Inspiron 9400? - Page 3

Same question here, as I'm sure Dell will drop the good deals when the 9400 comes out.

I am in the same boat as the last couple guys that posted. Personally, as soon as Dell comes out with the 47% off, or something around that, I'm jumping on it. From everything I have seen, dual core is not much of an upgrade over anything right now; and it's going to be outdates in less than a year. I also doubt that Dell will have anywhere near the deals on it for at least a few months of its release. I was not in the market when the 9300 came out, but can anybody tell me how long it was until they were offering some big deals on them when they were first released? Another possibility is that since at least from these Dell listings, it appears that at first it may be better than the XPS/m170, and if this is indeed true, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see them make coupons not compatible with the 9400 since it is their best system, what they are doing with the XPS right now and have always done.

I don't see the advantage in passing up on such an awesome deal for a Pentium M for new technology that is minimally better and will be just as outdated in less than a year as what I could buy now (or when the deal is right). If I'm going to wait for a 9400, I'll wait for Merom. And I don't want to do that, so I'll be content with a 9300 for at least a year before I want Merom.

Glad to know you... Jenny who?



(Rep to whoever figures that one out.)

-Doc

that would only be red dwarf of course. I grew up watching that series

best eposide for me was when H swapped bodies and pigged out on curries

(there's a movie coming out soon)

I believe that many people are underestimating the benefit of Napa's multicore architecture. There is little doubt that Napa is a superior platform over Sonoma. Currently there is not a big difference in performance because of a lack of software optimized for multiple cores. However with multiple cores now readily available on the desktop, notebook, and even the console you can bet that software development will quickly move to take advantage of this technology. The performance gap between Napa and Sonoma will soon be widening.

Now don’t get me wrong I am VERY happy to have purchased an XPS GEN 2 last year. It’s a great notebook and I may skip Napa completely and wait for Merom for my next notebook upgrade. If Dell offered would I swap my XPS GEN 2 for the XPS M170 revision that will likely be available based on Napa? In a heartbeat!! And if I were currently on the fence ready to buy a notebook – would I wait for a Napa based notebook – hell yes!!

As most of you know the Quake 4 multicore patch did not cause major performance gains at high resolution. However that was only a "patch" to a very complex piece of software that had been originally designed with single core CPU’s in mind. If Quake 4 had been designed from the ground up with multicore CPU’s in mind I suspect the difference would be more substantial. However, even if there is not a big difference in gaming performance I think a major benefit of multicore CPU’s is the ability to game (or perform other intensive tasks) without needing to shut down your anti-virus, anti-spyware, email, firewall, peer to peer downloads, etc. Having multiple cores will help multiple processes coexist with much less impact on a gaming session (or other intensive task that you might be executing).

From what I see so far, the new dual cores won't really change much in the pc game industry, because the pentium m being the fastest processor and a 7800 gtx graphics card which is the best isn't beatable by anything new thats coming out besides a 7900 (i think) O yea, do u think i could fit that 7900 into my i9300?

I don't think there will be a 7900, more like a 7800GTX 512.

I still think it's not very attractive to get a Yonah now because when OS, applications and games are more ready for dual-core, the more superior Merom will be out.

IIRC the 9300 came out in March. Good deals didn't really start until August, although I think there may have been a deal in May. I'd expect good deals on Yonah pretty quickly since Merom is right on it's tail. Dell knows that many people sitting on the fence will wait for Merom so they will have to aggressively price a technology that will be obsolete in 10 months, just like they did with the 9300 (which will be obsolete in 10 months as well).

I liken this to the 486/Pentium dispute. Everyone knew that Pentium was the chip of the future however people continued buying 486DX66 chips because the original Pentium 60,75, & 90 Mhz chips were better, but not that much better. (Pentium wasn't helped by the floating-point decimal problem either) The Pentium 133 was where the chip really began to shine. Same thing with P-M/Yonah/Merom. Once Merom is out, Yonah and P-M will be obsolete.

It will not make a difference for high res games. period. Games are not cpu limited, so even if you had a superoptimized 999999ghz gajillion core cpu, you will not see any performance benefit UNLESS games either become MUCH more cpu intensive or we get a video card that is MUCH faster than the 7800gtx.

For owners of 9300\XPS\M170, here will be little to no point to upgrade to a Yonah based 9400. However, it's a bit tricky for others.

There is much more to notebooks than just gaming. Where gaming is concerned I doubt your statement is accurate for all games. There are many types of games - FPS, RTS, RPG, strategy, etc. Not all of them are GPU constrained. If all games were GPU constrained then it would seem wasteful for Microsoft to configure the new XBOX with a 3 core CPU. Furthermore most people have lots of background tasks running all the time and as we find more uses for our notebooks this number will only increase. This fact alone is a strong indication that there will be a tangible benefit to having a dual core architecture.

it depends on the person. some people use their computers to game, and some use it for other tasks. for my uses(games, intarweb, movies, school, and some 3d modeling) a single core cpu with an uberfast card is perfect. games, 3d modeling and movies are all video card depenent. internet and school work hardly require a fast cpu. the only thing that can benefit from a fast cpu is 3d rendering, but that really shouldnt be done on a laptop.

Every single thing you do on a computer benefits from a faster cpu...

"Every single thing you do on a computer benefits from a faster cpu..."

ya beat solitare and watch the cards go faster. ultimate cpu benchmark.

Says the guy who overclocked both the cpu in his laptop and desktop...

It doesnt make a difference!!!! You dont need to overclock it!!!! You can run it at 1 mhz but games are gpu limited so it doesnt matter!!!!!

You people need to improve your logic skills.

if you ran your game at 1 mhz it would be totally unplayable. Most games are GPU limited, but not THAT limited. Even when Intel Speedstep takes the processor to 800 mhz, performance in many games at relatively high resolutions is noticeable.

Many games nowadays are CPU limited.

Try to run CoD2 @ 1024x768 and a 6600GT on a Athlon XP 2600+ and a Athlon64 3000+, same amount of RAM (1GB).
Would you expect the A64 to be more than 20% (twenty :P ) faster? Well I didn't but it turned out to be more than 200% (yes, two hundred) faster in heavy scenes and 50% in normal scenes!

As for dual cores, most games do not support them yet, but nvidia is trying to optimize its drivers for them and also many games from now on will probably be able to make good use of them. Don't expect double performance but the 2nd core will surely have sth to do!

except were all running cod2 at 1920x1200

no dude it was an old school computer joke that incorporated changes in clock speed. te cards would bounce slower in the finale ending scene on slower pc's

i could tell if a computer had a processor better than mine by simply beating solitare


. i assure you my logic is games are cpu limited to a certain extent.. thats why i see a fps boost in all games now with overclocking the cpu went from 1.73ghz to 2.13 ghz chip and the difference is night and day.

What does this have to do regarding whether a game is cpu limited?

Of course, higher res needs better GPU, but it has to be properly "fed" too!

And btw, I run it @ 1440x900.