Processor Speed Comparison?

[denemante]

Hey all,

I have a 3 year old HP desktop computer. It works fine for all my needs (which is primarily Photoshop and Dreamweaver/web design work).

It has:
Windows XP.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual
Core Processor 4200+
2GB of RAM

I'm looking for a new laptop. The one I like has:

Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T6500
4GB Ram
Windows Vista

Here's my question: Will this laptop be a downgrade in performance for me? Or do these specs exceed what I'm already using?

Thanks!
Dan

 

[johnb35]

The laptop blows it out of the water. However, it depends on the graphics card as well. What graphics is in each system?

 

[denemante]

thanks - now the video card question

The vid card in my desktop computer (that I'm hoping to replace with a laptop) is an ATI Radeon. 400mhz, 512MB, Radeon X1650 Series. It's a dual monitor (I have two 24 inch Samsung flat panels hooked up to it). I don't know much about it other than it was supposedly fine for me, and has worked great and still does.

The laptop in question has "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD (shared) with up to 1759MB total available graphics memory".

I've always (recently at least) used Windows XP. Seems I'll need to adapt to Vista or 7. I've heard they are memory hogs. I wonder if those OSs should be factored in. Perhaps in the end, my desktop (on XP) would be faster than this newer laptop with Vista or 7?

Finally - I might as well mention that I want to drive BOTH my Samsung monitors from this laptop while at the office (not use the laptop as one monitor and and one Samsung as the other. I posted at this forum about that topic here: http://www.computerforum.com/160185-dual-monitor-card-laptops.html#post1323899.

So my secondary goal is finding a way to do this (not sure if there's an accessory I could add to modern laptops or if they'd need to be pre-configured).

So depending on that solution, perhaps the onboard video card for the laptop doesn't really make a diff?

Thanks!

 

[The_Other_One]

The laptop blows it out of the water. However, it depends on the graphics card as well. What graphics is in each system?

I wouldn't say that... The laptop would be faster but not tremendously. I use PassMark's site to check processor speeds.
Athlon X2 4200 ~1000 (multiple entries...)
Core 2 t6500 - 1472
http://www.cpubenchmark.net

Either computer should do alright for what you want to do. The laptop would be slightly faster but probably nothing substantial. But for what you do, it's not very GPU intensive so the lower-end GPU should be just fine...

For the most part, Vista/Windows 7 have benchmarked and are faster than Windows XP. Yes, they do require more memory, but as long as the system's setup to handle it, you should be fine. 4GB RAM and a GPU from the latest generation should provide ample power.

Not even looking at the other post, you shouldn't have much of a problem running both monitors. I've done so on older machines with only minor lags. Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it.