Slashdot Mirror
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."
Vista? What's that? Get an Intel Duo laptop with OS X!
:-P
I wonder if apple would ever use a centrino, though... I doubt it.
I think the snail and the bunny still apply to centrinos.
--
The Television Wiki
The Television Wiki
My answer to anyone who asks if now is a good time to buy x in computer hardware. My answer is always can you wait 6 months? IF you can wait then do if not then buy now. Things will always be better/cheaper in 6 months so if you can wait you get a better deal.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
OS X's GUI is very Open GL heavy, so it's less the CPU and more the GPU that matters. CPU can still make a difference, of course, especially when putting a high-end graphics card with a low-end CPU is nearly impossible in an Apple product, except for the PowerMacs, which generally come with high-end graphics cards anyway.
The Vista GUI (if I recall) is going to rely on DirectX 10 (or whatever version). In theory, so long as ATi and nVidia keep up and their cards have good DX10 implementation, the CPU shouldn't matter as much. Of course, it's may not just be a matter of how "graphic intense" the two OSes are - it depends on how efficiently they are implemented. OS X is well built. Vista, we'll have to see when it comes out.
Bad move to buy a 32-bit chip in a world that's rapidly moving to 64-bit processors. ...in a world that's rapidly standing still on 32-bit OS's. If there had been any major advantages in moving to Win64, we would have seen movement despite the poor driver support. I have an Athlon64, but at the current rate I wouldn't be surprised if it was replaced by a newer dual-core processor by the time I move to Win64. Or Linux, depending... it's not the OS that I miss, it's all the apps I know and love. I run a Linux desktop over remote X, trying to work my way up to it but well... I'm still considering getting either an Xbox360 or PS3, then I can ditch Windows.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I agree with you... yes, they're right that the move to 64 bit isn't exactly "rapid", but do you really want a chip that won't be able to run the more powerful version of the next OS? Buying a 64-bit chip costs around the same and allows you to run 64-bit applications now... I think it'd be dumb for anyone to buy a 32 bit chip at this stage, even if everything is still 32 bit.
As long as it'll still run Windows 2000 and Linux, I'm good. I haven't needed anything Microsoft put out since W2K, and I haven't had any need for anything faster than about 1.2 GHz. A bunch of people at work bought tricked-out new 3+ GHz machines in the last couple of months, and I asked them, "Why so fast" or "Why did you buy the $300 graphics card update?" Basically people have become so conditioned that they HAVE to buy the FASTEST and BEST thing out there or their computer is already obsolete before they even start. It's a bunch of crap anymore. Most of these people are just browsing the web, doing email, writing documents, editing photos. A $400 PC or Mac Mini would have been plenty for them. They spent $1500, and threw away a bunch of money.
I had someone say that a Dell rep told them that they really should get that Hyper-hot $350 GeForce ultra-platinum video card, because she'd need it to retouch photos on the computer. That's pretty reprehensible IMHO. A $30 graphics card or mainboard graphics would have done just fine. I say they practically stole $300 from her.
Sorry for going OT.
I own 3 laptops:
- Dell Inspiron (1998)
- vpr Matrix (2002)
- Apple PowerBook (2004)
The oldest (Inspiron) had to make a daily commute back-and-forth to my school in Newark, and even back-and-forth to work for a while. Sure, there's the occasional scratch or skuff mark but otherwise it's fine. The only problem is the battery on the Dell Inspiron is toast, so it currently acts as a lower power makeshift server in my house.
It depends on how you treat them and if you buy decent hardware.
It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista and the Intel GPUs the Centrino Duo notebooks usually use are very poor.
Nothing can run 64-bit Windows because the existing versions suck so badly with driver and software incompatibilities. No one I know with a 64 bit processor is running a 64 bit version of Windows on it anymore. Everyone has given up and switched back. Vista will support 32 bit for longer than most laptops will last and I don't see any reason why someone would switch in the foreseeable future for their laptop.
As for graphics, what the hell are you talking about? There are a handful of Centrino Duo machines for sale right now and looking at the selection I see both ATI and nVidia graphics cards in them. Acers ship with ATI and Sony with nVidia.
Do you enjoy misleading people by making crap like this up, or are you just very misinformed?
The answer to the actual question the headline is asking ("buy or wait") is the same answer as it always is, no matter what:
If you really, really need a new computer now, buy one now.
If you don't, don't.
No matter what, there will be something new computers can do next year that the one you buy today can't do. C'est la vie. Don't buy computers you don't need, and this will never be a problem.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
RTFA, the /. headline is stupid and misses half the facts. The article is about the i945M integrated graphics, not the Core Duo itself, and whether the integrated graphics will be able to handle the load of Vista.
The iMac/x86 are bundled with ATI's X1600 and the Macbook pros have an ATI Mobility X1600, they're not using integrated graphics from the chipset.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I've got a dual-core and it doesn't really help much since pretty much all the software I use regularly is single-threaded. Occasionally the disk io happens in another core from other processing, so for example rar'ing might be say 5% faster than on a single core. It is nice that I can rar huge file without impacting performance of the 'main' thing I am working on, but that doesn't happen very often.
Overall, the only thing I've really noticed that is significantly faster is Java. Most Java apps use threads, and if nothing else the GC seems to run on the 2nd CPU. For example, the graphics demo takes 100% of both cores if you set the delay to 0ms between frames. That's about the only program I've seen actually use both cores.
As a side note, I predict with more cores we will see greater use of things like Java. It may run at say 80% C speed, but 80% + 80% is still much more than 100% on one cpu and 0% on another.
Rapidly? Wow, I'm blindsided by this. As long as I've been alive I've ran a 32-bit Operating System, and I saw Alpha claim the 64-bit crown, I've seen Sun's offerings claim to be the best thing since sliced bread, and I'm now seeing AMD do the same thing. Guess what?
RAM will be the deciding factor for when we move to 64-bit processors.
Don't believe me? Ask yourself this: why is it all of the big room server clients wanted a 64-bit chip years and years ago? So that they can saturate their servers with multiple gigs of ram; CPU archetectures might change day to day almost, but RAM archetectures usually last a long, long time, and as time passes, prices go down. So that big iron server that you purchased with 4GB of extremely expensive ram at the time, you can now saturate with 16GB of dirt cheap ram and still be in the top 80% performance bracket.
How does this translate to home users? When home users hit, and can no longer exceed the 4GB limit, then and only then will we see a desktop push to 64-bit. And we've still got a lot of ground to cover until then; some top end computers are running 4GB now, but by and large 512MB is the standard, with 1GB now being the recommended ram total. Ram scaling-wise, I predict we won't hit that "need for 64-bit" number until 2009, but by 2008 or earlier, all desktop CPUs will be 100% 64-bit anyways.
How does that tie into today's discussion? Perfectly; by 2008, your laptop will be obsolete, that's a given. So that means purchasing a system now will likely carry you until the 64-bit revolution. All and all, this means that 64-bit is a non-selling point to a Laptop consumer at this date.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
In a similar way the usefulness of 64 bit variables over 32 bit variables for integers is a lot less than going to 32 bit over 16. While one has to keep track of values larger than 65535 a lot of the time, the four billion as a maximal value for 32 bit is comfortably far away for a lot of tasks. Making actually operating on 64 bit integers rare enough that it is a non-existent win to go with them.
The actual feature that x86-64 has an impact on the typical user is the increased number of directly accessible registers, which does give a nice performance boost. What it comes down to then however is some straight benchmarks of whatever heavy apps one plans to run on it, it is not a killer application but rather a nice performance advantage.
Yeah, the thinkpad is a really nice and tough notebook. So is the Fujitsu Lifebook and the Panasonic Toughbook, I have heard good things about Dells, but haven't experienced it first hand (and I am a former Dell Tech) I find their fans die slowly (they spin, but not enough) at about 9 -18 months and burn the thing out... but the laptops that last seven years aren't the average notebook, are they?
It was a joke, with a grain of truth. Basically a laptop's life expectancy is 1 - 3 years and more realistically a year of serious professional duty. How long does your battery last? Over 4 hours, still? That's usually the first to go... How about the optical drive and floppy? Can it read every burned disk you throw at it? In my experience, and I have a shelf full of old laptops, these things probably don't work too well. Laptops die young. This is why most manufactuers have never given them a long warranty. It's probably great for hobbist stuff, but would you still have your job if you tried issuing 7 year old laptops as standard corp. issue?
Your seven year old laptop is going to be hard pressed to run XP and I don't think any sensible admin is going to want to have a 98 book in the wild with sensitve data. How many minutes would it take me to own your computer if it's hooked up to the internet? If you really want to extend your laptop's life, get a copy of Solaris on the thing. I am running Solaris 8 for intel on an old stinkpad of the same vintage and it is as good as XP on a new machine with a gig of ram.
Now that I have explained the premise of the joke and expressed my sympathies with your concerns, I will continue with the punchline... How long has MS been telling us they are coming out with Longhorn, now Vista? A dang long time.
In reality it might come out this year, but it might be another year or two at the rate things are going. It's been delayed for easily a good three years now. See, that's why it is funny. If you bought a laptop for longhorn/Vista when it was supposed to be released it'd probably be dead right now especially if you bought a gateway, emachine, HP or sony. In anycase, it'd be slow and underpowered.
And yeah, you're better off waiting for the OS to be released and get a machine made for the OS because if the graphics card don't work, your not going to be able to swap it out... and there are a lot of components that might be questionable under the new trusted computing/closed A(nalog)-hole/DMCA/**AA design Microsoft is going for. Your best bet would be to wait. If you need a laptop buy a $500 Acer (they have a great warranty and build good gear) and save your money for the machine you really want.
And the name of my laptop? Why I use an Aristocrat!
Why? Power consumption. There's little use having a super-efficient CPU if all the battery juice you save goes to powering a steaming hunk of ATI or Nvidia silicon (and additional battery-draining high-performance video memory).
Integrated graphics are good enough for just about everything but gaming. Most laptop buyers actually use their laptops for work, surfing the net, email, etc. Longer battery life is more important than frames per second to that large market segment.
The Core Duo competes performance-wise with the Athlon64 3800+ X2 while consuming less power at 100% than the Athlon does at idle. It surpasses the Turion in both performance and power usage. It would be silly to avoid the Core Duo in favor of the Turion just for the pointless excursion of 64-bit.
As someone else here also mentioned, all the people I know who were running 64-bit Windows gave up and now run the 32-bit version. Guess what, it's faster for them and runs better. There is little inherently better about a 64-bit chip since its performance gains are offset by its negative qualities (pointer size, cache bloat), especially if the 32-bit code is optimized for SSE as 64-bit apps often are.
Claiming "hardly anyone" will be using the 32-bit version of Vista is quite a claim considering the vast majority of laptops are 32-bit, the majority of desktops are 32-bit, and the majority of 64-bit capable desktops are running in 32-bit mode. The new hardware upgrade cycle just happened, so not as many will be buying new hardware later this year just to run Windows "now with more plastic" Vista.
"Sufferin' succotash."
One worry I have about Vista using the GPU is laptop power use.
My laptop has dedicated graphics that consume significant power when clocked at full speed. To save power, my machine underclocks the graphics module when the performance isn't needed, sort of like PowerNow/Speedstep for the GPU. I understand that Nvidia cards actually power down some of their 3D circuitry when it's not needed, as well.
If Vista requires the GPU to be fully powered up all the time, that could put a significant burden on laptop batteries. This seems unnecessary, especially when there's plenty of eye candy that can be rendered in software by a processor running at low speed.