What processor should my laptop have if I have a budget around 1500 bucks?

What processor should my laptop have if I have a budget around 1500 bucks?

  • AMD Athlon 64 3000+ to 3400+ w/ HT

    Votes: 6 10.0%

  • Intel Pentium 4 3.0 to 3.4 GHz w/ HT

    Votes: 1 1.7%

  • Intel Pentium M (any of the speeds)

    Votes: 52 86.7%

  • Other (Sempron, Celeron, older PIII/s, etc.. make sure you state)

    Votes: 1 1.7%
  • Total voters
    60
C

CORVETTEZ06

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 28, 2005
Messages
289
What processor should my laptop have if I have a budget around 1500 bucks?

I like 64-bit stuff but if 32-bit proves to be almost as good...
I have no idea about this Pentium M thing...
I think I'd go with the AMD Athlon 64 but how does it compare with the Pentium M? Can somebody explain?

Thanks
 
A64 has no HT (hyperthreading, I assume).

For the mobile market nothing beats the Pentium-M.
 
unless it's only in desktops, AMD64 has HT (as in hyper transport which is AMD's form of hyper threading)
 
Pentium M...incredible performance, Centrino chipset, very good power consumption, and the competitors run too hot or consumer too much power...
 
Well It depends what you want do with laptop (think about that question carefully). If battery life and weight is important and performance (gaming) is not (keep in mind all computers are currently over spec'ed); go with the Pentium M. Otherwise pick a A64 of Pentium4, very powerful but heavy and will go though battery's in no time.

I have a holiday booked last week but hadn’t finished my uni work so I brought this just over a week ago (its gone up £30 since :D). Suits me fine. good battery life, not too chunky/heavy, oh and CHEAP (got it for £320 because the company owed me money). yes i know the amount of Ram sucks but I've ordered 512mb's .But I’m happy with it.
 
Pentium M then...

Can somebody explain the story of this and what Centrino means? Thanks! I basically have figured that it's less in performance but gets a whole lot better battery time.
 
For $1500 you can get a loaded system from Dell. Every week they have a $750 off some amount under $2000. So you can configure a lappy from Dell at $2250 and only pay $1500.

As for centrino, marketing. In order to use the Centrino brand they have to use PentiumM, Intel Motherboard, and Intel wireless.
 
CORVETTEZ06 said:
unless it's only in desktops, AMD64 has HT (as in hyper transport which is AMD's form of hyper threading)
Click to expand...
really?
hypertransport is a bus interconnect. Not a hyperthreading like thing. Until the dual cores are out, AMD has no multi-threading built into their chips.
 
odd with my system (in the sig) it has the options in the BIOS of 1x 2x 3x 4x and 5x HT settings... isn't that pretty much hyper threading!?!?
 
CORVETTEZ06 said:
odd with my system (in the sig) it has the options in the BIOS of 1x 2x 3x 4x and 5x HT settings... isn't that pretty much hyper threading!?!?
Click to expand...
LOL. No.
I think A64s come with 2 HTs enabled, and opterons have 3 IIRC. 4/5 might be for dual CPU setups?
But no, hypertransport is an interconnect, Hyperthreading is a chip multi-threading setup.
 
Pentium M is a new processor just fit for mobile computing (laptops).

They run lower voltage, lower temps, virtually the lowest heat producing processor out there, which is great for laptops.

They aren't slow either, don't let the speed fool you. They can easily out perform a P4...

Also have increased battery life, and better wireless ability. The notebooks also have generally a more slim and lighter design.
 
CORVETTEZ06 said:
odd with my system (in the sig) it has the options in the BIOS of 1x 2x 3x 4x and 5x HT settings... isn't that pretty much hyper threading!?!?
Click to expand...

No... Hyperthreading allows a single processor to act like two virtual ones.
 
Ok then ... AMD64 has no Hyper Threading...

So Pentium M is the way to go looking at the poll

What speeds of Pentium Ms compare to speeds of a P4? (somebody said a x Ghz Pentium M was a 3.6 GHz P4 somewhere I read)
 
1.6ghz Pentium M seems to be the average standard, which is comparable to about 3.2ghz, give or take a few Mhz.


1.8ghz seems like a 3.4ghz,

2.0ghz - 3.6ghz,


only thing they seem to lack is the multitasking of a p4 w/ HT.

The 2.0ghz and 2.13ghz are very expenisve though, i'd say 1.6ghz and 1.73ghz is a good standard, 1.8/1.86ghz for some more balls, but the price raises.
 
Would the 1.5 GHz seem like a P4 3.0 GHz? What are your opinions about that?

Here's what I'd like to do with this laptop:

Microsoft Office Stuff
Internet Browsing
E-mail
Counter-Strike Condition Zero AND Source
Be able to play DVDs (and then I'll get a sound card that supports 5.1 digital outputs)
 
If battery life is of outmost importance, make sure you get a UltraLowVoltage P-M, they usually run in the 900Mhz-1Ghz range. Battery life will be somewhere around 8 hours.
For reasonable battery life, any P-M over 1.6Ghz should do, I would myself recommend a 2.0ghz Dothan (low vooltage, high performance)
For sheer performance I suppose you could go with the A64 mobile.
Stay away from the P4's for notebooks, horrible, horrible and horrible.

And for the record, a P-M 1.4Ghz runs similar to a 2.4Ghz Northwood P4. The high end P-M's (2.0 and 2.13Ghz) runs as well as, in most apps, a 3Ghz P4 (any core rev.). The only benefit you get from a P4 is the Hyperthreading support. General tasks, and everyday usage feels snappier than the P-M and A64 mobile. However, this "feel snappier" comes at a highe price. Battery life, and heat.

The Dell Inpiron 9100 3.4Ghz, r9800pro, 7200rpm hdd, etc clock in at 35 minutes flat normal surfing/word/excel/mp3 usage. Forget gaming on battery. it's HOT HOT HOT, but oh-my it flies when loading up and doing something (specially games).
The 1.4Ghz P-M, centrino I use mostly for business and casual gaming (r9200), it gets me 3 hours of battery, runs QUIET. not a peep most of the time.
The 2.4Ghz P4, is exactly as fast in everything compared to the 1.4Ghz, give or take a little in floating point calculations. Again, noisy as it requires more fan power to cool down the thing.

The only real thing I can recommend is to pay close attention to the LCD (I prefer widescreen), keyboard and touchpad. You don't want to end up with anything that feels and looks like crap to you.
The Dell's touchpad totally sucks (to me), but the other 2 are great.

So yeah, a lot of text, and no real content... cent and a half again.
 
Yeah the ultra long battery life ones are way too expensive for being way too slow... i'm not in that much of a need of saving batteries... i just want something that allows me to have the computer on for at least 2 hours (length of a DVD)...

what companies do you guys think are good?
 
Xan433 said:
1.6ghz Pentium M seems to be the average standard, which is comparable to about 3.2ghz, give or take a few Mhz.


1.8ghz seems like a 3.4ghz,

2.0ghz - 3.6ghz,


only thing they seem to lack is the multitasking of a p4 w/ HT.

The 2.0ghz and 2.13ghz are very expenisve though, i'd say 1.6ghz and 1.73ghz is a good standard, 1.8/1.86ghz for some more balls, but the price raises.
Click to expand...


I would rescale that a bit, but you can always pick your test to prove the above. In most tasks my Pentium M 2.0GHz 533FSB 1.5Gig DDR2 memory performs noticeably faster than my desktop 3.0GHz P4 Northwood 800FSB 1Gig Dual Channel memory.

Pentium M Centrino is where it's at for mobile right now, I mean even Apple knows this....
 
Wow look at the weighting on those votes :)

I think we officially have a landslide for the Pentium-M.

My 0.02$:

my 1.4Ghz P-M turned out to be a lot faster than I expected, and the power consumption is great.
 
Wow a postive comment on a 1.4 GHz Pentium-M!!! Ok i'm sold P-M! I'm just thinking now would it be worth it to upgrade to like a 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.86, or 2.0. The 2.0 seems way outta line price-wise so I'm thinking for the money the 1.8/1.86 would be good. Does anybody have anything to say? Supposidly the 1.8 is supposed to be a 3.4 GHz P4? Can anybody back that up?
 
just to throw somthing else into the mix, ever considered a mac laptop?
 
Im waiting on my i9300 with a 1.73pm, should be able to play any game (6800go) and still get decent battery life when not playing around and it came in a 1.3k after tax. Just need to pick up some decent sticks or ram from teh egg and it will be perfect. :D dell i9300=! a bad option
 
Gateway 7426GX notebook = 1500$
Athlon 64 3700+
100gb hd
1gb memory
radeon mobility 9550 (runs CS:S Pretty good)
 
If you want long battery life, you need to consider the differences that make up battery life, huge notebooks that are 17" widescreen rarely last over 2 hours of usage if that, and thats just general word processing and internet using... playing a DVD would barely get an hour.. Centrino notebook or not.

Laptops that have good battery life are generally smaller, the more dim the screen, the longer the life, that plays a big factor.

What are you going to be using that laptop for? If its for home use, battery life shouldn't be an issue, since you have an AC outlet just to plug into.. but if you are a road warrior, then something compact will serve you well, however as you mentioned.. its tough to get a DVD 2 hours long in battery mode, because that drains the battery pretty fast, the more intense applications you run, the faster the battery drains.

For the processor, I agree that the 2.0ghz and 2.13ghz is way too expensive for the upgrade, 1.6ghz is the standard and most common speed on a centrino notebook, 1.8ghz+ is high end.. it is really not that significant of a difference though, just get the highest processor you can get without the next one being like $300+ more to customize.
 
Gateway 7426GX notebook = 1500$
Athlon 64 3700+
100gb hd
1gb memory
radeon mobility 9550 (runs CS:S Pretty good)
 
you double posted the same thing... stop now if you are doing it to piss people off...

Ok I"ll state right here what I'm looking at doing:

Going to go to college soon and need a compact computer (laptop, not a PC)
need to take notes on lectures and need battery life there
want to be able to work awhile on batteries when i'm away from an outlet
want to be able to watch a DVD on a road trip
want to be able to play CSS and Splinter Cell 3 decently (with an outlet available)
size I'd love it to be small but it needs to have a decent graphics card i think...

so the choices are AMD64, Pentium-M, and others
for graphics cards I have composed a list of orders of bad to good:

Integrated
Radeon 9000-9500
Radeon x300
Radeon 9700 Mobility
nVidia 6600 Go
Radeon x800 Mobility
nVidia 6800 Ultra Go

I'm thinking where would the line be where CSS can be played decently? Can the x300 play it or would i need to go up to the 9700 or the 6600?
 
Look into the Sony VAIO 13.3" notebook, it has a 6200Go graphics card, which can easily handle CSS and other games. It might run over 1500 though.

You might have to sacrifice some uses out of there, thats asking a lot in a laptop.
 
if you can get your hands on a 9200 i hear they have killer battery life and still have decent vid (9700)
 
[T5K]thrasher said:
if you can get your hands on a 9200 i hear they have killer battery life and still have decent vid (9700)
Click to expand...
better a 9300 with the unultra 6800. And fucking cheap.
 
actually I've been thinking

Maybe I could get one of those ultra low power using laptops with the Pentium-M 1.1 GHz CPUs, 512 MB of memory, CD-RW/DVD drive, and like a 30 gig hard drive to be strickly used for school, work, etc... (no games) I have found one for like 1200 bucks in Dell's refurbished inventory which is EXCELLENT for schooling. I've gotten a refurbished Dell computer once and it is LIKE NEW so yeah I'm happy with paying 150 bucks less for a used Dell.

and then I could keep my current computer setup (in my sig) and get a LCD monitor for the amount of money I have leftover and use that for gaming (like an xbox but computer usage)... cuz I don't think that having a LCD monitor and a mid-tower computer case in the dorm room would be that bad. Really.

What do you guys think?
 
What would a Pentium-M 1.1 GHz run similar to? I think I want to go with these low voltage laptops.... what do you think?
 
I wouldn't worry too much what it refers too, its fast enough, especially if its just being used for general schooling. You'll be fine, its what they are meant for, along with business.
 
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