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64-bit Laptops Reviewed
prostoalex writes "ExtremeTech reviews current mega-notebooks, which are powerful enough to become a desktop replacement. Among the laptops reviewed there's one with 64-bit AMD Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz clock rate) - the Voodoo Envy m:855."
... Steve Jobs is choking and fuming because he wasn't able to fit G5s in PowerBooks and sell the "first 64-bit laptops".
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I'd really like one of these.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I saw the name Voodoo and about shit myself thinking that 3DFX had come back from the dead. Thankfully, it's just another company using the Voodoo name for their product. However seeing 3DFX come back only to enter into the laptop market, or computer market for that matter, would be humorous. One CPU for adding, one CPU for subtracting.
Hasn't almost every notebook that has come out in the last 10 years been touted as a "desktop replacement" ??
The Voodoo Envy laptop makes such promises as "3 + hours of battery life(when running real world apps like MS Office and the internet)". It also weighs in at 8 pounds.
No thanks, I'll pass on that.
My idea of a laptop is a good mix of power to get things done and portability. I doubt users will be carrying around their 8 pound Voodoo Envy for long.
Add that to the $3500 price tag and you have an expensive and unusable "laptop".
Come on, there are two reasons to prefer a desktop over a laptop. First, ergonomics: some people just prefer to have a big keyboard and a big monitor and being able to move the two independently of each other. Second, hardware capabilities-- you can fit more into a desktop, and you can upgrade it easily. (Oh, and you don't need to optimize for size or battery lifetime, so things can be cheaper and more powerful.) Neither of these is going to go away. Even if there are some really powerful laptops out there now, there'll be some even more powerful desktops coming up soon.
That said, there's no reason why laptops can't replace desktops for many kinds of people today. I haven't had a desktop in 3 1/2 years -- nothing new there.
Wow! Pretty impressive. This could be the next ultimate LAN gaming machine, but will I ever really be able to run it on batteries for more than 15 minutes? I know they claim 3+ hours, but.....
What about cooling? I thought my 12in Powerbook got pretty warm on occasion, but this might have to come with a warning.
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The feeling of actually placing an Athlon 64 notebook on your lap is probably not too different from placing an upside-down George Foreman grill on your lap.
No kids for you!
while this is a pretty interesting article, the benchmarks are dubious at best. most, if not all of these apps, are 32bit apps. the OS seems to be win2k, which last time i checked is not a 64bit OS. altho i'd have to admit they are comparing the notebooks themselves and not the chips. in any event they both look like monster "laptops".
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Anandtech has had a review for a week or so:
part 1
part 2
their conclusion:
"We recommend this beautiful notebook to those looking to tackle the best of desktop gaming, high-end multimedia users, and even those looking for an alternative to the very popular Pentium 4 desktop replacement notebook, like those that are ODM through Clevo (Sager/Eurocom/Hypersonic). At the moment, this is the only notebook on the market to use a processor from the Athlon 64 family, and we are sure there will be more to follow. We are particularly excited to hear about AMD?s upcoming mobile Athlon 64 processor, which should breathe a breath of fresh air that mobile systems have yet to fully appreciate"
later,
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
Personally, I think these things are like road-biased SUVs - overpriced hybrids that by being adequate for two tasks are not very good at either. Gimme a real desktop machine, a thin-and-light (or, better still, an ultralight), and rsync and you've got a much better solution.
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--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I have to bitch about the low memory limits on these AMD64-based laptops. All the ones I've seen so far max out at 1GB (actually, many of the desktops also max out in the 1-2GB range, but at least a few are cluefull). This pretty much kills the point of having a 64-bit processor (I guess you still might get a boost with properly tuned integer code).
Word to the wise: 64-bit apps actually take up more memory, if for no other reason than all the pointers are now 64-bit instead of 32-bit. So your 1GB laptop is going to feel a lot more memory constrained than if it were running 32-bit code. The Intel systems have better power management, and they typically will let you go to 2GB, so for most folks they will actually perform significantly better.
Methinks this first generation of laptops is essentially for folks who want the bragging rights of saying they have a 64-bit CPU, without really understanding the implications.
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Pros:
I don't know why people drop serious cash on these things. It's something like $700 for a low-end Dell laptop, which gives you everything you need except serious gaming potential. I'd never make a laptop my main system just because of the reliability factor alone.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Useless graphs, over-emphasis on gaming, lots of flashy buzzwords and "benchmarks" that involve nothing more other then running the latest games... Did someone screw up the DNS records for extremetech.com and reroute all traffic to tomshardware.com? No? Damned!
Seriously, all of that is fun but laptops are usually sold for two reasons*, one being the size and the fact it's easy to hide then. ( really nice if you don't want a desktop case in the middle of your living room ) The second reason is that they are mobile ( really! ) and thus can be lugged around by business people who seem to value their email more then their own lives. What about important factors to people who want a laptop for those two reasons? What about size, weigth, heat during use, screen brightness, stability, etc etc? 98% of the people who buy a laptop care more about the damned thing being lightweigth instead of being able to cram out 0,2543 fps on Halo. If you're going to buy a laptop for gaming you're a bit dense to start with. You can buy a state-of-the-art laptop and before you left the story it's ancient already. Try upgrading the proc or graphics card of your shiny new laptop to run HL3 or Doom4. Try playing for more then six hours without the system stalling due to overheating. Try to install an extra HD or something.
There, simply put; laptops are nice but aren't made to be used for gaming. Hence why putting a bunch of laptops through a series of benchmarks, aimed at gaming and set up by some people who most likely consider this to be the most arousing thing on the internet, is very useless. At best.
* = Working in computer retail business, ( kill me please ) so I unfortunately know what I'm talking about here.
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My desktop is almost 2 meters long and 1 meter front to back. It holds a 24.1" LCD and a 17" CRT (G4 is underneath), an iBook along with a set of speakers and subwoofer. You can also find the normal suite of accessories, external harddrives, digital cameras, hubs, coffee mugs, remote controls, shrunken head pencil holders, etc.
I seriously doubt all this stuff can fit on top of a laptop, no matter that it is 64-bit. Besides, I can get a new, larger desk if I need, it for a lot less than the price these things are liable to bring.
You guys are pulling my leg, right? Right? sheesh...
I've been drooling over Hypersonic's Laptops for quite a long time now, and I find it very hard to believe that either of these companies have the first Athlon 64 laptop (which Hypersonic has had basically since the Athlon Mobile 64 was announced) or the first RAID array in a laptop, which Hypersonic has had for a long time in their Aviator GX8 series.
Way too many "journalists" see something like that and go "whoa, that must be the first time that's ever been done." without ever looking into it.
Random and weird software I've written.
They pack so much power into notebooks and skip out on what's important..the keyboard. The notebook keyboards are smaller than the "standard" size so if you're used to touch typing on a normal keyboard, it's a pain to use a notebook, and they will never be a desktop replacement.
I find the apple powerbooks to be the most pathetic because the 17" has plenty of space for a normal keyboard and yet it has the same tiny POS. The price difference is huge and I really couldn't care less if my screen is 12" or 17", but I'd be willing to pay more for the larger keyboard.
I find even powerful laptops a poor second to my desktop. One thing is 3d agmes. The laptop I have does ok, but still nowhere near what my desktop can do. Of course, there are now better laptops that are as good or better than my desktop, but likewise there are better desktop cards. However the biggest thing is audio work. I finally have audio interfaces that will work with a laptop (firewire and usb), however the drives are still damn slow. So that means it's either a lot of wating, or bringing an external drive. Oh, and you can never have too much CPU for that sort of thing.
Now to try and use a P2 433? Thanks but no thanks. It'd be faster to save the data, walk it to a real comupter, render it, and walk it back than wait on a complex rendering on that. And forget about games.
Look, I appreciate that there are people out there who do very little with their computers resource wise. That's great, I'm happy for you. However this silliness of "Well X old box is great and all you need" every time a story comes out on new hardware ought to stop. There are plenty of people who DO use lots of power for work or pleasure and so it is relivant to them.
The point of a "desktop replacement" laptop means one that is powerful enough in every respect to compete with today's high end desktops. For those that want lots of power, this is of intrest.
Take these power laptops from all the makers and run them on batteries.. see how fast they can complete their tasks and if how fast they run out of juice. Imagine a Photoshop contest with the Athlon laptop, some other 64-bit laptops, and the fastest 32-bit G4 Powerbook.. UNPLUGGED. Turn off all power-saving features and see which ones actually get work done without dying.
That's the true test of a mobile desktop replacement.
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
The advantage of a desktop computer is the ability to open it up and futz with the innards. Want to call your laptop a desktop replacement? Give it an AGP slot so I can upgrade the video card.
So what if it'll be bulky and power hungry as hell? I want that high speed 3D rendering goodness to last and last.
At the very least, a desktop replacement laptop needs to synthesize the roar of 8 miniature fans turning. Without that sound, it just seems like an aspect of desktop-ness is missing.
People who are saying there is no market for these things are people that take their extra space for granted. I live in a very small one bedroom apartment. I have no room to have multiple desktop machines. However, being a computer geek, having more than one computer is an absolute necessity. Given the choice between having 1 desktop or 4-5 laptops in the same amount of space, I'll take the 4-5 laptops.
A laptop like this is ideal for me - I can finally have a relatively high powered machine and actually play some of the newer games out there instead of having to find the games that are 3 years old because that's the most my laptops can handle...
1: They didn't do ANY 64bit tests 2: The A64 was running on winxp pro not winxp 64. This would have been a much better comparison. 3: The memory bandwidth description is WRONG. the via k8t800 chipset actually has support for 2 hypertransport busses from the DDR to chip, because the chipset was designed for the opteron not the a64. Meaning that it's chip dependant how much memory pipeline there is.(I wonder if the laptop would handle a64fx chip which would mean an 800MHZ pipeline, the chipset does) This is glossed over (the nforce3 150 on the other hand has only one, because it's designed for the a64).
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