A question about laptop hardware
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I've been poking around looking to buy a laptop (never had one, don't know anything about them :-() and this one[^] sorta stood out a bit since it has 1Mb L2 cache instead of the more common 512Mb and uses 333 Mhz memory instead of 266. But how much difference will this make? As opposed to getting a faster processor (P4M 2.2 Ghz instead of 1.6). Or a 5400rpm disk instead of 4200. It's at the limit of what I was thinking of spending (AUD 3000). I need something reasonably grunty to do development on - those Awasu builds are taking a while now :rolleyes:. I'm really going to miss the RAID'ed dev box I've got now :((
Lets be honest, isn't it amazing how many truly stupid people you meet during the course of the day. Carry around a pad and pencil, you'll have twenty or thirty names by the end of the day - George Carlin Awasu 1.2 [^]: A free RSS reader with support for Code Project.
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I've been poking around looking to buy a laptop (never had one, don't know anything about them :-() and this one[^] sorta stood out a bit since it has 1Mb L2 cache instead of the more common 512Mb and uses 333 Mhz memory instead of 266. But how much difference will this make? As opposed to getting a faster processor (P4M 2.2 Ghz instead of 1.6). Or a 5400rpm disk instead of 4200. It's at the limit of what I was thinking of spending (AUD 3000). I need something reasonably grunty to do development on - those Awasu builds are taking a while now :rolleyes:. I'm really going to miss the RAID'ed dev box I've got now :((
Lets be honest, isn't it amazing how many truly stupid people you meet during the course of the day. Carry around a pad and pencil, you'll have twenty or thirty names by the end of the day - George Carlin Awasu 1.2 [^]: A free RSS reader with support for Code Project.
Totally IMHO: The only laptops I have now are old ones, that I normally can't be bothered using. But the same principles apply to laptops as to normal desktops. Except the obvious price/upgradability and size. So how about seeing if you can find a similar desktop config to see how long your "Awasu" build takes. The other thing to do is to work out what is going to be causing the bottlenecks. I think the specs on this laptop look good, and I doubt that trading off the cache size, and FSB for a 20% faster CPU would be worth it. So maybe make sure that the heatsink will actually come off so you can upgrade to a 3GHZ Centrino (or whatever) in 2 years or so when the Price has come right down. That's the same philosphy I'm now using with Desktops, eg "make sure the motherboard" is top of the range, not the processor alone. Generally I think getting bang for buck is trying to limit bthe bottlenecks. If you are going to be using big databases get the fastest biggest HD you can. But then sometimes you can get better HD performance by partitioning, and using clever cluster sizes and formatting. "Note SATA drives rock though" Also I'd consider bunpimg the RAM up as well, unless it is already two banks of 256, and full since it's DDR. Regardz Colin J Davies
*** WARNING *
This could be addictive
**The minion's version of "Catch :bob: "It's a real shame that people as stupid as you can work out how to use a computer. said by Christian Graus in the Soapbox
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Totally IMHO: The only laptops I have now are old ones, that I normally can't be bothered using. But the same principles apply to laptops as to normal desktops. Except the obvious price/upgradability and size. So how about seeing if you can find a similar desktop config to see how long your "Awasu" build takes. The other thing to do is to work out what is going to be causing the bottlenecks. I think the specs on this laptop look good, and I doubt that trading off the cache size, and FSB for a 20% faster CPU would be worth it. So maybe make sure that the heatsink will actually come off so you can upgrade to a 3GHZ Centrino (or whatever) in 2 years or so when the Price has come right down. That's the same philosphy I'm now using with Desktops, eg "make sure the motherboard" is top of the range, not the processor alone. Generally I think getting bang for buck is trying to limit bthe bottlenecks. If you are going to be using big databases get the fastest biggest HD you can. But then sometimes you can get better HD performance by partitioning, and using clever cluster sizes and formatting. "Note SATA drives rock though" Also I'd consider bunpimg the RAM up as well, unless it is already two banks of 256, and full since it's DDR. Regardz Colin J Davies
*** WARNING *
This could be addictive
**The minion's version of "Catch :bob: "It's a real shame that people as stupid as you can work out how to use a computer. said by Christian Graus in the Soapbox
ColinDavies wrote: make sure the motherboard is top of the range I did that when I spec'ed my desktop and that's good advice. With the desktop, I suspect that having RAID and bigger disk caches (8Mb) made a bigger difference in build times than having a faster processor. All those little .OBJ files :-) So I might try to find a faster disk but the fastest seems to be 5400rpm :~ The other one I'm looking at is a Toshiba Satellite A10[^] that has a 2.2Ghz processor and is about 20% cheaper but somehow seems less sexy than the HP :-) :rolleyes:
Lets be honest, isn't it amazing how many truly stupid people you meet during the course of the day. Carry around a pad and pencil, you'll have twenty or thirty names by the end of the day - George Carlin Awasu 1.2 [^]: A free RSS reader with support for Code Project.
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I've been poking around looking to buy a laptop (never had one, don't know anything about them :-() and this one[^] sorta stood out a bit since it has 1Mb L2 cache instead of the more common 512Mb and uses 333 Mhz memory instead of 266. But how much difference will this make? As opposed to getting a faster processor (P4M 2.2 Ghz instead of 1.6). Or a 5400rpm disk instead of 4200. It's at the limit of what I was thinking of spending (AUD 3000). I need something reasonably grunty to do development on - those Awasu builds are taking a while now :rolleyes:. I'm really going to miss the RAID'ed dev box I've got now :((
Lets be honest, isn't it amazing how many truly stupid people you meet during the course of the day. Carry around a pad and pencil, you'll have twenty or thirty names by the end of the day - George Carlin Awasu 1.2 [^]: A free RSS reader with support for Code Project.
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Alienware makes some awesome machines, but I'm gettin me a new Ferarri Acer Ferarri