/hot/