Your Computer Specs

currahee · Post by **currahee** » Tue 22 Nov, 2005 5:10 am

Actually they're still pretty expensive. I believe my Pentium M is the bottleneck for some games like Battlefield 2 where it can't produce enough "oomph" and boxed Pentium Ms are ridicuously expensive. I think my 1.6GHz pM costs about a good $220 per unit

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Tue 22 Nov, 2005 5:37 am

Not really. Notice it does say the minimum system requirements are a 1.7 Ghz processor.

That's probably your problem. 2.0 or 2.2 Ghz should run it fine. Especially if you also have a geforce 7800 go in it.

currahee · Post by **currahee** » Tue 22 Nov, 2005 5:39 am

Then again I think a 1.6Ghz Athlon 64 CPU could run it just as well.

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Fri 25 Nov, 2005 4:33 am

CompWiz wrote:
calcul831415 wrote:where do you guys typically get you computers?
Why get your computer somewhere? Make it yourself. I've made a few computers for myself and friends, and it costs so much less than buying a ready made one. On my computer that I built a few years ago, it cost about $1000 less than it would have if I had bought it from a retail store or Dell. If you want, I might be able to make one for you.

If you are referring to a laptop computer, you can build those also. I talked to someone once who had done it a few times before. Apparently, you can save a lot of money on building your own laptop.

I can't seem to be able to buy any laptop parts other than gpus, cpus, and stuff like that seperately. Where can I buy a laptop case? If I could build a notebook computer from scratch, that would be awesome!

currahee · Post by **currahee** » Fri 25 Nov, 2005 1:11 pm

Actually building your own laptop might end up costing more, because it still needs special parts in it.

lloydkirk1989 · Post by **lloydkirk1989** » Fri 25 Nov, 2005 3:15 pm

yeah, I've looked into it and it seems like a real complicated process. Thats why I wouldn't be comfortable buying a laptop from somewhere like xtreme-notebook or alienhead.

CompWiz · Post by **CompWiz** » Fri 25 Nov, 2005 3:41 pm

Here is an article on building your own laptop from tom's hardware.com

currahee · Post by **currahee** » Fri 25 Nov, 2005 6:13 pm

Oh i've read that before. The reason why I don't consider it a real DIY laptop is because you don't get to choose what your graphics chipset is and you can't really build it yourself. Like if you have parts, you can't assemble them as you would in a Desktop. Also if you were buying a CD/DVD drive or specific battery from the barebone manufacturer, it's not really DIY. As opposed to PCs today, we can pick up a CD drive (internal) knowing it will fit in right. Such is not the case for laptops, where specific parts are needed.

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Sun 27 Nov, 2005 3:44 am

Wooo, the pentium M is an awesome processor!
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/index.html

This compares the pentium M with the pentium 4 and the athlon 64. It beats the desktop processors! CompWiz, do you think amd will be able to make a processor that's more powerful AND more efficient than the pentium M?

the_unknown_one · Post by **the_unknown_one** » Sun 27 Nov, 2005 9:41 am

Of course, AMD OWNS YOU!!!

currahee · Post by **currahee** » Sun 27 Nov, 2005 11:41 am

But we're seeing the Pentium III trail behind just a tad bit from the Athlons. And that's without SSE2, SSE3, and all that optimization crap Intel but into it's Pentium 4s

lloydkirk1989 · Post by **lloydkirk1989** » Sun 27 Nov, 2005 5:09 pm

I don't understand how a pentium M could beat the Athlon 64 is so many areas.

I mean its a laptop cpu. The Athlon 64 was designed for performance...

conclusion: Biased article, written by intel enthusiasts.

EDIT: If this is the case though, the pentium M must outperform the amd turion 64. Damn, now im going to have scratch the acer ferrari off my chrismas wishlist.

currahee · Post by **currahee** » Sun 27 Nov, 2005 6:00 pm

That's because the Turion 64 is an underpowered Athlon 64 which kind of explains why it's a bit bad. However, it's reduced consumption of power is what kills it. I think I heard their max thermal output was 30W while the Pentium M was at 27W. Intel measures TDP at 75% of the CPU's output while AMD measures it as a worst case scenario. Because of that, the Pentium M does consume a little bit more power than the Turion. But I think the Athlon 64's TDP was originally at 80-90. So a reduction to 30 from 80-90 should also mean a little bit of a performance reduction.

lloydkirk1989 · Post by **lloydkirk1989** » Sun 27 Nov, 2005 6:52 pm

the Pentium M does consume a little bit more power than the Turion

Are you sure about that? All the pentium laptops I've seen have an abnormaly long battery life.

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Sun 27 Nov, 2005 8:24 pm

I posted an article a bit earlier comparing the pentium M and the turion 64. If you have a pentium M with the same Ghz as a turion, you get almost exactly the same performance in most areas. (except for stuff like video editing in which the turion pwns) The fps difference in most games tested is like 2 or 3 and the turion was usually in the lead, but only barely. Except Doom 3 which for some reason likes the pM better. In terms of battery life, the turion barely wins during idle time, but the pM gets like an extra hour on the turion during processor intensive stuff. It all depends on what you need the computer for really. http://www.pctorque.com/sager-5720-gaming-computers.php This notebook is the most uber pM I've ever seen. 7800 go 256MB in it! Also, there is the 5320 model which has an ATI x700 256MB gpu. This one gets a better battery life than the 5720 and is a LOT cheaper,

but the gpu isn't near as good. (still darn good though) Both of these, however, are much cheaper than the ferrari 4005 and both have better gpus. This could change whenever amd gets back on the ball and makes a better notebook cpu that supports the ram in the cooler gpus!

EDIT: here's another one I found that's almost exactly the same as the sager one: http://www.xtremenotebooks.com/index.ph ... el_id=1037