What would you buy?

depends, if your an upgrader, go with the amd 64 3200, then upgrade your video later.
If your not....

I would suggest instead of getting the centrino 1.7, go with an athlon 2400+ (they are about the same price I think) and get a radeon 9700 pro.

that would be my opinion

64 is nice, lots of choices tho

go w/ gfx!!

When gaming, the video card should be a lot more important than the CPU.

But for most other things...

So it depends on what you want to do.

In another week hypersonic will have its version of Voodoo's M860 out made by Arima. It has both the AMD64 and the 128mb M11 in it. Its real nice and hopefully will be alot cheaper through Hypersonic. It has a 15.4" WXGA+ (1680x1050 res), sounds more like an WSXGA though. Still iffy on whether or not to get a widescreen, and I have no idea what the refresh rate is either or what the viewing angles are like. But, its got great power and battery life, and they are supposedly alot quieter and cooler than any P4 based notebook. But, I guess you wouldn't be worried about that looking at a PM. Anway, thats what I'm waiting for, but I'm still looking at the 8790 and now with the 5690 coming out I really am not sure. Anyway I've been looking at the AMD for awhile now and it looks like its got the best power/battery life combo. Plus, I haven't heard too much about how good dealing with Hypersonic is...wish PCT and Sager would put out something with the AMD 64. Man I wish it was easier to decide...Argh. Thats my $.02.

64

It was a thread in the Other System Discussion board. Someone had called Hypersonic and said they were told they would have it up on their site on April 10 for ordering. I haven't called myself yet though. I can't wait to see how much it will be through them. Anyone know how good Arima is as an ODM?

That was I who checked with Hypersonic about their m:860 version...I'm guessing it'll be called AX7. Hyper told me they'll have it on their website by April 10, with first shipments going out by month's end.

I've narrowed my decision to a GX7/8790 or that new Athlon 64 model (AX7). I love widescreen computing. It's the ONLY good thing about this Dell 8600 I'm using. I'll probably order the AX7 first. If it doesn't grab me, I'll return it for the GX7/8790.

The 8790 is a good laptop but will be bland and unappetizing compared with the AX7. If you can, you should definitely wait to purchase for a couple of weeks. As far as all round value and lifespan goes, I don't think you could go wrong.

There's a couple of good reviews at anandtech about the voodoo m:855 (same as the AX6)
http://anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1916
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1921&p=1

I'm curious...what makes you think the AX7 will be so much better than the 8790?

Well it's JMO jswriter, but for me these advantages far outweight the advantages that the 8790 has:
64 bit compatability
Battery life
Noise

Me too, David B.

I mean, the 8790 has a bigger screen with the M11 @ 256 MB, can mount two media drives AND two hard drives, which can be RAIDED, plus the TV Tuner option. Not to mention two PCMCIA slots, 3 vs 2 USB, DVI out, TV in. I mean, they really aren't in the same class. The 8790 is a battleship. The Arima, though its a great machine, is a cruiser.

I think the Arima is a really great machine, but at Voodoo, with the 3400+, a 60 GB HDD it runs nearly $3800, while the 8790 with a 3400 P4, TWO 60 GB HDDs, and the 12 cell battery, goes for $2900. Even if Hypersonic knocked $900 off Voodoo's price, you'd still have a significantly lesser machine. I'd say at least $700 less machine when you add up the 17" vs 15.4" screen and the extra HDD in RAID. So, Hypersonic has its job cut out for it.

Say the screens are roughly the same price, the memory is the same, the CPU's are the same, the drives are the same, except the 8790 has 2 (about $200). I can't see the cases being that much different in cost, nor the mainboards. The 8790's 256 Video is about $150 more. And there's the odds and ends. So the Arima works out to being about $700 less cost than the 8790. Yet the retail price is $900 more. A difference of $1600. Somebody is making out like gang busters.

I'd really like to see SAGER do an AMD based machine. Something like the 8790. They should be able to offer it at the same price. Or take a step up and offer an FX-53 instead of an Inte P4EE. Again, the AMD processor is less costly, in this case, a couple hundred less.

Well, someday, someone will figure out it can't be any harder to stuff an AMD in a notebook than it is a P4. Probably easier.

64-bit, definitely a better thing.
Battery life, the arima is rated at 2 hours, only slightly better than the 8790 with the 12 cell.
Noise, I doubt there's any significant difference.

Again, they are different classes of machines, with entirely different pricing. For the money, the 8790 is a much, much better deal than the Voodoo. And for Hypersonic to get it close to the same, they'd have to cut Voodoo's price by almost 40%. That's going to be really tough to do.

As I said, I'd love to see a SAGER with an AMD, especially an 8790 with a FX-53. I think that would be the kat's meow, period. And yes, I think for gaming, it would clean the P4EEs clock and given it an hour's change.

It depends on how you're planning on using your laptop. If you only need it for carrying around places, and will always be near an outlet (or at least most of the time), then you might want to go with AMD64. However, if you're planning on frequently using it off battery (be it for work, typing, surfing, etc. or even a bit of gaming), then *definitely* go with the Centrino! Besides, a PM 1.7 GHz + MR 9700 128 MB is quite a very powerful combination!

Depending on the AMD64 laptop in question, battery life varies quite a bit. The CPU doesn't matter that much for power (on a AMD64 based laptop). It is the other bits and pieces which vary the battery life.
On an eMachines m6805 with upgraded ram and hard disk, I still get well over 2 hours listed above on even a worst case scenario. More typical for me is 2.5 to 3. If I am careful (dim the screen, underclock the processor, etc) I can get as much as 4 hours. Most of the high end AMD64's only claim 2.5hour battery life. And you should reasonably get that or more on most of them. It is entirely possible that the VOODOO with it's high end bits and no compromise approach might get a bit less.
I don't know about other AMD64 laptops, but the m6805 is fairly quiet, even when the fan kicks on. But the cpu fan (when it turns on) is not silent, just not very loud.
If you want an easy 4+ hours of battery life the Centrino based laptops with Pentium-M's is the way to go. The AMD64 does not need to be near a wall socket more then 2 hours out of every 8 (run_for_3--charge_for_2--run_for_three). This allows for a great deal of portability. It can charge in your car, on the plane, etc.
With a P-M, it is naturally even more portable but not nearly as fast. A P-M is around a 2.5ghz equivalent in a p4 while Laptops with AMD64's current run from 3.0 to 3.4ghz equivalent (compared to p4's again) So the fastest Pentium-M is roughly 20% slower then the slowest AMD64 (all other bits and pieces being equal and they never are, not to mention it would be close to impossible to devise a perfect test to compare them without selecting a test with bias to one or the other).