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64 Bit Athlon Notebooks Hit the Market
Omega1045 writes "Our friends at News.com.com.com are reporting that one of the first notebooks powered by the 64 bit Athlon will be made by (drumroll, please) eMachines. Slashdot has mentioned eMachines venture into 64 bit Athlon technology before. You also might note from this past press release that eMachines claims to be the 3rd biggest PC maker in the US. Hopefully this will have the dual effect of pushing the new chip into the market, and keeping it afforable of laptop junkies like me."
The only experience I've ever had with eMachines are two systems- one was my sisters' old P-166 machine- it lasted for 3 years without a hitch, till I blew it up by trying to put Win98 onto it (long time ago :)
The other one is one of those widescreen eMachines Athlon laptops- my friend bought it a while back- it's a really solidly made machine that has had no problems so far. YMMV
This is a good sign. I have to get a laptop for college next year, and i want to get a decent laptop for a good price. This will hopefully drive down the prices of the other notebooks. Anyone headed for college or forced to get a laptop for work will see this as a blessing.
It has a "high-capacity 8-cell LiIon battery." Still, no mention of batter life in the specs. Hmm, I wonder why?
Apparently you remember the eMachines of 3 years ago, not the one of today. Amazing that a company does so much to change their business model, yet some look blindly at the past and presume they still do something else...
So will the G5 PowerBook (if and when it comes) from Apple errantly claim the same thing the G5 PowerMac did?
I've been working with 64-bit chips since 1998 (DEC ALPHA systems and now G5's) and there has always been problems with heat and power. What's the battery life going to be on one of these machine?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Yet for all those "advantages" there are just as many disadvantages. Ever try typing a *lot* of information on a laptop? They are just not typically ergonomic enough for extended typing use. At least not compared to a "natural-type" keyboard. Then there is screen size. Call me insane, but I happen to like my 21" of crisp CRT goodness. No 15" LCD is going to quite match it. The list can go on.
The point being, yes, for some a laptop can replace a desktop, but not so for others. Almost all the reasons you gave could be an argument for *both* a desktop and a laptop (with wireless card.)
True E-Machines have tried in the past few years to change. They have restructured their business model, but the stigma of 3+ years ago still sticks with them. I just was pointing out my opinion that the other leading OEM's will use this to their advantage to keep prices up as long as they can. The same way they use anything else to keep prices up.
How many people on here would really fork over the cash to give E-Machines another chance? I know would not, no matter what they do.
(yes this is an opinion, but if 1 person thinks this way, how many others do.)
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
I guess if this eMachines thing has a 1-year warranty you can get an "extended" warranty from Best Buy for a few hundred bucks more. I'd definitely advise doing that. But it means you have to figure it into the price of the machine.
It comes with Win XP...can XP do anything 64 bit??
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I don't get why everyone mentions this. Yes, this CPU can support 64-bit operation, and no, there is no 64-bit Windows OS yet, but who cares? This CPU is also among the fastest 32-bit processors out there. It's not like you are "wasting" the 64-bit-ness by not using it. Those extra registers can't be used to feed the homeless or anything. So what? You buy a machine that very fast, and you get the "bonus" of being able to run future (or current) 64-bit OSes on it, one day. Why do you see the glass as half-empty? Why don't you see the 2 full glasses that are overflowing into the half-filled one?
Well, you can always dual-boot a 32-bit Windows and a 64-bit Linux/BSD. Then you can enjoy 64-bit goodness whilst still dipping a toe into your favorite games. And the Mobility Radeon 9600 that's in this laptop should go a long way towards making this laptop suitable for gaming. The processor won't hurt, either... ;)
Right now eMachines is just like Hyundai was a year or two ago--new products, better quality, etc. but with a poor reputation due to their past. eMachines went through a drastic change in management. Their machines today are much better than what they used to sell.
At least that's the buzz...
Looks like this laptop comes with XP Home installed. Now, I'm no expert, but does XP Home even support a 64-bit proc? I know it'll at least run in 32-bit mode, but what's the point? If your OS can't deal with the newer instructions, why not just get a 32-bit Athlon at a higher clock speed?
I looked on MS's XP Home system requirements page, and it makes no mention of 64-bit support - XP 64-bit version looks like a totally different product.
True enough, but you don't need a 64 bit machine to surf the web and read your email, and given the power consumption of the Athlon 64, you probably want an outlet nearby.
The best cases for 64 bit computing are generally text string database operations, server side encryption, and error control codes, not to mention heavy floating point apps like finite element analysis -- none of which I do anywhere near Starcruds.
...-.-
Second, the sound card in all laptops are pathetic. I do some basic MIDI and home studio stuff, but even for playback these cards don't give me what I want. I do have very nice headphones and I get okay quality with these.
Finally, laptops are about whatever you want them to be. You want portability? Go get a Sony Viao. You want a desktop replacement? They are available for a price. I've had four laptops that are basic portable desktops. These are almost as powerful as any desktop at the time.
Besides, this whole discussion is about putting a top of the line powerful 64-bit processor in a laptop and then shipping it with XP-home. What good are you getting out of that processor? Then they sorround it with mid-level components. It just doesn't make sense.
Anyway, you make some good arguments. But I will take better sorrounding components than that 64-bit processor.
OK, I've burned my karma squawking aobut this relative to G5's and 32-bit OSX, but
let my try again anyway:
There's not much reason to go to a 64-bit chip unless either
1) You are going to use more than 4 GB of RAM in a single process (actually, more than
2 GB tends to be a pain on a typical 32-bit system, but let's say 4). I don't think you
can have that much in one of these.
2) You do a lot of stuff with files over 2 GB (yes, 32-bit OSes handle more than this all the
time, but it's more likely everything works on a 64-bit sys).
Really, (1) is the only reason these days, but I threw (2) in for fun.
64-bit doesn't make it faster; the chip might be, but it's not a direct result of 64 bitness.
Usually, if there's a 32-bit compatibility mode, it runs faster. 64 bit is just useful for memory.
These observations are based on 10 years of experience with MIPS, POWER, alpha, and now
opteron systems. I'd buy an opteron/athlon64, but not to use it with less than 4 GB of RAM.
First, the Centrinos really do run at whatever speed they're rated at (but they have SpeedStep, which allows them to run at a slower speed as well to save power). Centrino just means a Pentium M with a Intel-branded WiFi transciever. So a 1.4GHz Centrino is just a 1.4GHz Pentium M.
Second, the cache doesn't really boost performance in the same way as a faster processor. The cache is good for speeding up memory access on applications that are easily cached (i.e., the pattern of memory access benefits from spatial or temporal locality; elements near accessed elements are likely to be accessed as well, or elements frequently access are likely to be accessed more). Look at it this way; the DRAM used in caches is accessible in maybe 1/10th the time of the SDRAM used in system memory. But at the same time, it's far more expensive.
The gains from having way more cache than needed (which really depends on the application; desktop processing or gaming, which doesn't involve extended periods of data processing, woudln't benefit a whole lot, though perhaps rendering or video processing would) aren't worth the great cost of DRAM.
And the speed of the processor doesn't have a lot to do with how much cache is useful, I don't think (perhaps one could argue that a faster processor goes through the cached data faster than more can be cached to replace it, but I don't think the difference in needed cache between a 600MHz and a 2GHz would be all that great, either).
More cache is better, up to the point that it can't be used any greater, but it's not at all the same as a faster processor.
Actually I'm holding out for IBM to make a nice PPC970 laptop with Linux pre-installed. That could be very nice indeed.
Surely such a thing has to be coming - it would be the ultimate biochem/math/physics/engineer laptop, a community that already uses linux quite widely, and would actually appreciate and know what to 64bits.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
With Dell you get a three year 24 hour warranty. While Dell has never serviced my laptop warranty claims within 24 hours, they often get them within 48.
So Dell promises, but it can't deliver. Interesting.
You may have been forgetting something to do with that Athlon 2100+ - its bus speed, which in the case of the 2100+ is 133MHz. At least one Athlon board I've seen defaults to 100MHz bus speed (does *not* autodetect bus speed), and those are the speeds you've been seeing. Also, many older Athlon boards have 100/133+ speeds set using a jumper, which was usually shipped as default to 100 (this has mostly gone to software now, thankfully); further bus speed configurations could be done using the BIOS.
You have to do this with Intel too whenever they bump the bus speed, unless they've changed the electrical connections on the socket or whatever as they usually do. Also, whenever you see random crashes, the first thing you think, always, is memory error; then you update board's BIOS, video, chipset drivers etc. I saw this recently on a board with a dodgy stick of RAM; causing very random crashes, despite the fact the dodgy RAM was >1GB.
You're not making adequate comparisons, anyway (despite what you said). I mean, Biostar compared to an Intel OEM board? Come on. I buy MSI for AMD builds, and I've never seen a bad one. ASUS, ABIT, Gigabyte etc. AMD boards are generally fine too, and the low end MSI KT600 is actually surprisingly good (if, as said before, you have to manually enter the bus speed, at least in software.)
In any case, Athlon 64 is a completetly different chip to AXP, so nothing from the past applies. It has a P4-style heat spreader. It's cheaper in the UK than the highest-end non-"extreme" P4 by about UKP100, it's about as fast, and according to the reviews I've read it actually produces less heat than its competitor, as have Athlon XPs since about the Thoroughbred (I've seen hot P4s c, 60C and cool Athlons c. 40C, both using the stock retail fan/compound. They're both quiet, too.) The cooling problem with AMD? No longer there, as long as you use an acceptable fan - and the retail one does come into that category.
Besides, my overclocking-freak acquaintance swears by them; if the OCers like it, it's *got* to be fine for the normal person. Wouldn't it?
Note: I do own Intel machines; my laptop is a P4-m, because at the time AMD laptops pretty much came with godawful integrated graphics. I think the situation is mostly the same today, unfortunately. My desktop is a fairly old Thunderbird Athlon 1GHz, and it works and always has worked fine. I have seen dodgy AMD machines from friends, but the main problem one was based on an ultradodgy PC Chips off-brand board that was unfortunately not the same as the Elite K7S5A, which can at least be made acceptable. It had the bus speed problem, too.