Ferrari 5000 vs. TravelMate 8200

There are 2 things here.
First procesor. If you want to use your lappy for 4-5 years by then 64 bit will be common, so go for Ferari 5000. TM 8200 use core duo which more powerful but "only" 32 bit. Yes, you can upgrade to merom when it is available, but then it's extra cost for you.
Second Price. I bought my 8200 for 2500$, yes it was expensive, but now you can get it for less than 2000 in some store. ferarri in other hand will be priced at 2500 for now.

So my suggestion, buy 8200 and upgrade to merom later. Unless you want to show that ferarri logo.

The Ferrari will come with a larger HD (over the current 8204), may have HD-DVD (but then it would not have a DVD-RW) have HDMI output with HDCP (really won't matter much if the Movie studio won't enforce the HDCP till after 2010) and wil lcost more than the current 8204. The Memrom Revamp 8200 will probably be behind the F5000 in production schedule and I have no idea what HD and optical drive will be in the shipping version.

Will the 64bit AMD chip in the 5000 Kill the Core Duo 8200?

Will the 64bit AMD chip in the Ferrari 5000 Kill the 32bit Core Duo in the 8200 when Vista comes out?

for sure, f0r 64 bit application. I dont think so for 32 bit application

Only if you are runing 64 bit applications. Unless you have sepcific application that you need to run that is or will be available in 64bit at vista launch. 64bit cpu will offer you no advantage. By the time mainstream applications and games move into 64bit (give it a year or 2 after launch), you'll be looking for a new laptop.

That's incorrect. Core Duo doesn't run any 64 bit apps, it's a 32 bit processor.

The Core Duo is both faster and more energy effective than the Turion for 32 bit apps and does not run 64 bit apps.

I think 32 bit will be around for a long time to come - the only real advantage of 64 is with regard to memory management, so I think Windows 64 bit will follow the footsteps of the "64 bit" Mac OS X where everything is really 32 bit except memory management which is 64.

So the only problem with buying a 32 bit machine nowadays is that you might need more than 2 / 4 G of RAM. At some point.

There is absolutely zero risk that *any* software will not run on 32 bit over the next 3 years just because the installed base is all 32 bit.

64 bits is IMHO for 2 things:
1 - More memory (good as you can never have enough)
2 - Marketing gimmick. So some markedroid can say "64.. double 32, ho ho ho (and have no idea what they are talking about). Twice as good!"

[quote=orthorim2]That's incorrect. Core Duo doesn't run any 64 bit apps, it's a 32 bit processor.

That was my point.

any 64 bit proc will beat core duo

[quote=samuderaindia]
In what exactly?

There's not much of a point getting a Ferrari 5000, unless you plan to run Windows x64 Edition and have to run 64-bit apps, which is very unlikely. Besides that, the F5000 has a 160GB HDD vs. 120 in the 8204 - not much of a bump - a slot-loading optical drive (for "ooh-aah" value), and an HDMI port.

The Core Duo T2500 solidly outperforms the top-line 2.0 GHz Turion 64 X2, and uses less power.

Here are some Turion 64 X2 benchmarks, the first two using a TM 8204:

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39...534,00.htm?r=1
http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,...80336-2,00.htm

http://xtreview.com/review81.htm
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/...9277339,00.htm

First of all, isn't the new windows vista going to be 64-bit based?

I am currently looking into getting a ferrari 5000 right now, and i see it as a worthwhile investment. I run a ton of engineering software i.e. pro-e, autocad, ANSYS, PSplice... It seems to me that if you were looking at a laptop for those reasons, 64-bit is the way to go. I am heart set on getting a 64-bit processor, just because i've seen first hand that pro-e works better on a 64-bit machine than a 32. so what if the clock speeds on the duo are a little higher, it just depends what you are looking to do with the rig.

The only problem i see with the ferrari 5000 is that its cool-looking, and if you were to buy one for college, like i am, i would be worried about someone boosting it from the student union. unless u need a rig ASAP, i would wait for the ferrari 5000 to come down a little in price, or i would wait for acer to make a similar, less-flashy model, like the 8100 was to the 4000.

plus, ut2007 has gotta be awesome on a turion machine!

8200 series with Merom should be out late Sept/ early Nov.

No, it's going to be just like Windows XP in that the 32-bit version will be the most commonly used, with a separate 64-bit version available. Hopefully, MS will have some of performance, driver, etc. issues better sorted out by release. For XP, the x64 version's 32-bit performance was pretty good considering that all 32-bit apps run on WoW (an added, emulation sort of layer), but not quite as good as regular XP. The main issue, however, is drivers, since no 32-bit drivers will work on the platform. Also, no 16-bit apps work at all (they worked on 32-bit XP under WoW16). No program can make use of 64-bit addressing if the OS doesn't support it. So in other words, there is literally no point in the 64-bit functionality under Windows unless you run x64 edition. What you're probably referring to is that Athlon 64s are faster than Pentium 4s in almost every application. That has nothing to do with the 64-bit addressing, however, and nothing to do with the Turion 64 or Core Duo. But it's better on Core Duo .

Does the 8200 series have Crytal Brite Screen or maybe im saying it wrong the (Glossy Screen) If it does id buy it like right now :-\

No, it doesn't

The screen is not glossy.

The benefit of 64-bit processing is more significant than just memory management, although the increased address space is a huge win. Don't forget that the processor registers are also 64-bits, so each CPU instruction manipulates twice as much information as a 32-bit instruction. There are ways to improve processing speed besides increasing bandwidth, like increasing how much work gets done within each cycle.

This is a theoretical advantage that you won't see happening in practice. While there are ways to optimize certain operations for 64 bit, it's only in specialized applications and unless you do a lot of math with actual 64 bit floats, it won't matter. So if you are doing finite elements or raytracing - maybe. Anything else... nope.

At the same time, mainstream programs that are compiled for 64 bit take up more space in memory which hits the memory bandwidth of these processors pretty badly. And memory bandwidth, unlike potential 64 bit operations, is a problem for mainstream apps and a problem at the best of times, even in 32 bit apps. That's why the latest Intel processors have huge caches (2M and 4M for Conroe).

So except for specialized scientific apps, you are more likely to see slowdowns from 64 bit binaries than speedups. Note that this isn't an issue for AMD 64 bit processors for the most part because they run 32 bit just as well, and all programs are still 32 bit. So they don't take advantage of the 64 bits that are there, but at the same time they also don't get the drawbacks from 64.

In short, it's not a problem because 99.9% of all binaries out there are still 32 bit....

On a side-note, one obvious area that would benefit hugely from 64 bit is 3D graphics. However, these days all 3D graphics calculations run on the graphics card (GPU), and they run way faster there than they ever could on the CPU. So, again, 64 bit doesn't matter here.

I'm not referring to 32-bit programs emulated on a 64-bit CPU. I'm talking true 64-bit computing. Software written specifically for a 64-bit platform will straight-up SMOKE anything written on a 32-bit one. Plenty of people are running Windows x64, although there is admittedly a lack of driver support for some peripherals, soundcards, etc. Slowly but surely, though, 64-bit applications are gaining traction. Anti-virus, gaming, engineering/design and some other sectors are already writing 64-bit applications.

It'll be like the shift from 16 to 32; the transition will sneak up on everybody. One day we'll wake up and 64-bit will be upon us. Is that 6 months? A year? Who knows. But it's probably closer than some people think.

BTW, even if you use a 64-bit processor to run with a 32-bit OS, you don't get an extended address space. Memory addressing is constrained by the OS, not the processor. In other words, the size of a process' virtual address space in WinXP is still 2^32, whether you run an Athlon 64 or Core Duo or whatever.

Also, there are people out there who see 64-bit computing as more than just a "marketing gimmick." I'm an application developer myself, and I'm really looking forward to developing for x64. That has been the major appeal for AMD to me. However, with Merom coming down the road, and the fact that it beats the Turion X2 in many benchmarks, Intel is beginning to look alot sexier in the short term.
;-)