Laptop for video editing/gaming

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Thu Jan 27, 2005 1:43 pm

thedog wrote:The thing is, in tasks like video editing, gaming, multi-tasking, can the P M keep up with the P4? Sure I know that for portability and power consumption Pentium M kicks P4's butt but if I am most likely going to keep it plugged in to an outlet all the time, wouldn't it make more sense to go with the P4?

Well I'll do some more research between Pentium M and P4 and how they compare but for now I think I will call it a day.

Do a Google search for "Pentium M", and read some of the articles that appear.

The Pentium 4 core has been criticized for some of its design decisions, such as its inanely long pipeline that suffers massively in e.g. branch misprediction. If you're doing very linear stuff like video encoding (remember: not editing, not compositing, just encoding) it's ok, but for anything else, it more or less sucks.

The Pentium M's advantage is not just lower power consumption -- it's also better architecture, which leads to better performance without fucking insane clockspeeds.

thedog · Post by **thedog** » Thu Jan 27, 2005 9:11 pm

Well I did some research and I'm sold. I probably won't get a laptop for a while, but when I do, I will look at the Travelmate 8104 and the like very closely.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Fri Jan 28, 2005 2:49 am

thedog wrote:Well I did some research and I'm sold. I probably won't get a laptop for a while, but when I do, I will look at the Travelmate 8104 and the like very closely.

The Acer Travelmate? I hope not.

Acer laptops are crap. The seniors at my school all have them -- it's their class model -- and they have horrible design problems. Here's three:

(1) Cooling. Or, rather, lack thereof.
(2) The motherboards are unusually prone to failure.
(3) The AC jack is unusually prone to failure.

Acer is also no longer in the business of manufacturing laptops, as far as I know: they now exist only to fulfill contracts (such as what they have with my school), and then they're gone.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Fri Jan 28, 2005 2:52 am

Quick corrections:

(1) The seniors obviously don't have the 8104: they're 7000-somethings. The design is crap, though; I wouldn't give Acer another try. Maybe you'll have better luck.
(2) I stand corrected: Acer appearently IS still in business. Weird.

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Fri Jan 28, 2005 2:07 pm

I haven't posted in here forever which is unfortunate since I'm a Computer Architest, but as trythil says, the Pentium-4 is absolute shit. It's actually pretty laughable from a design perspective within our industry.

The pipeline is nearly double that of an Athlon or Pentium III architecture and as trythil has eluded, speed (megahertz) DOES NOT equal Performance. If you're running at 3 ghz, but you have to go through twice as many flops to get the results, doesn't that mean something running at 2 Ghz with half the flops would probably be the same or better in performance? Don't give into the hype and marketing.

Now although I am pretty biased being an engineer at AMD, if you're going to go Intel, go with the Pentium M. It has better performance per megahertz and has much better battery life. Kinda makes sense since it all it is is a tweaked Pentium III which again, has better performance as well as lower power consumption (Watts).

At the same time, I recommend you look at some of the Athlon64 laptops. You will get comprable if not better performance and more importantly (imo), you're investing in the future. Windows XP 64-bit is coming out in April (finally) and it's apparent the industry will be following suit (Linux and some games already have), so might as well make the jump soon right? That is unless you're going to be buying *another* computer in the near future.

Anyway that's my two cents...

aznfs · Post by **aznfs** » Fri Jan 28, 2005 2:13 pm

trythil wrote:Quick corrections:

(1) The seniors obviously don't have the 8104: they're 7000-somethings. The design is crap, though; I wouldn't give Acer another try. Maybe you'll have better luck.
(2) I stand corrected: Acer appearently IS still in business. Weird.

acer is a international company i believe and they make ALOT of electronic stuff, cant say they are very good quality tho

oldwrench · Post by **oldwrench** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:54 pm

Check here for some good prices on notebooks and hard drives. It's a good company. http://www.tigerdirect.com/

aznfs · Post by **aznfs** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 7:52 pm

oldwrench wrote:Check here for some good prices on notebooks and hard drives. It's a good company. http://www.tigerdirect.com/

bah;; only trust the ones with one rebate or just buy the ones that dont have rebates;; since almost all of tiger direct's pricing runs off of rebates so rebates are stacked on top of each other when they can be stacked

other wise tigerdirect is a good source for stuff, newegg as well

RichLather · Post by **RichLather** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 1:34 am

I'd argue Newegg is better, if only on the considerable strength of their customer service and largely hassle-free returns policy.

By largely I mean that unless you were some l33t dweeb who trashed his new Athlon by painting it with Arctic Silver or burning it to a crisp in a failed overclock attempt, you'll be able to return it and get a replacement.

Newegg gets all my business.

Knowname · Post by **Knowname** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 4:12 pm

dwchang wrote:I haven't posted in here forever which is unfortunate since I'm a Computer Architest, but as trythil says, the Pentium-4 is absolute shit. It's actually pretty laughable from a design perspective within our industry.

The pipeline is nearly double that of an Athlon or Pentium III architecture and as trythil has eluded, speed (megahertz) DOES NOT equal Performance. If you're running at 3 ghz, but you have to go through twice as many flops to get the results, doesn't that mean something running at 2 Ghz with half the flops would probably be the same or better in performance? Don't give into the hype and marketing.

Now although I am pretty biased being an engineer at AMD, if you're going to go Intel, go with the Pentium M. It has better performance per megahertz and has much better battery life. Kinda makes sense since it all it is is a tweaked Pentium III which again, has better performance as well as lower power consumption (Watts).

At the same time, I recommend you look at some of the Athlon64 laptops. You will get comprable if not better performance and more importantly (imo), you're investing in the future. Windows XP 64-bit is coming out in April (finally) and it's apparent the industry will be following suit (Linux and some games already have), so might as well make the jump soon right? That is unless you're going to be buying *another* computer in the near future.

Anyway that's my two cents...

I admittedly, have a habbit of chasing my tail when I read tech specs, but I'm waiting to u/g my proc (just bought a Barton) until they can implament low latency memory on A64's. Also, because of the low latency DDR2 or RDRAM on P4s (as opposed to DDR and outdated mobos/ memory pipelines on P-Ms even Athlons) even partially because of the long pipelines and since video editing is not too prone to mistakes, aren't p4s just quicker at editing?? In normal tasks it's rather apparent that they aren't pound for pound as good but this guy is interested in editing. I would say, if you game more go A64, if not- go P4.

Also your in HS!! Just get a desktop, I really doubt you need to take in depth notes (get an additional pda if you like, don't need a fast one just a palm) in even Honors classes in PRIVATE school. It's not like college. Plus I'm thinking your an incoming freshman (14?) you don't need a laptop!!