Centrino Duo, Buy or Wait?

pillageplunder writes "BusinessWeek Columnist Steven Wildstrom answers a readers question on whether or not to buy a laptop with the new Intel Centrino Duo processor. The reader wanted to know if the new chip would be up to handling the Graphic requirements of Microsofts new Vista OS, and whether or not it would cost more. His take? Regarding price, probably not, about performance, right now there is no real way to know for sure. He does a decent job of outlining bug issues with new chips, and what the various vendors say/feel about this chip."

Comments

Requirements

[cosmotron]

According to Microsoft, you will need around the following:

System Requirements:

Minimum system requirements will not be known until summer 2006 at the earliest. However, these guidelines provide useful estimates:

512 megabytes (MB) or more of RAM

A dedicated graphics card with DirectX® 9.0 support

A modern, Intel Pentium- or AMD Athlon-based PC.

So, I am guessing that a Centrino will fly.

New Duo Prices for Dell

[berboot]

Dell left an internal directory open to google's bots and accidentally leaked their upcoming Duo Core prices. Interesting how similarly priced they are to their single core brethren.

Re:New Duo Prices for Dell

[yamla]

Yeah, I found exactly the same thing. The Apple laptop with extended warranty, etc. etc., was a little over $3600 Canadian. A comparable Dell was closer to $3000 Canadian, a 20% price premium. It's somewhat confused, though, by the Dell warranty being clearly superior, the Dell laptop having a dual-layer burner, a better battery, and a much better video card, and the Apple hardware overall being higher quality. And of course, the Apple operating system is clearly superior.

I'm actually hoping to get a laptop closer to $2000 to $2100, though. For that, I can get a WXSGA display, 2 gigs of RAM, a 1.86 Ghz CPU, and a super-duper warranty if I go the Dell route. Or, for an extra $200, I can get an Apple laptop with a lower-resolution LCD, slower CPU, and a quarter of the RAM. Also, the Apple would cost an additional $400 for a substandard warranty (though I've heard Apple treats their extended warranty customers very well). Or alternatively, a 12" iMac with less RAM (1.5 GB), no DVD burner, a vastly slower CPU (1.33 Ghz), vastly smaller LCD and resolution, but at least with a decent hard drive and an extended warranty.

IF ONLY. But with price premiums in the 25 - 50% region, Apple's laptops are just out of my price range.

Re:The snail

[Tx]

I wonder if apple would ever use a centrino, though... I doubt it.

Centrino != Celeron

The processor used with the Centrino chipset is a core duo, exactly what Apple is using.

Bad Move

[Nom du Keyboard]

Bad move to buy a 32-bit chip in a world that's rapidly moving to 64-bit processors.

Re:Bad Move

[aSiTiC]

Radidly moving to 64-bit? Even with all the pumping up of AMD64 I've yet to see a killer app for 64-bit. Even with Windows Vista support for 64-bit in late 06 or early 07 I don't see 64-bit being a must have until mid to late 2007. Sure AMD beat Intel to 64 bit x86 instructions but I don't think it was really needed on the consumer desktop.

Re:Bad Move

[Overly Critical Guy]

Others have pointed out that you're wrong, but I wanted to explain why. The world is not rapidly moving to 64-bit except in the server space where memory is a concern. However, Intel chips since the Pentium Pro have supported 36-bit memory addressing which breaks the total 4GB barrier anyway. The reason 64-bit is not rapidly taking off is that 64-bit introduces a bigger pipe but offsets the gains with bigger pointers and more cache bloat. Most of the performance gains you see in benchmarks comes from the fact that in 64-bit chips, SSE3 is a baseline and so you can target it in your code, as well as the extra registers which are added by the vendor and not related to being 64-bit.

In 32-bit code where SSE optimization is implemented, a lot of 64-bit gains disappear. This is particularly interesting for the Mac since their baseline Intel spec will always have at least SSE3, so all apps can target it from now on. Doing 64-bit math doesn't require a 64-bit chip either, as SSE goes up to 128-bit. The real reason you'd want 64-bit is if you're running a server that needs a very high amount of memory.

64-bit gaming has been the most amusing to me, watching as CryTek and AMD teamed up to sell more chips and desperately advertised 64-bit Far Cry as better than its 32-bit version by adding higher-res textures here and there and tweaking the visuals, even though absolutely none of that has to do with being 64-bit and everything to do with your video card. 64-bit Half-Life 2 is actually slower than its 32-bit version according to the benchmarks. Slashdot has an article in its archives about how 64-bit gaming has been overhyped to gamers.

There are times I wonder if 64-bit will die as a fad this year and become an unused set of instructions that only server admins use. It's certainly got all the makings of a tech fad. I think the novelty is wearing off and people are realizing 32-bit is just fine and that there is nothing inherently better about being 64-bit, other than giving AMD and Intel a marketing reason to sell you new chips. I can't think of any reason a desktop computer user today needs a 64-bit chip. Microsoft, of course, is very vocal about wanting to put everyone on 64-bit chips, and the reason for that is that the majority of Windows sales come from pre-installations on OEM computers, so if they can convince people to buy new computers that have new chips in them, they sell more copies of Windows. I think they'll have as much success with that as they did with the XBox 360 launch. Ahem.

As a sidenote, Apple handled 64-bit in OS X Tiger by keeping the GUI 32-bit, but allowing 64-bit processes to be spawned in the background. This means your app is 32-bit but you communicate with a spawned 64-bit console process (it has to be a console process because the GUI libraries are still 32-bit code). It's so little used that it took a while for anyone to notice when one of the 10.4 updates accidentally disabled 64-bit support...

It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista

[Brian Stretch]

It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista and the Intel GPUs the Centrino Duo notebooks usually use are very poor. Buy an AMD Turion laptop with an ATI (or nVidia, whenever they get some Turion design wins) GPU if you want to be Vista-ready. Or if you want to run 64-bit Linux now. Hardly anyone who is going to go through the nuisance to upgrade the OS is going to bother with the 32-bit Vista "PHB Edition". (Unless the Pointy Haired Boss makes such technical decisions at your company... hmm...)

Rather glaring ommission by BusinessWeek.

Different Question

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Does the new Celeron still not clock/volt down?

I'd only ever buy a mobile CPU if I know it doesn't eat my battery for breakfast!

(actually I'm looking into buying a Turion NB, but not sure yet, as choice in that area is *slightly* limited)

Re:The snail

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. If you must have a slick duo-powered laptop right now, the Macbook Pro is a sweet machine.

Except that it's not available yet. And even when it will be, Intel ports of Mac software will still be mostly missing in action (unless all you need is basic stuff from Apple) - and no, Rosetta does not always cut it, heck, some programs can't even run under it at all[*]. So depending on your needs, a MacBook might just be a slick brick for a while. The key concept here is think before you buy.

[*] preemptive example: if you have a large investment in Altivec-accelerated Photoshop filters for your work (by no means a corner case) then you're screwed, as Rosetta can't handle Altivec. And so on.

Re:Sage advice says:

[rjstanford]

The dual-core machines don't help that much unless code is written for them specifically; there's precious little code that can really whup a dual-core just yet.

Yeah, if only we had something that let us work on two different programs at the same time. Oh, right, we do, its called a multitasking OS. Even if you don't do anything like ripping CDs, chances are good that you're running multiple widgets, all doing their things at the same time. You're checking emails, running an RSS gatherer, indexing your disk, providing good desktop interactivity, and working on a new proposal (which is formatting your page as you type, checking your spelling, et cetera). Most people multitask way more than they think; the key isn't long periods of parallelization, its eliminating those annoying short blips of contention.

And if you're a developer, this is a no-brainer. You've probably got at least one DBMS on your machine; running client software, a dev environment, the database, and keeping good responsiveness is so much easier with a dual core (or better) setup.

Re:After checking Core Duo specs, the verdict is

[otis wildflower]

Er, the Macbook has up to 256MB dedicated to a real mobile GPU..

Come over to the shiny side!!

Vista Reqs

[ghost1911]

If you want to run Glass (the GUI) you need to make sure you have a compatible video card. I have found in Vista that the biggest perf issues stem from low memory or not having a compatible video card. Here is nvidia's list of supported video cards, note that there are no notebook cards on it right now. Here is ATI's list of supported video cards. If you want the slick UI, just make sure you get a laptop that supports LDDM.

Re:Vista Reqs

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent is gravely mistaken. The following NVIDIA notebook GPUs are "Windows Vista Ready:"

GeForce Go 7800 GPUs
GeForce Go 7600 GPUs
GeForce Go 7400 GPUs
GeForce Go 7300 GPUs
GeForce Go 6800 GPUs
GeForce Go 6600 GPUs
GeForce Go 6400 GPUs
GeForce Go 6200 GPUs
GeForce FX Go5700 GPUs
GeForce FX Go5650 GPUs
GeForce FX Go5600 GPUs
GeForce FX Go5200 GPUs
GeForce FX Go5100 GPUs

http://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_vista_home.h tml

Re:Works fine with OS X

[WhiteWolf666]

You've got it backwards ;-)

OS X uses some OpenGL stuff; a lot of 2D compositing. It doesn't totally bury the system, however, and it can move a lot of that to software rendering as well; that's why it works just fine on my Powerbook with a GeforceFX 5200, 32 MB ram.

Vista, on the other hand, uses boatloads of 3D, everywhere. Lots of texturing. The main issue with Vista is not having enough graphics ram. For the full "Avalon" "experience", you'll need 256 MB in a 32-bit environment, and possibly more in a 64-bit environment. Fill rates will also be important, in order for you to keep your windows flying around the screen in 3D.

God knows why so much is needed; Project Looking Glass provides a similar display with far more modest requirements, and thats a JAVA window manager. Not to mention that Xorg is getting really, really close to alot of these things. Xgl is currently running with all kinds of interesting shader/geometry effects, and KDE's got the window manager refraction/reflection (take a look at the CrystalGL, the big cousin of Crystal, which does it in software).

Ultimately, Linux will get there, but the problem is integration; most of these features are avaliable on X, but few of them play nicely with OpenGL, and they often don't play well together. We'll have to see a big, combined push between the KDE 4 effort, GNOME's next generation Metacity, the freedesktop XGL/Xorg 7+ people, and NVIDIA/ATI. As I understand it, much of this is occuring now; but we probably won't see releases till near the time Vista is released, and we won't see proper integration into distributions till late 2006/early 2007.

The best part is, however, that once it DOES get into Linux, it'll run just fine on 32/64 MB cards, and most likely will degrade much more gracefully than Vista; there'll be a finer set of non-functional options, rather than 3/4 main settings.

I have no fear that we'll see plenty of desktop eye candy in the near future on Linux; this is mainly attributable to the freedesktop people, who have saved X with Xorg, a product that is making progress now after years and years of stagnation.

I'm much more worried about DirectX 10 (WGF 2.0). Will OpenGL keep up? I hope so, otherwise we'll see the few Linux/Mac gaming houses there are out there (in addition to Transgaming) fail completely as they become unable to port over Windows graphics features. NVIDIA, ATI and Apple seem to be keeping the OpenGL group moving, though.

Re:Works fine with OS X

[WhiteWolf666]

BTW: Here are some BE-AU-TI-FUL Xgl videos. Real videos, as in captured with a camcorder ;-)

http://forums.gentoo.org//viewtopic-p-3081186.html #3081186

Re:The snail

[saleenS281]

Apple has good customer support? *LOL* Nice support

Vista will run - GPU is needed, not CPU

[Philip K Dickhead]

Even your 2 GHz Centrino or 1.6 GHz Mobile Pentium won't be crippled by Vista - as long as you have 2 Gb RAM!

The demanding requirements of Vista come from the Quartz-clone, Aero Glass. This is like Apple's quartz, only pure XML instead of Adobe PDF based (an XML/Forth hybrid/melange).

In doing so, it is between 500% to 1000% less efficient, requiring the highest end GPUs, with minimums of 128 MB VRAM.

In the end, it accomplishes little more than Quartz - with the exception of easire X-Style remote window invocation. This is a possible direction, as yet undeveloped.

Re:Anecdotal evidence is not Data

[WuphonsReach]

Things have slowed down a lot in the past few years. No longer does system performance double every 12-15 months. As long as you pack enough RAM in the system, these units can keep ticking for a long long time without feeling outdated.

We have numerous laptops that are 3-5 years old and still run WinXP/Win2k just fine. Mostly because we made sure to max out their memory configurations (either with 512MB or 1GB of RAM). Heck, my system is a 1GB Tecra that is from early 2002 and I still use it 12-15 hours a day.

The biggest killer is failing hardware. Warranties cover that for the first 3 years, after that we get them fixed as needed ($200-$400 per repair). Backlight fade is repairable and our users are pretty careful about not breaking optical drive trays or twisting the hinges off. Still, a $200 repair is worth the cost compared to replacing the entire laptop and spending the labor time to get the user up and running on a new system.

It probably also helps that we only bought Toshiba's business-class Tecras for the past few years. Their build quality and sturdiness is quite good. (We're switching to Thinkpads starting this year, however.) It doesn't pay to go cheap with laptops, they get too much abuse.

Re:Merom

[Overly Critical Guy]

The Merom will be pin-compatible with the Core Duo and uses the same chipset, suggesting an easy upgrade path.

Re:The snail

[prickeke]

The "Centrino" you speak of is a brand name which includes multiple pieces of silicon. The processor included in the "Centrino" brand is a Pentium M. The new "Centrino" second generation includes the Pentium Duo or Solo. Therefore, Apple IS technology from "Centrino."