AMD/Intel/Laptops huh?

[AF]

OK I see a laptop with an AMD Sempron 3000+ for £499.

Now what gets me si that I always thought the 3000+ was meant to mean it ran as fast as a 3Ghz intel cpu.

But then I see other similair laptops but with intel cpus around 1.6 Ghz for similar prices.

Am I missing something todo with intel cpus? Hw am I supposed to comapre the speeds of the two? Is the AMD sempron really twice as fast as the others in tis price range I saw? Is ti really a bargain over the others? Or am I missing a piece of information about comapring intel to AMD?

[Lindir The Green]

General concensus is that AMD, while slower, is better for gaming because of... something.

Something that has to do with how it processes data, not the speed.

[AF]

That doesnt answer my question though.

[Lindir The Green]

Well it pointed you in the general direction of what the difference between intels and AMDs are.

[Drone_Fragger]

a 2600+ semperon will run as well as a 2.6 ghz Celeron. The actuall Core clock speed is kinda irrelevent in an AMD.

And don't forgot, If its a dual core laptop, That 1.6ghz is per core, So in total its actually 3.2. And Intel generally melt your legs in a laptop anyway.

[FuzionMonkey]

lol sempron.

The mobile intel processors are better then the desktop ones. Yay for isreali design team!

[SinbadEV]

<talking out my ass>yeah... I'm getting really confused, I thought top of the line computers were 3+GHz, but I keep seeing these 1.6s all over the place... I also remember hearing that AMD 3000 was acctually closet to a INtel 2.4 or something like that when it comes to raw flops... I think you have to be careful with the dual core thing, Intel is showing the single proc speed instead of the combined speed, because technically 2x1.6 isn't the same as 3.2 when it comes to raw proccessing speed... </talking out my ass>

[Erom]

Clock speed is a suprisingly bad metric for how good a precessor is. There are a host of other important factors, all of which are inter-dependent. It's complicated enough that comparing through pure stats is often misleading, and benchmarks are usually a better test.

[Forboding Angel]

get an amd barton core processor if you can. They are amazing.

[wizard8873]

if you're going for a laptop and want AMD, then get the turion. the 3000+ means it performs as well as, if not better then, a 3.0GHz Celeron while being much slower.

for gaming, go AMD. for general office uses, go Intel. I would suggest that you wait for the Conroe to come out. it's supposed to be better then any AMD out right now if you're in it for power. if not, still wait as the other processors will drop down in price.

[AF]

Well I'm coming itno a wad of money soon, onyl I dont wanna go spend £1k on a laptop, I doubt I'll have that money for a longtime, I'm looking more around the £500 mark

[Forboding Angel]

AF, the socket 939 amd's are being replaced by a newer processor. Make sure you get one of those. Also, these new processors run MUCH cooler than predecessors. For example my athlon xp 2.2 runs much hotter than the 3800 new processor.

[Drone_Fragger]

if you're going for a laptop and want AMD, then get the turion. the 3000+ means it performs as well as, if not better then, a 3.0GHz Celeron while being much slower.

for gaming, go AMD. for general office uses, go Intel. I would suggest that you wait for the Conroe to come out. it's supposed to be better then any AMD out right now if you're in it for power. if not, still wait as the other processors will drop down in price.

Conroe > all. They proved it. Its good for gaming, Office work and mobility. Well. Mobility in the sense that if you have one in a laptop it won't melt your legs off.

[Caydr]

Won't be bothered to read all this, I'm just going to say: sempron = celeron = crap.

Pentium M < Turion = fantabulous

[Felix the Cat]

The Intel Centrino mobile processors tend to have better performance for their clock speed than other processors. For example, my Intel Pentium 4 3.33GHz laptop is roughly equivalent to a Centrino 2GHz or something like that. Centrinos run cooler and use less electricity, thus their laptops tend to have higher battery life. My laptop randomly shuts off if I take it off of its special cooling rack and has a battery life of about 50 minutes.

AMD chips confuse me. I'm an Intel man. I got heavily into computing right when AMD came out with ultra-crappy cheap chips for the mass market. (We won't even mention Cyrix here.)

[Caydr]

Turion outperforms any intel chip except the Pentium M (which is ridiculously overpriced).

I know what you mean about that ridiculous cooling rack crap. I had a Toshiba Satellite A30 - unless you had its special "power management" software (which slows down every aspect of the computer massively, even keyboard responsiveness... like 3 seconds after you push the key it appears, NO exaggeration) it would overheat in minutes while IDLING unless I put it on this cookie sheet I found ^^

So I got this HP Pavilion 5020 now. Turion 1.6 or 1.8 ghz, I forget. The ML series, so it's not the most efficient they've got, but it still surprises me with its speed - in pure CPU applications it rivals my 3 ghz p4 overclocked to 3.6. Runs so cool the fan only comes on if I play Spring

If you don't care for AMD, let me give you just one piece of advice you CANNOT ignore: Don't get a garbage Intel chipset. Get Nforce or Mobile ATI. Price doesn't matter, you *need* a proper graphics chip.

[Erom]

Aye, I second that point on graphics. Fun story: I was once wiring up a custom board to connect my Nforce card's second monitor port up to an ancient projector me and my friends pulled out of a dumpster. We're talking like... 1950's tech or some such. Anyway, my friend royally screws up and crosses power and ground, shorting accross my card. My computer snow crashes, goes crazy, and locks up. We thought it was shot, but it turns out the card actually has onboard ground fault protection that routed the power surge to the ground of the battery charger cord (thank god I had that plugged in). That card runs fine to this day.