CaptainAwesom

My parents are offering to get me a laptop for my junior year so that I can start my college applications, write papers, and various other things. My sister's mac was $1800 and my parents said to pick one around that price. The problem that arises is my computer knowledge. I have assembled some desktops and know the basic components, but i want to know more about the processor.

Question 1: What are multithread applications? (please give examples and how many threads per app)

Question 2: It says 1.8Ghz(turbo mode 2.8Ghz), but how often will I access turbo mode and is it accessed autonomously.

__________________
^_^

I try to help but don't take everything I say as fact.

You truly love something when you continue to do it while everyone is laughing as you. -Me

Damorian

1: "Multithreaded applications have multiple threads executing in a shared address space. Threads are "lightweight" subprocesses that execute within a process. They share code and data segments, but have their own program counters, machine registers and stack. Global and static variables are common to all threads, and a mutual exclusivity mechanism is often required to manage access to these variables from multiple threads within an application." Found that on some site. Most large applications are multithreaded. Here's a short list of some that I found. http://www.denniskarlsson.com/smp/

2: It sounds to me like it underclocks the processor to save power. I'm not certain but I would imagine that as you start using more cpu power, it increases the clock speed. I'm not 100% sure on that though. There should be a way to change it if you get a computer with that feature.

__________________
My general cleaning guide: www.thegreatdamorian.com/howtos/fixit.html
A few tips on computer building: http://www.thegreatdamorian.com/howtos/diycomptips.html

ganzey

PLEASE DONT GET A MAC. THEY ARE EXTREMELY OVERPRICED. pcs are better and cheaper and can do more things. for $1800, u can get one hell of a laptop, but only a basic mac.

__________________
When I walk through the shadow of the valley of death
I will fear no evil, cause I'm the biggest son of a b*tch in the Valley

The Chad

You must be getting an i7 laptop pressumably? The Turbo-Boost is one of its features, while the processor is being used and a heavy load of tasks comes upon it, it can raise its clock speed up to 75% to cope with the tasks. The processor controls this by itself (Automatically)

"Intel® Turbo Boost technology maximizes speed for demanding applications, dynamically accelerating performance to match your workload—more performance when you need it the most." _From Intel's website

CaptainAwesom

ok, thanks for the input. yes! i do realize how overpriced macs are and will definitely get a dell. thanks for the explanations.

__________________
^_^

I try to help but don't take everything I say as fact.

You truly love something when you continue to do it while everyone is laughing as you. -Me

vonfeldt7

Keep in mind that Macs are also higher quality though...

I have hated Macs my entire life. Until I got one.

__________________

Gooberman

Our school has 6 macs in a digital media class they render videos x2 faster than the other computers but guess what? the pcs probably cost <$400 while the macs costed $1500 lol

__________________
Compaq Presario SR5130NX
AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ 2.01 GHz
2GB DDR2 667 MHz
Evga GeForce 8500GT
22" Acer monitor
Asus MB (don't know what one :) )
200 GB HDD
Windows 7 Professional
250W PSU probably made by chinese workers making like a couple dollars a week

Bodaggit23

Mac's aren't really overpriced, as they use top end hardware.

But, most people don't need high end hardware for their needs, so it's not worth spending the extra money, in my opinion.

My buddy just had to have his motherboard replaced in his Macbook Pro and it cost around $425.

I told him he could have bought 2 mid range laptops for what he paid for the Macbook, and still been ahead at this point.

__________________
Team Stats @ ExtremeOverclocking.com

Team Stats FOLDING FOR THE GOOD OF MANKIND :F@H Team 44358

CPU: i7 920 Batch#3841A525 (@3.43Ghz) Board: EVGA E758-A1 Memory: Dominator 3x2GB DDR3 1600 Hard Drive: 300GB VelociRaptor GPU: EVGA GTX260 SC Core 216
Optical: Sony Optiarc 22x DVD/CD Burner PSU: Corsair TX850W CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 Primary OS: Windows Vista x64 SP2 Case: Coolermaster HAF 932

2048Megabytes

Some really good quality Laptop brands to look at are the following:

Asus

Sager

Toshiba

Sony

Dell Latitude

__________________
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." -- Benjamin Franklin

Operating Systems: Linux Ubuntu 9.04 and Windows Vista
Power Supply: OCZ StealthXStream OCZ600SXS
Video Card: MSI R3650-T2D512 OC Radeon HD 3650
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H
Memory: Super Talent PC2-6400 2 gigabytes
Processor: Phenom 9550 Quad-Core (2.2 gigahertz)