Eric_Collins Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 Since Christmas this forum has been filled with 'what laptop to buy' or'whats this laptop worth' ect...... I've noticed a common thing with all of them, the CPU speds. They seem to range from 1ghtz (?99 special at PCW ) upto like 1.7ghtz (?299-?499 woolies/PCW/Tesco ranges). Do Makers knock out big HTZ CPU's now ? I have a Dell C640 i bought of eBay about this time lat year. 2.2ghtz P4M CPU,1gb 333DDR Ram, 80GB HDD, 8x DVDRW Multibay,ATI 7500 mbile 32mb DDR GPU ( which still plays 99% of all new games .. STILL ),Wireless,Dell suitcase. This cost me Very little,Buy Now at ?200. My brother bought a Laptop from 'the club book' he's paying ?700 over 100wks . His CPU is only 1.5ghtz and mine still leaves it standing even though mines 4 years old. Just i thought like Desktop CPU's that speed isn't everything. Like a Socket A 3200Xp Athlon will be blown away by a socket 939 3000Xp as the CPU is better made although slower in speeds. Is this the case that new Laptops are getting slower maybe for battery power wise ??? Like mine lasts 1hr to 2hrs depending on what your doing, his lasts about 3hrs. ________ Babi mac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghozer Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 the problem is that people want 'cheap' laptops, for business use, not for playing games, a 1.2ghz Celeron is enough for browsing the web, word processing and playing mp3's, so thats all they provide.. companies will make cheaper laptops because they will sell.. the higher spec expensive ones are still widely available.. other reasons, especially with cheaper laptops, the batteries dont last as long because the batteries are cheaper laptops, so to a) save cost of manufactur, and b) to make the batteries last that extra 15 minutes, they use slower cpu's and such like, as these are really the biggest power hog... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr chris Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 Newer machines, with Core 2 Duo mobile whatsit technology actually run faster at a lower clock speed. Seems strange, I know, but it's true. A longer explanation will possibly be given by someone who hasn't just got back from a wedding down south and who has been fed, showered and is awake... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muddycoffee Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 Newer machines, with Core 2 Duo mobile whatsit technology actually run faster at a lower clock speed. Seems strange, I know, but it's true... That's because they contain 2 CPUs instead of one. One of the problems for most people is jacking up the speed of the processor won't do much to help the overall speed of the machine. It will just use more power and create more heat. The bottlenecks in speed are other things like disk drive and network connection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fnkysknky Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 It got to the point where people were sticking P4 desktop CPU's in a laptop and thus getting less than an hour battery life from it which is no good to anybody. Also there's the issue that a P4 in a laptop ends up getting rather hot. I've got a P4 laptop and sure it's quite fast but battery is crap and you can't leave it on your lap for any amount of time - the fans are noisy too. People realised it made more sense to research ways of reducing power consumption to keep battery life up and heat down. Intel's answer are the Pentium M and Celeron M (Celeron M is basically the same chip with reduced L2 cache and no SpeedStep) - the Pentium M being the basis for the Centrino platform. The Pentium M is that good at it's job that motherboards for desktops have come out that support it. Great for a silent PC as the heat genereated is very low but you still get good performance. So basically laptop manufacturers have gone back to actually using CPUs that were designed for a laptop as opposed to shoe horning the biggest, hottest most power hungry CPU they could find in to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carpetviper Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 It got to the point where people were sticking P4 desktop CPU's in a laptop and thus getting less than an hour battery life from it which is no good to anybody. Also there's the issue that a P4 in a laptop ends up getting rather hot. I've got a P4 laptop and sure it's quite fast but battery is crap and you can't leave it on your lap for any amount of time - the fans are noisy too. People realised it made more sense to research ways of reducing power consumption to keep battery life up and heat down. Intel's answer are the Pentium M and Celeron M (Celeron M is basically the same chip with reduced L2 cache and no SpeedStep) - the Pentium M being the basis for the Centrino platform. The Pentium M is that good at it's job that motherboards for desktops have come out that support it. Great for a silent PC as the heat genereated is very low but you still get good performance. So basically laptop manufacturers have gone back to actually using CPUs that were designed for a laptop as opposed to shoe horning the biggest, hottest most power hungry CPU they could find in to them. Totally aggrees laptops were never meant to be as good or quick as desktops but just convenient for a handy office. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MickM Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 no they aren't getting slower, they are just getting more efficient in that they perform more instructions per cycle/mhz whilst also consuming less power. you can't measure processors by megahertz anymore unless they are both of the same family. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 New architectures means lower clock speed for more performance and at lower power consumption. Hence why we're not running 100GHz Pentiums Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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