Intel's New Chips, High Power And Low

sebFlyte writes "Centrino has been one of Intel's major successes of late, and they've just released the replacement, Sonoma. ZDNet has stripped the new chipset, and published a review of the new kit with all the technical details of what this new chipset will do for your laptop." ZeroOne42 adds a link to Hardware Zone's exhaustive look at Sonoma, "complete with benchmark results between a Sonoma notebook (Fujitsu E8020) and a Centrino one (Gigabyte N512). Looks like Sonoma is closing up the technological gap between desktops and notebooks." And on the desktop side, foxalopex writes "It seems that Intel's new dual-core CPU chips will have some of the highest wattage ratings ever seen on the X86 CPU market, which, according to Tom, wasn't what they initially said would happen. I guess this isn't too surprising seeing how AMD's been beating them on power usage in the last several revisions of chips."

Comments

Closing the gap

[wed128]

We constantly hear about computer manufacturers "closing the gap" between laptops and desktops. this will never happen. At least for me, the two serve completely different purposes. My desktop is the workhorse, does all the compiling for both computers (both run linux), and is my general use machine. My laptop is low powered, and only used for work on the road. Last time i shopped for a laptop, most models were trying to do everything and more, while i just want a cheap laptop, no glitz except maybe wireless, with a long battery life. That's it. No 4 ghz 512 mgs ram monsters. I don't need 64 Bit processing. Keep it simple stupid.

Re:Closing the gap

[moshez]

Why should I buy two machines? Why shouldn't I compile when I'm on the road? It makes perfect sense to close the gap between laptops and desktops, and keep just laptops and "servers".

When I bought my laptop, I shopped specifically for when which can serve me well as a desktop. I had to compromise on disk space, though frankly 40GB is not that big a compromise, but most other features are exactly what I would choose for a desktop -- and it wasn't even that expensive (if you figure in the cost of the monitor, the 3-year warranty from a well-known company and the value of the computer not going down when the power is out for a few hours, in fact, it is cheaper than buying a comparable workstation).

Re:Closing the gap

[wed128]

As a college student, i disagree. I take my laptop to class, and thank god i have no goddamn widescreen or dual optical drives or anything like that. The battery life and footprint are bad enough as it is.

Re:Closing the gap

[KlomDark]

More eyestrain from an LCD? How do you figure?

After eight hours in front of a CRT monitor at work, my eyes burn like hell. But after the commute home, my eyes are fine to sit in from of my LCD screens at home for hours.

I can't see the other way working at all. In my experience, CRTs cause much more eyestrain.

Performance

[shic]

Only recently did I become aware that there was a marked architectural difference between 500 and 700 series CPUs - and I read about distinctions between Pentium mobile and Pentium M chips. While I applaud the move away from correlating the computing capability of a chip with its clock speed, I now find myself (as I suspect the typical man in the street also find themselves) completely unable to compare the relative performances between the various CPU series.
I realise that benchmarking is no panacea - but it would be really helpful to see a comprehensive set of benchmarks in order that I can establish a rough idea of the advantages of upgrading before splashing out on a machine with a newer processor. When Mhz mattered a good rule of thumb was that it was only worth considering an upgrade when the new CPU had a clock at least twice as fast as the old one... How should a user make this sort of decision with the new names? Is there any 'good' (unbiased) online material?

Re:I don't know about you guys

[hackstraw]

But I don't really care a whole lot about what the bloody Wattage rating is on my Processor. But I don't really care a whole lot about what the bloody Wattage rating is on my Processor.

Fine, I'll send you the powerbill when it gets to be $1,000 a month for the privilege of running a new processor.

Low Power CPUs are only a concern if my computer is running off a battery.

Another dorm room computer expert.

When you have a room full of servers and it takes an additional $20,000 or more for cooling and power upgrades and UPS upgrades because people don't care about low power CPUs except in a computer running off of the battery, I'll send you that bill too.

Re:I don't know about you guys

[Lisandro]

As CPUs dissipate more power, they become more prone to failure, and need a more complex cooling solution to boot. That means jetplane-sounding-like coolers or watercooling kits. Never mind having a small heater in your bedroom. Besides, some people (I, for one) care about power consumption and electrical bills.

AMD vs Intel Redux

[Renraku]

AMD chips seem to be a lot cheaper than similarly-fast Intel chips.

AMD chips seem to run cooler than comparable Intel chips.

AMD chips seem to have more support and 'options' than Intel chips.

Whats keeping Intel afloat? While mobo combo shopping recently, I barely paid any attention to the Intel line. All I saw was 1.3x price for 95% performance.