AMD 64... is it a good idea

[niggles]

So I'm about to buy my latest laptop but want to find out what the consensus is on the AMD 64 laptops. I will not be able to afford a new laptop for quite some time so something that will last a long time is important. Having a laptop that is able to run the newer 64 bit version of windows is more important to me than battery life or weight. Essentially this will be a desktop replacement that we'll move around the house as required, or take up to the cottage and use it on the way.
I'm noticing that there are fewer and fewer AMD 64 laptops out there and it seems intel is everywhere. Isn't anyone else concerned about running the upcoming 64 bit windows or the subsequent 64 bit apps? Anyone have any insight on this?

 

[intogamer]

Thats cause ppls are choosing the dothan core. Centrino = wireless internet, lighter, low power comsumsion. The 64 is more beefy. I wouldn't really worry cause windows 64 bit won't arrive for a while.

 

[stratman]

People don't usually take the 64-bitness of the AMD 64 into account when buying procs nowadays, people think it's too far away or whatever.

At 32-bit processing, the amd64 proc is, overall, probably slightly faster clock-for-clock than the Pentium M, but both will be fast enough for most modern tasks. The main advantage the A64 has over the PM is price. A A64 proc will be much cheaper than a similarly clocked PM. The main advantage the PM has over the A64 is lower power consumption. A PM lappy will be able to go longer without recharging the battery.

It sounds like you don't care too much about battery life, so you could go with the A64.

Really though, compare all your buying options on a laptop by laptop basis, and go for whichever is a better deal. Even though I don't care all that much about battery life, I'm typing from a PM 1.6, which I love, because I jumped on a sweet deal (the 750 off 1500 deal of legend ).

 

[RobsTV]

I agree that is the way it "should " be.
But for some reason it is not.
P-M loaded laptops actually cost less than comparable A64 laptops.

The Dell 9200 I just ordered is a good example.
17", 1.8GHz P-M (compares to around A64 3200+), 128 meg ATi mr9700, 60gig, 512, etc, at under $1500.
The closest A64 to it was the Gateway/emachine 7405gx at $1250 after rebate, but with less everything, only 15", and 64 meg ATi 9600.

Doesn't make sense since the A64 parts are cheaper.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: RobsTV
I agree that is the way it "should " be.
But for some reason it is not.
P-M loaded laptops actually cost less than comparable A64 laptops.

The Dell 9200 I just ordered is a good example.
17", 1.8GHz P-M (compares to around A64 3200+), 128 meg ATi mr9700, 60gig, 512, etc, at under $1500.
The closest A64 to it was the Gateway/emachine 7405gx at $1250 after rebate, but with less everything, only 15", and 64 meg ATi 9600.

Doesn't make sense since the A64 parts are cheaper.

You do realize that the Dell you described costs $250 MORE than the Gateway\eMachines model, right? The Dell has a bigger screen and better video card, the Gateway has a bigger hard drive, pick your poison. I'm happy with my eMachines M6805 (A64 3000+) so I'd recommend it without hesitation.

 

[RobsTV]

Actually even though I stated a $250 price difference, that was wrong info.
The Dell is only $79 more normally ($1478 as described SB), and since the $1400 Gateway/eMachine has been sold out since they announced the instant $150 rebate, the $1250 price is actually non-existant.

My only point was given the extra $250 (if possible) cost = the extra 17" and video upgrade alone, so you could compare CPU's at equal cost if not less for the Intel P-M (paying extra premium for video and larger screen, not CPU). You are pretty much stuck with the display and video you get when you first buy a laptop, so it is critical that you get the best, but with hard drives choices are endless. I have faster external drives that cost less than any internal so not an issue, and not too big a deal for anyone to upgrade HD later. But now, with no deals that you can actually purchase with gaming AMD's for under $1500, the Intel P-M's have an ever better edge. (I'm sure by the time I hit enter a gaming AMD A64+ laptop will appear for $1100) .

As the original poster states, concern of the future is important, since laptops are not very upgradeable. With that in mind, I would be more concerned with non-upgradeable parts you will have to live with for a few years than a 64 bit OS. Display, video performance, and CPU (CPU upgradable at least). For example (yes I like examples) I am upgrading from a Toshiba Tecra 750CDT 266MHz, S3-Verge with 160 meg of ram, and a 4 gig HD. Sweeet. (at least I put a 12 meg Voodoo2 in it's docking station PCI slot!)

 

[uOpt]

Don't get the AMD64 to run a 64 bit OS unless you know why you want to run 64 bits. For the end user it has no practical advantage but quite a bit of disadvantages. Great geek and programmer value, though.

Now, the AMD64 has great value as a 32 bit processor, but for a notebook that I actually want to move around the Centrino architecture is just wiping it out. There are some applications that will be faster on the AMD, and games are probably among them.

 

[imported_haris]

Don't worry about not being able to find an A64 laptop at Best Buy, it's because they are already phasing out the 7405 for the next model. It looks like they only want to carry one Gateway machine at a time, so they are constantly discontinuing models. I purchased the 6805 and a month later it was replaced.

It's still a high performance laptop and the mobility 9700 is overrated as most benchmarks show it slightly outperforms the 9600. IMO it might be worth waiting for a PCI Express graphics card, but if you are not a big gamer then even the 9600 should hold you over pretty well for a couple of years.

 

[txxxx]

If you need battery life beyond 2 1/2hrs+ , then the Athlon64 mobile will be fine. Otherwise stick with centrino.

If your spineless, Centrino otherwise Athlon64. After carrying mine back and forth to university most days, 2months later, I now cant tell I've got a 3.6KG laptop in my bag.

The mobility 9700 does have a load of headroom to be overclocked compared to the 9600 (mine goes from 445/216 -> 560/255 happily in HL2). Although thats' more dependant on the core itself and cooling the laptop's equipped with.

 

[niggles]

so I'm getting the feeling that no one thinks 64 bit applications are coming out anytime soon. I'm thiking they'll be out in the next 2 years. Seeing as I will not be buying a new laptop for probably 6 or 7 years I think this may be important. Although Intel may be the way to go for the short term, I'm reading enough pro 64 bit here to convince me it's still a good idea. On the various GPU info it's really not a concern for me as I keep my gaming to my desktop where the price point is more affordable.

Thanks for everyone's input, and feel free to add your thoughts to this still as I will not be buying for about 2 weeks.

 

[onix]

I think that the advantage of Windows OS upgrades stopped with W2K. Any additional functionality I can add with the appropriate software, etc. The reason this is important is that future OS'es will support 64-bit, but unless your motherboard is capable of addressing more than 4GB with a single processor why get more than 32-bit? Lesson: don't upgrade unless you have to, and only if you cannot get by with what is currently available to meet future needs.

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: niggles
so I'm getting the feeling that no one thinks 64 bit applications are coming out anytime soon

That's really not the problem. E.g. for Linux all that Openoffice, Mozilla, KDE/GNOME and whatnot stuff is available in 64 bits and runs perfectly

The problem is that tiny bits here and there are not available. For example there is no flash plugin for Linux/AMD64. Since that is a plugin loaded as a shared library that forces the whole chain of Mozilla/Firefox and all plugins including Java to be 32 bits.

It takes experience to be able to set this up, and time to do it.

 

[Justin216]

But here is the real issue, do end users benefit from a 64-bit process? Yes, but only extremely slightly. 64-bit applications are already in effect for the sector that really needs them, scientific work or high end CAD work. Someone running Office apps, etc, is not going to see and major benefit since it's not a heavy process. Games may someday take full advantage of it, but not until we have 64-bit native processors and not a hybrid, such as an A64 chip, at much higher speeds that what we are currently running.

I'm not saying that 64-bit isn't the future, because we all know it is. Heck, 128-bit won't be very far off after that. But what I'm talking about is the actual usefullness of such technology to most end users. Right now, 64-Bit is more or less a marketing ploy, since we, as end users, don't have processes that really require those extra 32 registers in the near future.

 

[beyoku]

marketing ploy - shmarketing shmoy - We dont really need dual vidoecards or dual cpu's for home users. In fact MOST users could get by off a 700 mhz machine running NT. The fact is - if it is here NOW why not get it just for future proofness. it is here and it is cheap, and it performs good. I own an amd64 laptop and plan on having it for a longer time than i would retire any other laptop.

 

[RedWolf]

I have owned both a 6805 and an 8600. The 6805 had about 3 hours of battery life. The 8600 has about 4 hours. There is definitely a difference there. As far as speed, the 8600 had a 9600 Pro Turbo and the 6805 had a 9600. For most gaming, they were pretty close at stock speeds. For more cpu intensive tasks, the 6805 was faster. I didn't overclock my 6805 but I know they are very overclockable (both the cpu and the video). The 6805 was a great DTR. It had everything on it. 6 in 1 card reader. 4 usb ports, firewire. The 8600 (revision c) doesn't have ANY card reader slots and only 2 usb ports. If you are going to use the laptop as a DTR, I'd look at the ports you'll need. The new 8600's are very sparse in that department.

If you are concerned with 64 bit support, I would definitely choose the 680x series of e-machines (or the gateway equivalent). They are great machines with solid battery life, good build quality, and excellent performance. The 64 bit version of windows ran very well on the 6805 (other than finding drivers for the wireless card).

 

[niggles]

ok, all good points I'm sure. Again, thanks for everyone's input. I know that the AMD 64 bit processors out right now are a hybrid, but my concern is being forward compatible with a 64 bit O/S running only 64 bit applications. Quite literally this thing is going to need to last 5 to 7 years for me and I'm worried that by that point having a CPU and motherboard that can't even be compatible with may of the apps that will be out by then is not going to fly. I recognize that a 64 bit AMD 3000 isn't going to be anything but slow by then, but at least if it will run the apps I'll be ok. One of the posts above mentioned it being a hybrid, and I recall such articles before they came out saying that it would be great in the short term because AMD would capture both 32 bit and 64 bit markets at first, but that Intel had the longer view ahead with it's 64 bit only cpu. We all know how well that turned out. Still, with the AMD being a hybrid will it really take that much of a hit running native 64 bit apps? I have to say at this point I'm now leaning away from the AMD 64, but I want to make sure it's for the right reasons. As I mentioned, my goal here is longevitiy, not having necessarily a fast processor or gaming machine, just longevity.

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: niggles
Quite literally this thing is going to need to last 5 to 7 years for me and I'm worried that by that point having a CPU and motherboard that can't even be compatible with may of the apps that will be out by then is not going to fly. I recognize that a 64 bit AMD 3000 isn't going to be anything but slow by then, but at least if it will run the apps I'll be ok.

No games and no consumer apps will require 64 bits in 7 years.

There might be some things like video/image editing, CAD and the like which will have a version for 64 bits which is faster and/or more convenient to use but the 32 bit version offered along with it will still have the same features. Obviously, in 7 years your A64-3200 will be much too slow and, worse, can't hold enough RAM to do any of these applications at that time.

Obviously, if you need to do high-performance storage and data lookup vendors will press you into 64 bits much earlier.

As an individual the only strong reasons to get 64 bits now are:
- you want to prepare your code for 64 bits (you need a few years)
- you want to clean up your code
- you program something which benefits from just flat mmap'ing data and you have more than 3 GB of it (now that Fedora Core dropped the 4G/4G patch)

 

[imported_haris]

Where did this number come from? Driver support is almost ready now (at least for version 1.0) and there are already a few games that are supposed to take advantage of the 64Bit OS when it comes out. Those games might not take full advantage of it, but they do make some use of it's capabilities. Shadow Ops: Red Mercury and UT2004 are the two games I've heard of so far. Considering how "old" UT2004 is, I'd be surprised to not hear that more 64 Bit games will be availbale within the first year or so of official release for the 64Bit OS.

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: haris
Where did this number come from?

Uh, which number are you talking about?

 

[imported_haris]

No games and no consumer apps will require 64 bits in 7 years.

 

[uOpt]

I said "require 64 bits", not "support 64 bits" which is what you were talking about.

 

[imported_haris]

Misread you're post, but I believe Niggles is more concerned about "support." Anyone buying an Intel based laptop today is not going to be able to take advantage of any 64Bit support until they upgrade again (unless the current rumor that certain CPUs just need a bios update to enable 64Bit support).

 

[imported_Poozler]

yes get a A64, i like them.

 

[nyarrgh]

I would say it depends on your projected use. I have both a centrino (Dell 600M) and an a64 (emachines m6811). Although I like the A64 for playing games, For travel I use the Dell. I commute weekly coast to coast and the weight does make a difference when running for the next terminal. battery life is also longer for in-flight use. So I bring the dell for frequent travel, but I bring my emachines when I'm going to stay someplace longer.

If you want a DTR, get an AMD64. If you're going to use it for traveling, get a PM.

 

[trungthiendo]

even the new replacement for the centrino line of laptop does not include the 64bit support...i wouldn't worry too much about 64bit

unless you want bragging rights than get a amd64, if you want a laptop with good battery life get a pentium M, battery life is where pentium M shines at

processing power on par with an equally clocked amd 64

you say u wont replace ur laaptop in 6-7 years, maybe so...but if the laptop is what you find urself using most, u'll upgrade after 3 years due to performace.

just get what is good for you now with a little headroom for future, no need to look beyond 1 year