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What processor is for me?

post #1 of 27
5/6/05 at 1:23am
Thread Starter 
hi, i will be buying a new laptop soon, to have at the end of june, so if i end up buying from a co. like alienware, i would need to order at begining of june.

i like gaming. i want to game, and i want the laptop to be good for gaming for a few years at least. i want to be able to play the top of the line games for lets say.... 3 years.

it would like the laptop to last for 3-4 hours with light usage on battery, not heavy gaming or DVD playing, but internet browsing...

i would like it quietish, and lightish (lets say under 10 lbs)


i know all of these are impossible, but gaming is the top priority. if i have to i will take the great gaming.

i want it about ~$2,500.

which processor is going to do it all this for me? (and provide a little proof please)

so far, ive been looking at the sager 9860 as my top choice... great gaming, with tv tuner, however no battery and its a ton. i will want a 60 gig 7200 rpm, but not 2. 1 optical drive is probably enough.

so, is there a more efficient processor that is still great for gaming? will it be available, and cheap enough by june 30th? (arrival, not purchase.)
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post #2 of 27
5/6/05 at 1:26am
Dell XPS 2
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post #3 of 27
5/6/05 at 1:32am
as in the Pentium M (Sodoma) is good for gaming. And the Dell XPS 2 has it. And is currently considered THE best gaming notebook avaliable, hands down.

I myself prefer the Athlon 64 but that's a personal preference. The Pentium M's large L2 cache helps it immensly in gaming.
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post #4 of 27
5/6/05 at 1:34am
The latest Intel Pentium M processors are (according to Intel, no less) just as powerful as the latest Pentium 4 Processors. In addition, they are the ONLY processors currently available that will give you the battery life you're looking for. Since gaming is your top priority, but you also want decent battery life, I'd recommend the Dell 9300. If you don't mind having less battery life, the Dell XPS2 is the best gaming laptop in existence right now. Both of them have the Nvidia GeForce Go 6800 graphics card, but the XPS2 has the much faster ultra version. And both use the Pentium M processor. If you want something a little smaller (both the Dells are 17") and lighter, look at the Acer Travelmate 8104 and the Asus Z71v, both of which have very good graphics cards "one step down" from the 6800.
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post #5 of 27
5/6/05 at 1:45am
Thread Starter 
how exactly do the centrino things match up to p4s?

is it like a 2 ghz centrino = a 3 ghz p4?


hmm, xps2 is pretty expensive though...
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post #6 of 27
5/6/05 at 1:49am
Quote:
Originally Posted by daveo_the_great
how exactly do the centrino things match up to p4s?

is it like a 2 ghz centrino = a 3 ghz p4?


hmm, xps2 is pretty expensive though...
Pentium M clockspeed x1.7= Pentium 4 clockspeed, so 2 Ghz P-M = 3.4 Ghz P4

Most of the Dells are overpriced initially. They're more reasonable when you use one of their ubiquitous coupons.
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post #7 of 27
5/6/05 at 2:00am
Thread Starter 
well on their website, using the ~ $500 off thing or whatever...

compared to the sager 9860, i would be paying $600 for a laptop that lasted maybe 2-3 hours more battery charge, and is 3 pounds lighter. plus what really hurts, is the memory... i kinda wanted 1 gig initially, and then in maybe a year or two, upgrade to 2 or more gigs.


also, how will the centrino work with the 64bit windows? i dont know much about it...

how long does the 2 ghz centrino last, and how long does the p4 3.4 last under same conditions, xps vs sager 9860, only doing simple internet browsing?
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post #8 of 27
5/6/05 at 2:11am
The Pentium M is a 32-bit processor. It will not run 64-bit Windows. However, you also don't need 64-bit Windows, so it works out.

2 hours XPS2, 1.25 hours 9860
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post #9 of 27
5/6/05 at 2:15am
Thread Starter 
2 hours vs 1.25....


hmm.... $600 for less expandability, 45 minutes longer, and 3 pounds lighter....

well i need to work out more, so ill save the 600 for now.... next plz!

btw, thanks for the help and suggestions so far, dell is just too overpriced for me.
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post #10 of 27
5/6/05 at 2:26am
okay, next up are the Acer Travelmate 8104 and the Asus Z71v. They both have Pentium M processors and good video cards (ATI x700 and Nvidia 6600, respectively). The Acer only comes in 2 configurations (8103 & 8104) in the US. The Asus is customizable. The Acer gets between 2.5 and 3.5 hours on battery, and the Asus gets up to 4+ hours on battery. Check out cdw.com to look at the Acer or istnc.com/store to look at the Asus.

...and you're welcome!
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post #11 of 27
5/7/05 at 1:38am
Thread Starter 
so how does centrino make the proccesser 1.7x faster? was there any tests done or anything?


and what is "dothan?"


that asus is seeming pretty nice, ill have to check out their forum and see the stories...
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post #12 of 27
5/7/05 at 1:50am
heres are some pics of my friends xps2>> http://home.comcast.net/~awgest/dell/dell.htm
i have this notebook in my hands as of the present time, and i can tell you with no BS that this machine is a gaming machine. it plays doom3 and half life at 1024x768 AA at 4x and ANI at 8x with no hiccups whatsoever. it even plays homeworld2 with 5 cpu enemies each building their own fleet. for your $2500 the XPS2 can be yours, as thats what was paid for it.

1gb of ram.
intel pentium-m at 2ghz with 2mb of L2 cache.
60gb 7200rpm harddrive.
nVidia 6800Go Ultra with 256MB of ram.

i must say the DVD recorder is slow when installing games or files; but so
what. this puppy rocks!
impressive for a notebook.
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post #13 of 27
5/7/05 at 1:50am
you can find my Asus Z71v review by clicking on the link in my signature. It, and 3 or 4 others are in the Asus review section of Notebook Forums. Dothan is Intel's code name for the current version of the Pentium M processor. It replaced the initial version, code-named Banias. And the 1.7 is a multiplier to indicate comparison between Pentium M processors and Pentium 4 processors. You could look at it this way: for every clock cycle, or every hertz speed of the processor, the Pentium M is 1.7 times as efficient as the Pentium 4, or 70% better. This means that a slower P-M processor can outperform a much faster P4 processor.
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post #14 of 27
5/7/05 at 1:59am
djembe, do you know if the motherboard is made by asus?
nice rig! i like the blue power button, it adds a nice flare to the asthetic look.
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post #15 of 27
5/7/05 at 2:03am
yup, the motherboard, video card, and half a dozen other things in this are made by Asus. if you look at the Sandra stats, you'll see "manufacturer: Asustek computer, inc." a lot. It's under system, chassis, mainboard, chipset 1, all the USB controllers, and the firewire controller.
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post #16 of 27
5/7/05 at 2:38am
Thread Starter 
so is it possible to have a pentium 4 centrino? (3.4 x 1.7...)


also, any 17 inchers with a tv tuner that use centrino? (basically, i want a sager 9860 that has centrino instead....)
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post #17 of 27
5/7/05 at 2:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by daveo_the_great
so is it possible to have a pentium 4 centrino? (3.4 x 1.7...)
We could dream couldn't we
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post #18 of 27
5/7/05 at 2:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by daveo_the_great
so is it possible to have a pentium 4 centrino? (3.4 x 1.7...)


also, any 17 inchers with a tv tuner that use centrino? (basically, i want a sager 9860 that has centrino instead....)
One of the new Asus W models, either the updated W1 or the W2v, will have a TV tuner built in, but I don't remember which one. The W2 is 17".
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post #19 of 27
5/7/05 at 2:46am
Thread Starter 
well many of you seem to really love centrino, even for gaming notebooks.... i always thought that centrino wasnt for gaming. so, what are the benefits of getting a P4?
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post #20 of 27
5/7/05 at 2:56am
The p4 is better at number crunching, scientific applications, and encoding type of applications. I think it is about on par or a little behind the pentium M for gaming with the same setup.
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