Vistakid, advice please.

wolfeking

banned
The difference in price between say a 6770 and 6790 is not 130 bucks, whereas the difference between these two laptops is, and the GPU is the main difference.
But also looking at them, the bus difference is closer, and they have the same memory and the same core count. I would not even consider it if the only difference was the bus rate.
 

spirit

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I did a quick Google search regarding the quality of Eurocom's products - apparently they're not that well made and the quality isn't great, so you may want to stick with the TP.

It's a hard decision. :/
 

wolfeking

banned
okay, so now to figure between the dell and the IBM. so general forum question time. Thanks for your help vista.
 

wolfeking

banned
What do you think of this http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precis...3498510?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item4602baaa8e?

I like the fact that I will not have to wait 2 months to get it. Might be used, but should still be good. But a couple of questions.
1. What differientiates a extreme over a regular processor? Is it worth it to get a QX9300 over a Q9000? I actually think that this is cheaper than the Q9000, but not buying yet so that will not matter that much.
2. Edock. Is this compatible? I like the M90s compatibility with my docking station, but I need E dock compatibility for school. I do not want to be using the projector via VGA if I can just sit it down on the dock and go fn+F8 and be good.
3. not a question. 1200p. Heck yes. Why do new ones not have it?
 

spirit

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wolfeking said:
What differientiates a extreme over a regular processor? Is it worth it to get a QX9300 over a Q9000? I actually think that this is cheaper than the Q9000, but not buying yet so that will not matter that much.
Well IIRC the desktop Core 2 Extreme processors had unlocked multipliers and could usually support up 1600MHz FSBs where as the 'ordinary' Core 2 Quads usually only supported up to 1066MHz and 1333MHz FSBs. There was usually more cache on the Extreme-end chips and the stock clockspeeds were usually higher too. The unlocked multipliers were usually the biggest points.

On the laptops, I would imagine that the differences are the same, bar the unlocked multipliers because people don't tend to overclock their laptops.

wolfeking said:
Edock. Is this compatible? I like the M90s compatibility with my docking station, but I need E dock compatibility for school. I do not want to be using the projector via VGA if I can just sit it down on the dock and go fn+F8 and be good.
Should work OK going by what has been said here http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ion/362873-precision-m6400-dock-question.html are you using something like this at school? http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...etail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=430-3114

wolfeking said:
1200p. Heck yes. Why do new ones not have it?
Not sure why, most are just 1080p these days. Maybe it was because of GPU issues? Not sure though.
 

wolfeking

banned
Well IIRC the desktop Core 2 Extreme processors had unlocked multipliers and could usually support up 1600MHz FSBs where as the 'ordinary' Core 2 Quads usually only supported up to 1066MHz and 1333MHz FSBs. There was usually more cache on the Extreme-end chips and the stock clockspeeds were usually higher too. The unlocked multipliers were usually the biggest points.

On the laptops, I would imagine that the differences are the same, bar the unlocked multipliers because people don't tend to overclock their laptops.
okay, my computer engineering is not helping here. Is there any advantages to having a higher FSB? I think it is DDR3 based, so it will work with 1600 maybe? Or is the memory controller separate from the FSB?

As far as other things, its 2.53GHz so should be plenty fast.

It is similar i think. It is only vga and DVI, with eSATA and like 6 or so USB ports and a few other ports. It might be a older version or something. I know the teachers laptops are Latitudes with C2D and newer than the D600 line. So must be an e series of some sort.

Not sure why, most are just 1080p these days. Maybe it was because of GPU issues? Not sure though.
I am not sure either. I like the picture on the 1200p screen, even though there is probably less than 1% difference in the quality.
 

spirit

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Staff member
wolfeking said:
okay, my computer engineering is not helping here. Is there any advantages to having a higher FSB? I think it is DDR3 based, so it will work with 1600 maybe? Or is the memory controller separate from the FSB?

As far as other things, its 2.53GHz so should be plenty fast.
There's not going to be an awful lot of advantage to you really, no. Apparently the QX9300 only has a 1066MHz FSB anyway, which seems odd for an Extreme-end processor. http://ark.intel.com/products/36727...essor-QX9300-(12M-Cache-2_53-GHz-1066-MHz-FSB) of course that may be relating to the desktop QX9300 but I couldn't find out anything about the mobile one.

It's the extra cache that you'll benefit from the most. Apparently the QX9300 has 12MBs of L2 cache.

wolfeking said:
It is similar i think. It is only vga and DVI, with eSATA and like 6 or so USB ports and a few other ports. It might be a older version or something. I know the teachers laptops are Latitudes with C2D and newer than the D600 line. So must be an e series of some sort.
I reckon it would probably work OK. It does say the dock is for Latitude and Precision series notebooks.
 

wolfeking

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spirit

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For the price the M6400 looks pretty good, it's about half the price of the other Dell we were looking at and about a grand cheaper than the ThinkPad. Upgrade it to 8GB or 16GB of RAM and you've got yourself an awesome machine. The Core 2 Quads are still very capable processors, I know this as I own a Q8300 in one of my rigs. It still works fine. :)
 

wolfeking

banned
I am not really worried that much about the processor not being up there. It will be far better than what I have, and is smaller (45nm if i saw it right) so cooler, and far over double the power for far less than double the power (34 watts vs 45 watts), so should last about the same on the same battery. (assume for same amount of charge, same RAM, and same video card level).
It should be far better I think at graphics task with 128 sp and DX10 over the 24/8 I have now, well actually 16 (not getting a picture at all on the M90 right now.

and to top it all, the M6400 has windows 2000 drivers! my day has been made. was going to check the other one, the M6600 or M6500 (core series revisions I think) but it took me 25 minutes to get the 6400 up, so I will wait till I am back in the land of ethernet tomorrow to check them.
 

spirit

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wolfeking said:
I am not really worried that much about the processor not being up there. It will be far better than what I have, and is smaller (45nm if i saw it right) so cooler, and far over double the power for far less than double the power (34 watts vs 45 watts), so should last about the same on the same battery. (assume for same amount of charge, same RAM, and same video card level).
Yes it's a 45nm lithography so it will run cooler than your current processor. The extra cache will definitely come in handy. I have 6MBs of L3 on my 2500K and I did have 8MB of L3 on my old i5 760, and that was enough cache, so 12MB should be way more than enough.

wolfeking said:
and to top it all, the M6400 has windows 2000 drivers! my day has been made.
:D Windows 2000 on a QX9300... you going to do a dual-boot with 2000 and Vista then?
 

wolfeking

banned
triple boot actually. I am going to go with a SSD and go with a Linux, 2000 and Vista ultimate 64 bit. The only one that will take advantage of the SSD is the Linux, but it is more for power usage and heat than speed anyway.
 

spirit

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An SSD is the way to go. I read somewhere that Windows 2000 was actually one of the best OSes for SSDs and I'm not even joking. Here's where I read it http://liliputing.com/2008/12/whats-the-best-os-for-ssds-windows-2000.html and here's another reference http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...rating_system_is_best_for_solid_state_drives_

I've used Vista on SSDs in the past and it was relatively fast, but 7 was faster on SSDs. I quite like Vista Ultimate though, I'm tempted to put it on my Core 2 Quad machine.
 

wolfeking

banned
I do not believe them. their story looks fake.
Apparently Windows 2000 runs 5% to 8% faster on solid state disks than the newer operating systems because there are fewer applications running in the background on the older OS
This looks to be a RAM advantage over a hard disk issue. especially if you offload the pagefile to a HDD. May not be right though.

Apparently Windows 98 is even faster, but it also tends to wear out flash memory more quickly because it has a habit of writing over the same portion of the SSD over and over instead of spreading the data out across the memory module.
Drive leveling stops that from happening. The main reason it does not work as well is because any mobo with a SATA port is not going to have 98 drivers. But from their reasoning DOS6 should run the fastest of them all.

According to Patrio Media’s tests, Windows Vista performs better with SSDs than Windows XP; OS X trumps Vista, and Linux is faster than either but still slower than Windows 2000.
this part sounds reliable. But I have to say that one of the posters was right. There are Linuxes that load the entire system image to RAM, thus would be far faster than any windows ever. Unless your running 7 on a RAMDISK with 64GB of RAM.
Also, with a graph, or some hard numbers it would be far more believable.

I will still run it though. But it will not have support for the TRIM, or any optimizations as far as I know. Or SATA drivers. As I have yet to figure out how to get them installed. and even when installed they do not make a great deal of difference on read and write times.
 

spirit

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So have you decided on what you're going to get now then? You'll probably run into issues with running W2K natively on new machines because of drivers. It's an old OS running on new hardware. :/
 

wolfeking

banned
I don't really worry about running it on the hardware. If there is XP drivers available, then Dave, Sara, and I can find a way to get them working under 2000. Its not generally hard. I find most of them will install right off. Some need a file from XP to work like Flash does, and that is easy to fix.

I still do not know. I got a while before I get it. I am going to tear down the M90 and see what is going on with it today. After that, I will go a looking farther to see what I can find.
 

spirit

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All sounds OK then. Yeah I had forgotten that you should be able to get XP workings on 2000 usually and vice-versa as they are very similar OSes.
 

spirit

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I reckon that M6400 you found on eBay would be a pretty solid choice though. Core 2 Quad QX9300 and RAM upgradable to 16GB sounds good for around 800.
 
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