New 3750 - Page 2

Re: Re: Centrino comparison to P4?

Agreed the Centrino monicker is Intel marketing hype, it is indeed a Pentium M, but it is not to be confused with a Pentium 4 M.

The Pentium M is built from the ground up as a mobile CPU, the Pentium 4M was a reworked desktop CPU.

From PC Magazine:

...a 1.4-GHz Pentium M unit easily beat out a 2.4-GHz P4-M system on our Business Winstone and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone tests. On Business Winstone, the Acer unit (the fastest of these Pentium M portables) scored 31.9, a 38 percent increase over the 2.4-GHz P4-M's score of 23.2.


That is what I've been reading elsewhere, as well. The Pentium M, which is currently available in clocks from 1.3g to 1.7g, whoops up on the P4Ms. For a mobile CPU, it rocks.

Re: Re: Re: Centrino comparison to P4?

I think Intel should have come up with a new name to replace pentium with a while ago.. too many variants and then they do this marketing hype bit...


Pentium4-m Pentium 4,3,2 Pentium M and on and on... only reason the pentium M is in contention is due to it's cache.. also most pentium M solutions I've seen have shared video memory

Re: Re: Re: Re: Centrino comparison to P4?

Well they can't change the Pentium name because they have too many marketing dollars behind it...consumers identify Intel with Pentium. Joe consumer wouldn't recognize (for example) Prescott as coming from Intel.

Really seriously thinking of getting the 3750 -- will it have enough juice for a student who only want to take it to class to take notes, write paper, download and play a couple of MP3 and perhaps watch a couple of DVD? Thanks for any inputs.

Playing DVDs

To answer your question yes it would have more than enough power to do all of the things that you described. The video card in most systems has little to nothing to do with DVD playback. Any computer faster than 400 mhz will be able to decode DVD video. The only factor that the video card would have is in the overall display quality. If the display looks like crap during normal 2D operation (i.e. Windows) then the picture quality while watching DVD will also look like crap. Of course the opposite is also true.

judging from the pictures of the 375 on clevo's site, that definitely looks like the compaq x1000 (which I own). Although pctorque's spec sheet lists this as 0.2" thicker than the x1000 and 0.1lb heavier. nevertheless it seems to be the same design. Should be a slightly cheaper alternative to the x1000, although the x1000 has a radeon 9200 card in it

Woohoo, does that mean the 3750 has an AGP slot for a discrete graphics card ? The x1000 has swappable graphics card.

Is this what I want?

Hello--as a college student somewhat frustrated by the clunkiness of the 56xx series (let alone the 88xx) I'm intrigued by the 3750... but it sounds like it falls a little short of being the "dream college laptop" the way that the 56xx (or 88xx) was the "dream desktop replacement."

Most of these are just questions that stem from me being uneducated (lol), but any reflections on the following would be appreciated:

1. Why do centrino laptops tend to have poorer resolution?

2. How big of a deal would the 'poor graphics card' (again, I don't know nuts about graphics cards) be for the typical college student? I'm probably not going to be running any high tech games on my machine... but it would be nice to be able to render things in MatLab/Mathematica, use an external TV tuner, etc. ... also, I find myself giving presentations (powerpoint) often from my laptop... will the graphics card affect this? (Or, for example, if I wanted to watch a DVD from my laptop, but output to a tv)

3. Portability (~6 lbs) sounds really nice compared to my current 56xx system... but that's still kind of a moot point if the system is as loud as the 56xx's. I guess this isn't a clevo model--but i'm skeptical about getting my hopes up.

4. What are the details about the firewire/usb ports? (sorry if this has already been discussed?)


5. Other than the graphics card and CPU, what else separates the machine from the 56xx models?


Thanks!
-Flip

To start, about the only reason you would need an advance graphics card is for real-time 3d rendering, as in games or 3dmax. Playing a DVD won't matter at all, as the CPU's doing the MPEG decompression.

Pentium M's don't have a conversion rate to P4's. 1.6ghz is 1.6 ghz. If you were doing a large calculation, a p4 2.4ghz will stomp a pentium M 1.6ghz into the ground. The Pentium M, however, will SEEM a little more responsive than a P4 because of it's increased cache. That's about it.

fliptomato, if you get a compaq x1000, it seems to be the same machien but you have 3 resolution choices. I'm running the 15.4" widescreen at 1680x1050 and its perfect for me. However, you can get a 1920x1200 resolution if you want(i think that would be too small!).

Plus the x1000 has a really good graphics card.

Having said my praise for the x1000, I nevertheless suspect that the sager 3750 is going to allow screen upgrades as well as video card.

Pricing on the 3750

Just saw an ad for Sager in Computer Shopper -- the 3750 with 1.4 Ghz is priced at $1495. That's a really sweet price. Went to the Sager site but there's no info there. I thought the model wouldn't be available for another three weeks?

I'm not quite sure I understand how the pentium M can "seem" more "responsive" because of its cache. So the hz ~ calculations per second? ... and cache ~ amount of memory the processor can process at a time? (can you *tell* i'm completely ignorant? )

In this case, what kinds of tasks are more dependent on "cache" versus those dependent on "processing speed." ? I imagine raw computations would be dependent on ghz (something which makes me a little queasy when I start thinking about some of the data that I process with matlab).

Incidentally, yes Statix--that x1000 system looks very nice! Large HD, crisp screen.


-Flip

Wouldn't this logic thow the whole theory of processor evolution out the window? I mean, AMD would love to argue with you.

I think the P-M is so radically different in its core that saying it's clock-for-clock equal to a standard (wide-pipe) P4 may not be totally accurate.

-myrkat

Put it this way: put a raw calculation benchmark like pifast on a Pentium M, and a P4 with the same exact RAM. P4 at 2.4, Pentium M at 1.6. P4 will finish first, guarenteed. True, the Pentium M will beat the P4 if the P4 was clocked at 1.6 ghz, but at 2.4 ghz, the P4 will win. By raw calculation speed, a P4 will most likely win. However, in general everyday use, the Pentium M will seem more responsive and snappier, because it doesn't have to retrieve stuff from RAM as often.

It's the same idea with Athlons. In raw calculation, an XP 2000+ will not beat a P4 2ghz. However, because it's better optimized for everyday applications, the XP 2000+ will feel just as fast, if not faster than your standard p4 2ghz. It's a matter a feel...

If it's just the "feel," then wouldn't we see worse performance in benchmarks?

I mean, what about stuff like this?

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10987

It's been widely proven that Athlons and and Pentium-Ms with lower clockspeeds can outcompute P4s. Check this thread for an extansive discussion of the topic, and why clock speed is not a particularly accurate measure of computing power between different chips.

What it boils down to is that P4s are designed with a massive pipeline which allows them to run at outrageous clock speeds, which is great for marketing - Intel has been very big on promoting the "faster clock speed is better" belief. However, a long pipeline creates huge inefficiencies and isn't necessarily the fastest design for acomplishing actual computing.

In fact, Intel maintains a sizeable lead in die-size and chipmaking technology over AMD that, it could be argued, should provide a greater performnce edge than what the P4 currently enjoys over the Athlon, arguably indicating that Intel's massive-pipeline architecture sacrifices real chip perfromance for a more impressive clock speed number for marketing purposes.

While it is true that cache size, clock speed, and pipeline architecture will affect performance in different ways, there really is no such thing as 'optimizing a processor for everyday applications' - anything that improves performance of 'everyday applications' improves performance of 'advanced applications' almost as much, and vice versa. To optimize for one over the other, there would have to be noticeable design tradeoffs in performance of one vs the other.

The real place you'll see improvement in computing power is Hyperthreading, which you can consider either as providing the near-equivalent of a second processor, or as eliminating most of the inefficiencies of a long pipeline that severely limit the P4.

-phubar

Quote:
""The screen on this thing is supposed to be very nice. It's being compared to the Toshiba CSAV screen and we'll be interested to see how they look next to each other.""

/sigh. I really dont get some companies' decisions. Same as with the 17" wide screen Toshiba with the 5200 32mb.

Why would they put a CASV quality alike screen in a laptop that wont be geared towards the customers who will make the most extensive graphic usage -since it's got a low end graph card-. Wouldnt it make more sense to put such a quality screen on a 5980'ish machine that will be used by gamers, graph and picture editors, etc?

/ponders.



Cheers.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I really dont get some companies' decisions. Same as with the 17" wide screen Toshiba with the 5200 32mb.

Why would they put a CASV quality alike screen in a laptop that wont be geared towards the customers who will make the most extensive graphic usage -since it's got a low end graph card-. Wouldnt it make more sense to put such a quality screen on a 5980'ish machine that will be used by gamers, graph and picture editors, etc?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amen to that. 5680 with the new 15.4" LCD would be killer (if it is like the CASV), but IMHO the 5680 also needs an upgraded sound system...

Anybody get one of these yet? Anybody have a review. I know, I know not a big gaming machine.

I have not had any time to play games in years.

Matt