How much gain with 3.4G HT vs. 2.0G Dothan? - Page 2

What's your budget and screen preference (15", 15.4*widescreen*, or 17")?

GamePC.com did a comparison of the 3 (4 if you count P4 EE) main laptop processors and has all kinds of benchmarks comparing the 4 in otherwise identical machines (the P4 has a 256 MG 9700 the others have 128). In terms of CPU power the P4 and the A64 are close with no real winner. The P-M (Dothan) can keep up in games because they are all constrained by the graphics card. So I would recommend the A64 as it will get even faster with Win XP-64 or Linux based 64-bit Apps which it sounds like you may be using, and it is as fast as the P-4 now, and it comes in a lighter form factor. For pure numbercrunching the P-M is a little under powered but still a great processor.

I would recommend the ABS Mayhem G3. You can get it pretty much loaded for around $2300 and there is currently a $100 rebate. Look at the A-64 3400+, with 1 GB of Ram and the 7200 RPM 60GB HD. It comes with the ATi Radeon Mobility 9700 which won't hurt you if you don't need it but is always nice to have. This machine is probably the most powerful laptop you can find in your price range.

Edit: The link for the GamePC benchmarks is here
The P-M and the A-64 are the same as the models the ABS sells

old article but check out http://www.cpuid.com/PentiumM/index.php
also http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2129&p=2
and http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20040510/index.html

For your work, I would go for AMD64 low voltage. It is a real powerhouse with acceptable battery, portability functionalities and great potential down the road.
Again this is only true BUT for 17" (sub par portability). BTW, there is no Centrino with 17" either. But you can get 16.1" one, me think
I don't know if there is any AMD64 3000-3400 with low voltage version or not (only one I know of is 2800+ such as Ferrari3200). If you can find high power AMD64 with low voltage version, I would get it over centrino.
As many people mentioned earlier, if you want both power and decent portability go with 3200-3400 AMD64 15" version. If you want high-end acceptable power with great portability, go with Centrino. Just my two cents.

I don't know it off the top of my head either. I suggest you calling those dealers for info. I bet by the end of this evening, you will get a good number of inputs from the forum members as well.
Goodluck.

Well,
with the P4 out of the picture, you have to decide what else other than CPU power you would like in your lappy. If you want a very powerful CPU combined with long battery life I recommend the Dothan 2.0 (and I do so as a hardcore AMD fan). This processor follows te AMD 64 in terms of pure power but I really doubt that you will find it not powerful enough for the type of work you will be doing.
Understand that most people here are gamers and benchmarkers who love to see their machine going faster even if it is a matter of a couple seconds less. One example, a 7200 60GB HD will give roughly 9-10 sec bettr boot-up times (on the same machine) than a 4200rpm 80GB HardDrive. Yet, just look around, and you will see that most of us "brag" with how fast the bootup is after having paid 200 for a new drive. Off course getting a 7200 drive will give you better performance than a 4200 HD but, I mean, ask yourself are 10sec or so gonna change your life? Truth is that gamers and benchmarkers are crazy about performance and truth is that most people, when in the market for a PC, try to buy a machine that is much, much faster than their actual needs. I am sure this is the case with you too just like it is/was with me. When we try to buy a PC/laptop we always try to go for the fastest but we hardly ask ourselves whether we realy need it. Furthermore, it is a rule of thumb that a 10% increase in performance, whether due to faster CPU, HD, more RAM, etc., remain undescernable for most people's senses.
I understand that you will be doing a lot of number crunching but unless you will be doing some supercomputing a 2.0 Dothan will be more than enough for you. I personally bought a 1.7 Dothan (before the Dothan came out Intel didn't exist for me at all) and find it more than capable for simulations in physics/astrophysics. Chances are the 2.0 Dothan would be more than you will actually need in terms of pure power in CPU, especially when coupled with 1-1.5 GB RAM.
This being said, if you are really convinces that your simulationjs will ask for the very last CPU cycle you could get, my advise is to go with an AMD64 Mobile 3400+ (3200+ will aslo be enough). This cpu takes the best of both worlds, so to speak, it is more powerfull than any P4 (ExtremeEdition or not) and has a much better battery life than a P4, but traces the Dothan, of course. I doubt that you will be overclocking your cpu but AMD 64 chips are among the most overclockable cpus you can find. If overclocked, no P4EE can even touch the AMD in bencmarks, a said note to all Intel fans.
Above, in my last post, I said that a 3200+ powered eMachines M6809 lasts for about 2.5-3hrs. With the Mobile 3400+ eMachines M6811 the battery life should be (have not encountered reviews yet) about 2.5hrs and slightly less. A similar P4 would give about an hour or so (plus their form factors, as mentioned by me and others, are the heaviest of all. Again, the 2.0 Dothan, depending on the screen size (smaller screen - more battery life) will give anywhere between 4hrs and even more if the it is a 15inch screen.
You have to decide for yourself what are yu gonna need the laptop for.
If you decide to go for RAW but relatively efficient power, again the AMD64 MOBILE is the way to go for a very powerful and hghly efficient, in battery terms, cpu there is no alternative to the Dothan.
I mentioned the Sager NP4750 as an AMD alternative to eMachines M6811 but the Sager comes with a 17inch screen and this will bring battery life down to 2 hrs which is under heavy, heavy gaming - this may not sound a lot but is in fact a very respectable result impossible for a P4 cpu. The big screen also contributes to less battery life. I am not sure, however, that Sager uses the Mobile AMD64. To tell you the truth I CANNOT think of any 15inch laptop that has an AMD64 higher than 2800+ (not that this is not a powerful cpu). Only the Acer Ferrari 3200 has the AMD64 2800+ and comes with 15inch screen but I doubt that you will like the red painting on the cover. Apart from that it is a great machine.
There are many A64 laptops out there but most of them come with 15.4 inch screens - Uniwill, eMachines, HP, Compaq and others however I am not convinced that you will find one of these to have everything you may need for good 3D graphics in their stock configurations. Yor best bet, IMO, would be to configure the system by yourself.
Right now, I cannot refer you to any RESPECTABLE vendors who have AMD 64 laptops and will not rip you off (read Allienware, Hypersonic, etc). The only guys I can think of are ibuypower.com and cyberpower.com but their good prices are coupled with some horrible reviews on service, quality, and tech support. My best bet for an AMD laptop is emachines M6811 which had some issues with cracking hinge covers (just the covers) but they seem to be fixing it right now. Apart from that the laptop comes for about 1500-1600 but again since it is a stock configuration yoy may have to upgrade to a faster HD and more ram in order to get the best out of the AMD 64 3400+ cpu the M6811 comes with. The graphics card is an ATI 9600 64MB which will be enough for rendering 3D graphics and some nice gaming but is hardly the choice of the HEAVY gamers.
For Dothan 2.0 I can advise you to look at Acer TM8006 (a bit expensive at ~2500), Compal CL56, and ASUS M6(B)Ne. The Acer and the Compal come with 15.inch displays while the stock Asus M6ne has a 15.1 inch but is also available with 15.4inch and its name gets changed to M6BNe with the B for BROAD, I guess.
I do not believe that the Acer is offered as configurable by any on-line vendor. However, the Compal CL56 and ASUS M6(B)Ne are offered at sites like:
www.powernotebooks.com
www.discountlaptops.com
www.proportable.com
www.rjtech.com
www.geared2play.com
The best (read best prices coupled with great tech support, customer service, warrenties, reviews, etc.) are the first two:
www.powernotebooks.com
www.discountlaptops.com
For reviews go to www.resellerratings.com.
My personal choice, and I guess of all those who have the money and know what ASUS stands for in quality, is the ASUS M6(B)Ne. The compal cl56 is a great notebook which will cost you slightly less but, IMO, the price difference is cancelled by the ASUS's screen (Samsung it is - second only to Sony's xBrite) and its superior overall quality.
At powernotebooks.com you will be able to get low latency Corsair RAM and some other luxeries not offered by discountlaptops.com for a very affordable price difference.
Please note that discountlaptops.com offer the 15.4 ASUS only with ATI 9600 while powernotebooks.com give you the choice for ATI 9700 for abot 100 bucks more in the total cost of the laptop.
Hope this helps.
Good luck.

Well, I guess it is a LONG post.

Look no further than this:
http://pctorque.com/acer_ferrari_3200.php

The 2800+ isn't going to be as powerful as a 2.0 Dothan he needs at least a 3200+ low voltage to make the AMD more attractive over a Dothan.

Yeah... the 1.6GHz Dothan seems to be inline with the A64 2800+.

You can configure the Battalion 101 SL from Ibuypower with a 3400+, 1 gig ram, 60 7200 rpm hard drive, and a Radeon 9600 for around 2K.

http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp.net/sto...or.aspx?mid=94

Yeah, they have very nice pricing - the only other AMD 64 3400+ that comes to my mind and is cheaper than the ones at www.ibuypower.com and www.cyberpower.com (they seem to be pretty much the same company) is the eMachines M6811, which will lack the extra RAM and 7200rpm HD in its stock configuration.
The problem with these on-line vendors (meaning both ibuypower.com and cyberpower.com) is that they have some very bad customer feedback and their overall rating is at best average.
If you check the ibuypower.com site there is a statement of 9.9/10.0 (or something like that) customer rating from www.resellerratings.com This is to attest for their past positive feedback, I guess. In some very small shrift, however, it says that this rating is from January/2004. Well, just go to www.resellerratings.com and you will see that this "great customer feedback" is far, far from the truth. This cheap way of trying to mislead their customers leaves a bitter taste in the mouth and makes one wander what should one expect from them in the future? And from what I have read in other reviews it is nothing good, at all.
Otherwise, yeah, the pricing is great compared to other AMD alternatives but I have also heard of some overheating problems with AMD laptops from ibuypower.com and cyberpower.com. I am not sure but I think they use the Uniwill base which is built pretty cheaply. The same ones you can get at mwave.com for much less (without the nice paint) and I have read some not so great reviews for the Uniwill base - if people like it, it is mainly for the low price which I guess, in this case, speaks for the overall quality of the machine. Ibuypower basically does an "Alienware" on the Uniwill and sells them for more money then they would otherwise.
This and the average customer feedback made me turn my back on the ibuypower and cyberpower shops. And I was very close to getting one of them especially after I saw the nice paint and price. Some more research, however, made me see the eMachines M6811 from BestBuy and the Sager NP4750 from www.pctorque.com as my only well-priced AMD 64 alternatives.
Hope this helps.
Best of luck.

The laptop I linked to is not based on the Uniwill which has a 15.4" and has a Radeon 9700. Rather it is the older AMD based system that is the same as the Hypersonic AX6 and the Voodoo 855. I'll agree that Ibuypower and cyberpower have some negative reviews and average reselleratings but many of those are for the desktops not notebooks. Also several people in these forums have had a good experience with them. I think Rincewind got his laptop from Ibuypower and is very pleased with their service.

Mine should ship on the 13th. I ordered it on the 26th so the wait is quite long but hopefully worth it. I'm not entirely sure how normal my wait is but I'm going to call tomorrow to find out what is happening.