AMD and Intel Notebooks Head to Head

An anonymous reader writes "The two chip giants go head-to-head in this review of notebook computers which features 10 different models." From the article: "To be blunt, sourcing high-performance AMD-based notebooks for this test was less difficult than extracting teeth from a fully grown chicken -- but only just. After much chasing, only two vendors submitted an AMD-powered product -- MSI and Asus. Interestingly, both vendors had their Intel-powered notebooks at the Lab with no chasing needed. We should point out that the rarity of AMD product is not the fault of AMD, rather vendors, in Australia at least, do not seem to stock adequate quantities of high-performance AMD-equipped notebooks. Acer, for example, has a humdinger of a notebook the Acer Ferrari 3400 that is equipped with a mobile Athlon 64 but the company was unable to ship a single unit to the lab during the entire month of May."

Comments

Fodder for the lawsuit?

[jarich]

Is this sort of situation fodder for the pending lawsuits or just a reflection of consumer demand (or the lack thereof)?

Re:Pentium M processor good for desktop

[DanielNS84]

They clocked up a 770 model Pentium M and it outperformed an extreme edition at lower temps. http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/index.htm l tfa if anyone is interested :)

No wonder an Intel unit was the winner

[gilesjuk]

Given the limited number of experienced corperate notebook vendors using AMD, it's no wonder an Intel laptop won. Until the likes of IBM, Toshiba, Sony and others are shipping AMD notebooks then AMD based portables are going to be second best.

Re:No wonder an Intel unit was the winner

[manno]

RTFA, That AMD based ASUS is no joke, it's one of the best laptops out there no exceptions. I'd take a laptop made by ASUS, over any other company out there. They are hands down one of the best consumer oriented electronics companies around. I prefer AMD processors in my computers. Plain and simple I'm an underdog kind of guy. Every PC, and laptop I own uses an AMD processor, and 2 of the three PC's have ASUS motherboards to match. But truth be told in the mobile market Intel has a far superior chip. Your not going to see widespread acceptance of AMD in the mobile market, until they make a chip that's better than the Pentium M(PM). AMD's Turion is OK, but has a long way to go in terms of battery performance. The fact that the ASUS notebook did so well on the battery benchmark is a testament to ASUS's engineering more so than AMD's underlying technology. It's no coincidence that the top performers in battery performance were all from Intel. If you want to see how good a chip the PM is look at the Doom 3 numbers here:

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=a64 x2&page=10/

A PM @ 2.13GHz performs exactly the same as a A64 @ 2.4GHz, And it consumes a lot less power. PM's on the mobile side are just better chips. If you're doing media creation the scales tip towards AMD, but for business apps, and typical home consumer use it's the PM's battery life that makes it so popular.

-manno

Re:One possible explanation

[panurge]

Indeed it could be. It may be too that the vendors are careful not to promote them too hard because (a) Intel may get nasty and (b) they would eat into the mainstream product lines.

When I got my AMD64 notebook, eighteen months ago (yes, early adopter, I know) I was told it would be unreliable, run too hot, etc. etc. It has so far survived eighteen months of commuting and abuse, especially the abuse of using it as a test vehicle for a complete web server and development platform. It's still on the first HDD ("Won't last eight months...") And so far the only thing to go wrong is a little rubber foot came off (replaced with superglue.) Even though my other notebook is a P-M Thinkpad, I would recommend the AMD64 to anyone who actually needs performance.

Wanted!

[copponex]

• 17" Laptop with 1650x1050 resolution
• A clear, crisp display with no glossy finish that doesn't look like ass (I'm looking at you, Dell 9300/XPS Gen2!)
  
• full numeric keypad
  
• Turion processor
  
• two memory slots
  
• DVI Out!
  
• NVidia GPU
  
• Built-in Bluetooth

In all likelyhood, I'll have to settle for an Apptel Powerbook and give up on Turion/NVidia. This assumes, of course, that they offer a new display on the 17". I just hope they make it out of something besides soft metal in the next revision.

Re:Pricing

[Bad to the Ben]

It's even more extravagant when you consider that the Australian dollar is worth 76 US cents (not great but not enough to justify that markup), and that Taiwan, where most of this stuff is made, is a hell of a lot closer to Australia (and therefore less expensive to ship to) than it is America.

Then again, the US is a far bigger purchaser of this sort of stuff, so they probably get a bulk purchase discount or something.

ASUS in Italy, not in USA

[mennucc1]

I live in Italy, and often travel to USA: I noted that ASUS notebooks (that are quite common here - my university also bought a dozen to lend to students writing thesis) are not usually found in USA (actually it was a professor there who also noted and commented "I see all you italians arriving with ASUS notebooks that here are nowhere to be found). I wonder why.

Wrong priorities

[trevdak]

Now his troubles are all great and nice and whatnot, don't get me wrong, but isn't the point of him writing an article so that we don't have to go through the same trouble he did? I'd rather hear something in the summary about which one actually did better....

Some hot temps there...

[Bad to the Ben]

Some of those laptops are real toasters judging by the thermal tests there. The Toshiba Tecra is 45.6C under the base and exhaust air is 43C. Wouldn't want that sitting on my lap too long. Cooler models would probably yield increased battery life as well (more efficiency, less energy loss to powering fans).

One thing I'd like to see taken into account in these types of tests is how hot laptops such as this perform outside the lab. In Australia, 37C temps are not uncommon outdoors during summer. If this Tecra tested that high in a lab, how will it hold up outside in that kind of heat? I mean, half the benefit of having a laptop is being able to use it outside the nice, comfortably AC'ed office. If I got BSODs due to thermal problems, I'd be pissed.

Re:Aesthetics?

[weg]

Actually aesthetics is the unique selling point of Apple notebooks nowadays, cause the current i- and Power-Books are really lame with respect to performance (I'm not an Apple hater.. I own a brand new Powerbook myself). But as long as the other manufacturers make sure that their notebooks look like cheap toys there will always be somebody (like me ;-)) who buys Apple notebooks.

I want my AMD.

[th3space]

My last few computers (desktop and laptop alike) have been AMD powered, and I've been very impressed with the reliability and performance that they have brought to me. For example, my Athlon64 3000+ laptop has been running like a champ for the past 3 months...my new P4 work box is two months old and has already needed to be replaced once and repaired twice.

I'm never switching back, never, never, never. I need to get my hands on a PPC PowerBook soon, because the Intel jump at Apple concerns me...

An unaddressed option...

[ant_slayer]

I have owned a Compaq R3200 series with a 3200+ for about a year now. One thing I find frustrating is that reviewers rarely run the machine the way I do. I use my box for a LAN party machine (or did, before the integrated GeForce 4 lost sight of the curve), but it's always plugged in. I use it for some computational work, sound processing, and Blendering as a hobby -- but it's always plugged in.

Sure, it's warm, but it's also sitting on my coffee table, my kitchen table, my Panera table, my desk, or my mattress. The heat doesn't really bother me then. And it kicks every Pentium M's butt I've ever played with.

Yet, these reviewers don't do what I do when I unplug -- instead of running Windows benchmarks and all that crap, I run Linux. A simple echo out to /sys/... and I clock it where I want. I turn the brightness down, etc. Lo and behold, a year+ after purchase, I still get about 2.5 hours of battery life (vast approaching the 3 hours I got with a dopey 1.4ghz Pentium M I had at my last company from Dell).

Who needs 2 ghz to pound away in emacs on the train?

-Ant Slayer-

Re:HP makes Athlon64 notebooks...

[zenneth]

A little info regarding HP's service. My mother bought a nice little A64 3200+ laptop from BestBuy, a Pavilion zv6000. It came with 512mb of RAM, DVDR, 80gb of HD and a dedicated 128mb Radeon X200m. She'd had it for a little over a month when, after removing a PCMCIA Buffalo Wireless card, a small brass pin fell out of the slot.

Needless to say, she spent the requisite time getting the situation handled. First, she tried the "Live Chat" on HP's support page. The person who first had contact with her appeared very helpful, yet was actually no help at all. When she contacted them using the telephone, she began getting the runaround. They tried to tell her that it was physical damage, which it certainly wasn't. My mother isn't so well off that she'd spend $1200 on anything and then trash it. Eventually, she received a call from a very nice support representative who contacted her several more times, both before and after receiving the replacement.

Speaking of which, she ended up with a brand-new Pavilion from the factory. A64 3500+, 1gb RAM, 100gb HD, and still the dedicated 128mb Radeon X200m. She had to reinstall her software, etc, but it ended up almost being worth the hassle, IMHO.

Moral of the story: Stay away from the online support, and contact HP directly via the telephone.

Here's a fun test: Call Dell

[popo]

Call Dell and ask for an AMD based machine.

You'll get a very scripted answer of how AMD suffers compatibility problems, overheating, and is slower than Intel.

I asked if AMD had any chips that were faster than Intel (you know like the 64 bit dual core CPU's which every gamer knows well).

The answer? "No, AMD is really a second rate product and is not reliable". He followed with "Nobody is looking for AMD. They are really very junky."

Amazing! "Junky!" One must wonder why then is Intel now copying AMD's "junky" architecture?

Apparently no one told this guy that HP, Sun Microsystems, Lenovo (Thinkpad), and Hitatchi all went AMD within days after the lawsuit was filed.

ASUS make iBooks?

[bach37]

Doesn't the ASUS company make the mobo for the current iBooks?

Re:Ohh, you're wrong about that.

[kesuki]

While I'd LIKE to have a huge battery life in my notebook

If you can get the power requirements low enough, I'll take 10 years please ;)

http://www.physorg.com/news4081.html

screw the wall outlet I want a laptop where you have to replace the system before the battery dies ;)

before someone say's 'but what about the radiation' if it's safe enough to put inside someone's pace maker, then it's can be designed safe enough to build into a laptop..