Help me choose my laptop please!

[Mach1threat]

how would the pentium M / amd 64 moble chip perform compared to that 3700+ athlon 64? I dont really need more than an hour of battery time

 

[andylong333]

Ok let me start this with what i want. I basically want a laptop that is mid-grade ( + / - $1500 ). Im not really worried about battery life as i am performance. The only thing that is really holding me back is the video card in this notebook. Here are the specs:

www.ibuypower.com


15.4 1280X800
Mobile Amd athlon 64 3700+
1024 DDR 400 ram (corsair)
Mobility 128 MB ATI radeon 9700 Pro (256 bit)
80 gig 7200rpm HD

Total: $1,322.00 + Shipping ect


I think that is a good price for a laptop and i have had good dealings with this company. Do you guys think that the video card will be able to run doom 3, halflife 2, or world of warcraft even at a low resolution / quality? Im just lookin for something mobile that will do the same things as my mid grade PC.

SPAM deleted.

 

[Mach1threat]

Thank you for cutting the spam

Are the pentium M laptops underrated compared to the Pentium 4's standards ( IE: how amd runs at a lower ghz. but is "rated" at pentium 4's standards)?

 

[Brtnboarder495]

I would go dual-core, why stick with Pentium D? Pentium D is on it's way out, and you can get dual-core for hardly any difference in price.

 

[Jorsoft]

Really, this is arguable. The Turion and Pentium M are pretty close in performance, and the Pentium M's battery life beats the Turion 64's by about ten minutes. The Mobile Athlon 64 is also about even in performance with some Pentium Ms, however, the battery life absolutely sucks, and runs very, very hot (and I say this from personal experience). But the Core Duo that Intel introduced is quite powerful. I'd like to see how AMD is going to respond to it...

At my work I do run 3dmark on a lot of the higher end laptops so that my gaming customers know what to expect and I've found that Turions consistently beat Pentium M laptops in performance at the expense of 10-15 minutes of battery life. Almost every single one of my customers would rather have the faster performance.
The Athlon 64 is pretty powerful, but the fact that battery life is very limited on it makes it less popular and not a great option for a lot of people. If I were buying a new laptop I'd honestly stick with either a Turion64 or Pentium M, whichever one I can get a better price on.

 

[Mach1threat]

I would go dual-core, why stick with Pentium D? Pentium D is on it's way out, and you can get dual-core for hardly any difference in price.

I hear if you are just doing one thing at a time the dual core isnt really worth the money. Is that right?

Do you have any links to companys that sell the dual-core in their laptops with a good video card?

 

[Brtnboarder495]

Apple and HP both offer Core Duo technology, although only Apple offers a good video card, a Mobiliy X1600, while the HP offers an Intel GMA 950. Other companies may offer notebooks with Core Duo, but I'm not going to do all your research for you. ATM, Dell isn't offering it.