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Originally Posted by Chronobuster
The Turion platform is not as efficient as the PM platforms (being the 915 and 855 platforms), and as such, they get about an hour less battery life than a comparable PM. The Turions also benchmark below the PMs, except that difference is unnoticeable in practical applications.
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Just to correct you, the power consumption is
not accurate. The Turion comes in two flavors: The MT and the ML. The ML uses 35W, and is the more power hungry of the two; if you get the Ferrari, you will be getting the ML. To put it in perspective, the Pentium-M uses 27W. Either way, the Ferrari delivers about 3+ hours of battery life performance--about the same of a similarly equipped Z71V. On the other hand, the MT line uses 25W of power, 2 less than the Pentium-M; before today, the fastest MT processor was a 1.8ghz--not very comparable to Pentium-M's top of the line processors. HOWEVER, AMD announced the MT-37 (2.0ghz) and MT-40 (2.2ghz) processors. Not only are they half the price of their equivalent Pentium-Ms, but if an ML uses the same battery life in equivalent P-M notebooks, the MT processors should easily push those battery life marks up into the 4 hour range.
Sorry if that's a little too much information! Its too little to split apart, so I decided to clump it all together! All I can say is, the Pentium-M has a serious competitor on its hands.
As for the benchmarks, I go by what I've read in reviews and, largely what I've read on GamePC's benchmarks of the two systems. Let me forewarn you by saying that most users don't trust them, but let me also say that they have yet to point out even a single reason as to why their benchmarking procedures are flawed. Additionally, common sense dictates why each processor would be better in each field, which the benchmarks support.
So based on these benchmarks, the 64-bit processor does extremely well in workstation performance such as rendering, CAD, and video encoding. The Turion has shown much faster performance in memory processing, so things that require a lot of memory (like the tasks I mentioned above) will excel. In addition to the fact that the 64-bit processors can hold more than 4gb of RAM (obviously, not a strong point for a laptop), the Turion also features SSE3 instructions over the SSE2 from the Pentium-M--a benefit which will only aid programs that actively take advantage of the additional lines.
With that being said, now for some reasons for the Pentium-M! For one, the battery life is technically going to be faster--the Ferrari, a popular Turion/gaming machine has an 8-cell battery, which is why it's able to match the battery life of an equivalent 6-cell Pentium-M machine. In games, the Pentium-M definitely shows an aptitude for continual mathematical operations--in other words, long chains. This, plus the larger, 2mb cache, will make the Pentium-M a much more viable choice if you plan on gaming a lot.
Now that all that's down, keep in mind one thing: the differences between the two are very, very small. If you were to use two laptops with identical speeds, the difference would only be noticable if you got down and dirty with benchmarks. However, since you do plan on modeling and/or using synthetic programs, the Turion might be a better choice for you, simply because of all the software to take advantage of 64-bit processes, those things would be the prime beneficiaries.
A note about your GPU comment. If you're in the running for a full desktop replacement, the 6800 Go Ultra definitely "trumps" the top of the line, MX800 line. No question about it. However, where nVidia owns the DTR line, ATI has definitely taken advantage of the often overlooked mid-range section. The midrange card from nVidia is the Geforce 6600 Go, with ATI's being the X700. In most laptops (but not all), the X700 has a tendency to beat out the 6600 Go. In the Acer Ferrari 4005, the standard clock speeds are usually around the low to mid 2000 range in 3DMark05. Comparatively, the 6600 Go (in its underclocked state) usually gets in the mid-upper 1000s.
However, that is not exactly the case for all laptops. Through some means (and I have not seen anything in the way of definite proof), people have claimed to reach the high 2000s with the 6600 Go in an MSI laptop. Yet I have definitely seen proof that the X700 can easily reach the high 2000s as well--and that's not even with extremely overclocking.
If you've narrowed your choices down to any specific choices, do tell! The Ferrari 4005 is a fantastic notebook if you're looking for a gaming system, but its even better if you're in the market for 64-bit. The X700 card will square off well as a mobile gaming machine. Good luck, and I hope all this helps!
EDIT: My 1000th post!
EDIT AGAIN: Despite what most people claim, 64-bit is
not right around the corner; if anything, we won't see 64-bit software trickling in for months, and having 64-bit won't even
begin to become a necessity for at least a few years. If you plan on using this for college or what not, by the time 64-bit processing is a smarter choice, you probably won't be able to buy 32-bit processors anymore. Remember that just because 64-bit is new and great, 99% of computers in use by consumers are running 32-bit processors.
