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Core 2 Duo Notebooks Reviewed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the and-it-fits-in-the-something-of-your-something dept.

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."

7 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Bottom line? by gelfling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Bottom line? by PhoenixOne · · Score: 2, Insightful

      My view is very limited (I work in the game industry), but do people really buy the latest and greatest hardware just so they can run Thunderbird faster?

      I know there are plenty of non-game apps out there that require some serious CPU clocks, but if you need 2+ GHz to view your mail something has gone very wrong...

      --
      Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
    2. Re:Bottom line? by LWATCDR · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well CAD users and yes a lot of people use CAD on notebooks.
      Photoshop users need a lot of CPU power as well.
      I for the life of me don't know why people pay two grand to play a $60 game.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    3. Re:Bottom line? by Moofie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wow...it's almost like you have a different set of values and predilections from other people! What a stunning revelation. Where ever will it stop?

      --
      Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
  2. battery life by Mike_ya · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:A tale of the Dell XPS Line by Ignignot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hello, astroturf. Who the hell knows the model numbers of their friend's laptops??? Is there some sort of organized place where slashdotters can identify astroturfers like this?

    --
    I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
  4. Re:What no AMD ? by jamesborr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    More relevant to me at least, is the ability to meaningfully add 4GB of memory to a laptop (starting multiple VM's being one use case). The Intel stack (with the addition of the Merom) finally getts a 64 bit CPU, there are 64 bit OS's available (including Windows XP/2003), but we are still waiting on a 64 bit (or greater then a 32 bit) chipset (and will be waiting at least another 7-8 months, best case). Without all 3, even if one puts 4 GB of memory in the laptop, the top 1 GB (usually) will be hidden and unavailable, as the chipset cannot remap all the other i/o, devices which need to currently map from the 4GB boundary down (which means that the OS never sees (can't see) the memory, as the BIOS has already hidden it. There is nothing more annoying then spending a fair amount of money for the memory, only to have a GB of it ignored and unused.