New Notebook

Toshi.des · Post by **Toshi.des** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:42 am

I just bought a new notebook and it's currently shipping, probably should have asked you guys before I bought it but how well do you think this one will preform.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834114393

I plan on switching the HD out with another HD I bought a few months ago for another notebook that's 100gb at 7200 rpms, while I really hate cutting down 150gb 4200rpms seems really slow.

Other than that I plan on keeping it the same, might upgrade the memory to 4gb since it will only cost $54 more.

Your impute would be much appreciated.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:35 am

looks like it'l handle editing very well.
4200rpm is a bit slow, but it also cuts down on the noise (and maybe heat as well.) You'll usually find notebook drives that spin at either 4200 or 5400

you probably won't really notice a difference between 4200 and 7200

as for the ram, 4GB with vista is a good idea, especially if you plan to edit. Vista is a memory hog (from people I've talked to who use vista, it can use up to about 1GB for startup alone...but after its idle for awhile it starts cutting back)

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:25 pm

A 7200rpm drive will help with things like loading Windows and large programs. But they generally run hotter and are noisier.

There are some issues with having 4GB of RAM, even with Vista. The main problem is that most programs (and most Vista installations) are 32-bit. Older versions of Windows (32-bit, non-server) with 4GB of RAM installed would either see 2GB or 3GB of RAM, depending on whether certain special 'switches' were set. Even then, applications would only be able to address 2GB of memory.

Moving to 64-bit versions solved the RAM issues but introduced other problems. Certain 32-bit programs would have issues running under 64-bit Windows, 64-bit driver support was (and to some extent still is) spotty, and certain hardware would reserve portions of RAM (address space) and make it unavailable to applications and the OS (unless certain unrecommended hacks were used). I always assume that the version of Vista installed on any new computer is 32-bit.

Unless you have a lot of hardware that uses exclusive memory space, with 4GB RAM installed you should still get a little over 3GB available.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=281738

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=443

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Feed-4-G ... 0924.shtml

Toshi.des · Post by **Toshi.des** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 10:04 pm

PostPosted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:25 pm Post subject:
A 7200rpm drive will help with things like loading Windows and large programs. But they generally run hotter and are noisier.

Would it be a significant difference from a 4200 rpm? Like enough to actually switch out the HDs?

PostPosted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:25 pm Post subject:
A 7200rpm drive will help with things like loading Windows and large programs. But they generally run hotter and are noisier.

There are some issues with having 4GB of RAM, even with Vista. The main problem is that most programs (and most Vista installations) are 32-bit. Older versions of Windows (32-bit, non-server) with 4GB of RAM installed would either see 2GB or 3GB of RAM, depending on whether certain special 'switches' were set. Even then, applications would only be able to address 2GB of memory.

Moving to 64-bit versions solved the RAM issues but introduced other problems. Certain 32-bit programs would have issues running under 64-bit Windows, 64-bit driver support was (and to some extent still is) spotty, and certain hardware would reserve portions of RAM (address space) and make it unavailable to applications and the OS (unless certain unrecommended hacks were used). I always assume that the version of Vista installed on any new computer is 32-bit.

Unless you have a lot of hardware that uses exclusive memory space, with 4GB RAM installed you should still get a little over 3GB available.

That's what I'm used to hearing, some guy at best buy actually said vista 32 bit would work fine with 4 gigs

.

Currently on my desktop I have windows vista 64bit version and haven't had any issues except with half -life 2 episode one. The orignal half life 2 though plays fine

.

I have yet to read the links you gave me but you do mention that while using the 32 bit version it would still recognize or use around 3 gigs of ram correct? If so I think I could live with that and still stick to the 32 bit version, though disappointed. If not I would rather buy another copy of the 64 bit version since all the programs I really use, which are the adobe software, work fine with the 64 bit version, or at least have with my desktop

.

Toshi.des · Post by **Toshi.des** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 10:09 pm

Oh one more thing, I heard that the 64 bit takes better advantage of quad cores than the 32 bit, is that true?

While this notebook obviously isn't a quad core my desktop is and I was just wondering if that was true or not, since it would be awesome if it was

.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 4:36 am

Toshi.des wrote:
PostPosted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:25 pm Post subject:
A 7200rpm drive will help with things like loading Windows and large programs. But they generally run hotter and are noisier.
Would it be a significant difference from a 4200 rpm? Like enough to actually switch out the HDs?

That's tough to say. More RAM can make a slower hard drive less of a factor in performance. I think there is a noticeable difference between a 4500rpm and 7200rpm drive when loading programs, but I'm not sure if it's a significant enough of a difference. Plus, I forgot to also mention that there is a downside to using a 7200rpm drive in a notebook in that battery life suffers a hit, not to mention that your 7200rpm drive is smaller than the 4200rpm drive. The only way to find out for sure is to use the notebook as is for a while, then swap the drive, load your recovery software on the faster drive and then compare the performance.

As for 64-bit being better at using quad-cores, I'm not sure about that aside from being able to use more than 4GB of RAM in the system. That would allow each core to have a bigger chunk of memory to run more applications in.