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Core 2 Duo Notebooks Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes "With the launch of Intel's Core 2 Duo chip today, I found this article that not only covers the new chip itself, but also reviews and benchmarks two retail notebooks. It's interesting since one machine has the entry level 1.66GHz CPU while the other has the top end 2.33GHz chip."
So it's a glorified gamer machine? How fast can it start and run Lotus Notes or Thunderbird? How fast can it run a complete AV scan? How well and how fast does it run end to end, real world applications and not just RAM resident games? These benchmarks suck and pretty much ignore the fact that it's a notebook machine at all. And battery life appears to suck hard.
We've had a Core 2 Duo ("Conroe") workstation here for a couple weeks now.
Only the Core 2 Duo "Merom," for notebooks, was released today.
Instead of reading the entire article, here's the summary ...
Verdict
Both of these are impressive machines for anyone who wants to get hold of the power of Merom straight away. The lower clocked AJP does seem slightly lack-lustre compared to the top end Rock, especially as the 1,920 x 1,200 screen wasn't the best we've seen. If battery life is the primary concern you might do better with a Core Duo, due to its lower TDP, unless you can wait for ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo laptops to appear.
If you can spend the money the T7600 based Rock is outrageously fast for a notebook and it's well specced too. However, we think the mid-rage 2GHz, T7200 will end up being the Merom CPU of choice.
So the Intel Core 2 Duo chip, also known as Merom was internally known as Conroe and is based on the Pentium M 'Banias' mobile chip based out of Haifa.
Additionally, the original Core Duo (Yonah) isn't really a Core product, it's just a P4M with two cores. Core structure actually starts with Core 2 Duo, thus the Core 2 identification?
And to think it used to be confusing to explain to a customer the difference between 486 DX and 486 SX.
And where is the Intel Sexium chip we've been waiting for?
Funnypics
How does the battery life compare to the 'single core' Pentium M?
Does battery life not matter in laptop reviews anymore?
How is the lap heat, is it twice as hot? My current laptop gets limited lap time because of the heat.
Are they for POWER-HUNGRY users? Or TECH-SAVVY businesspeople? Or are they BUSINESS-FRIENDLY machines? Is there one modern journalist or advertising copy writer that can construct a sentence without hype-hyphenated babble?
For that matter is there one computer company that can discuss computers and money without a picture of a salt-and-pepper-haired overpaid buzzword-shitting suburban asscrack holding or in the immediate vicinity of an oversized coffee cup? Because the boxes for these financial programs don't seem to mention A COFFEE CUP IS REQUIRED TO ADD UP SUBURBAN CASH ON YOUR COMPUTER.
Oh, and about the Core Duo 2 zippy super gizmo? Get a Mac.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Wow, thats crazy. I never would imagine that TWO machines would be benchmarked in one article, at different performance levels no less. Times are a changin.....
Whats the power usage like on a dual core?
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Jesus, check their logo.
intel(r)
core(tm)
inside(tm)
This requires talent. I just hope we don't run out of words we can use seeing how businesses trademark them one by one.
Just found another review: http://www.hardware.info/en-US/articles/am5na2ptZA /Toshiba_Qosmio_G30_Intel_Core_2_Duo_Mobile_and_HD _DVD__Review/
Since amd have a lot of CPU with dual core on the store now. I would like to see a comparative with Intel and AMD dual core 64 bits CPU.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
- first chip - better than some other chips, unless you wait until spring
- chip II - chip C is better than this in all respects, except that a certain chip which may or may not be the second chip or chip 3 is more modern and consumes less heat and is faster
- third chip - designed in a foreign country and better than chip 2 but slower than the second chip
- another chip - better than a chip which is to say not really better, but overwhelmingly not quite as power hungry as chip 1
- a different chip - this is the be-all and end-all of chips off the ol' block, the mother load of chipdom, but not very impressive otherwise as that other chip
Having trouble following me? Oh, gosh! I'm so sorry! As you can see, I'm having some difficulty stringing nouns and verbs together in order which conveys useful meaning. This article is a wedgie bunchy terdhammer pukebucket of crap. This article is a hopeless string of buzz words in a mash-up, probably ripped from an ars technica article or two and cranked back and forth through the Google translator to obscure the source . Don't waste your time reading it.I hope and desire that reading this really-not-fine-in-any-way article has not permanently affected my linguistic processing ability, although it may be so effected... doh! affected.
Doesn't anybody *screen* these submissions?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Coffee maker broken?
Get a Mac.
It's funny that you said that. I've been shopping for laptops and Macs(for the first time for me, anyway) are looking like a good deal. And since I'm going to making my living with those things, i.e. sitting in front of them for hours, I want a pretty thing to look at to reduce my stress. There is a financial reason for aesthetics - it will increase my productivity. Give me time and I'll quanitfy it.
What is it about these hardware review sites that makes them all use the same tactic of spreading a short review over 30 pages of ads? I understand they have to get paid for their content somehow, but why is it so consistently the hardware review guys who do it this way? Are they all modeling on Tom's? Is the target audience too small? What's the deal?
So in other words, just as with nearly every review of a new processor ever made that doesn't try to divide by 0... if you can afford the brand new bleeding-edge chip, you might like it better than the less-expensive version.
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Does anyone know when we can buy these on places like Newegg so we can upgrade our Core Duo CPUs?
From the 2D benchmarks, it's obvious that both of these systems are still vastly outperformed by the E6600 chip on the desktop. Either it's a poor mix of hardware, or these notebooks are still quite lacking in performance compared to the mainstream desktop.
How's that for strange? Just when it looks like Intel has made a big comeback, they make a huge misstep.
The Core 2 Duo may be a great weapon to win back the desktop, but the market to pursue right now is the mobile market. Intel has had the advantage in that market, but just threw it away. That battery life is completely unacceptable.
Where's the instructions for upgrading the cheapest old Core Duo notebook to a Core2 Duo with these new chips?
--
make install -not war
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The article linked in the post is pretty light on substance and heavy on the fluff. A much more thorough look at Merom can be found here, at HH: http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=864&cid=10
first of all this has nothing to do with Conroe, this is about Merom. Of course I know you can buy conroe chips. Secondly you CAN update the processor in your laptop, all you need is a BIOS update (and a socketed set, not soddered as a few are). The first release with the 667FSB is designed to drop right into the 945GM chipset. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2_Duo#Merom
Dell laptop advertised with core 2 duo
Click through to specify the machine and only the T2600/T2700 for sale. These are Core Duos arent they?
Wouldnt suprise me to see Dell guilty of misleading adverting (They got me on an "upgradable graphics card" before) but this looks prity blatant.
The "WTF, ok, better buy intel, better buy new" monopoly marketing approach.
PS Without sorting through all the garbage a smart shopper will buy AMD until Intel comes back with sequential names based on some performance metrics that the consumer cares about.
How much time does it take to finish an infinite loop? Did they say that?
I have a laptop sitting here next to me which is a dual core 3.6 GHZ machine. It is already 1.5 years old.
Control panel says "Pentium(R) 4 3.59 GHZ 2.00 GB of RAM". Why yes, it was a custom build for me, and yes I do use it, but not as a gaming tool as much as I do for CASE tool processing.
So why do we care about a "top end" 2.33 GHZ machine?
This is old news, move along here.
The SO and I both have XPS M140 laptops with the Pentium M processor. They work beautifully - I use mine for mostly database development, web surfing, email, etc. The other machine is mainly used with Photoshop, Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2006, email, web, etc.
They both work fine - in my case I'm more hamstrung by memory than I am by CPU cycles. Same goes for the other system.
Co-worker of mine bought an XPS-M1210 - sweet little machine. And it is small, granted not like a G4 powerbook but still, has the same feature set as the M140 except in a slightly different layout.
The M140 and M1210 both get about 4 hours of battery time.
A friend bought an M1710 - that's a core-duo machine and gets
I'll take cheap, lightweight, good battery life over monstrous computing power. SO tells me that people laugh at his little 14.1" wide aspect screen. I told him to laugh at them when they only get a couple hours time out of their monstrosities.
I just don't see the draw for dual-core. Most people don't even approach the limits of their current CPU. Even geeks don't - most of us are memory bound. So dual-core is just a marketing gimick as far as I'm concerned.
After reading Anandtech and Tom's hardware for years, just looking at the site hurt my eyes.
You can't change facts by marking something troll. The machine is right here and running fine. This whole article is not news it is garbage.
Stole my joke. Sorry I ran out of mod points.
I wonder how long before Apple deploys 64-bit notebooks...