Core Duo vs. Turion

[Trevante]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I've searched and couldn't find much.

Anyways, which would be better, an Intel Core Duo, or an AMD Turion? I imagine the Turion would have better battery life, but the Duo would perform better (for general use and some video encoding, I don't plan on gaming). Any input would be appreciated.

In the one thread I did find, someone said that dual core Turions would be out in may (later this month I guess). Is this true?

 

[TrailerParkKing]

Trevente,

this is a good question... I have recently purchased two lappy's. One for my wife an HP DV8110 with a turion and then an Acer Aspire 5670 for myself which has the core duo. I would tell you that both machines seem to be plent fast and in some cases I think my wifes is a little faster than mine. Although I will say that this core duo does a fantastic job. It is easily as fast as my old OC'd xp2100 PC.

As I was tumbling with the decision i ultimately just chose the machine that had the equipment I wanted for the best price. The thing that swayed me to do that was the fact that even if you have dual cores most software isn't using both of them anyway......

hope this helps in some way.

 

[6000SUX]

Originally posted by: TrailerParkKing
Trevente,

this is a good question... I have recently purchased two lappy's. One for my wife an HP DV8110 with a turion and then an Acer Aspire 5670 for myself which has the core duo. I would tell you that both machines seem to be plent fast and in some cases I think my wifes is a little faster than mine. Although I will say that this core duo does a fantastic job. It is easily as fast as my old OC'd xp2100 PC.

As I was tumbling with the decision i ultimately just chose the machine that had the equipment I wanted for the best price. The thing that swayed me to do that was the fact that even if you have dual cores most software isn't using both of them anyway......

hope this helps in some way.

I agree with you about either chip being more than fast enough for almost any personal computing need. However, I would still prefer a dual-core over a non-dual-core machine (such as an older Pentium M). Even if you're just running one foreground processor-intensive task, the OS, antivirus programs, etc. still add a fair bit of overhead, which can be offset by the second core.

 

[Aluvus]

As far as I know, the Turion 64 X2 (dual core) and matching Socket S1 are still due June 6, 2006 for official launch. The launch of AM2 was moved up a bit, which means basically nothing, but S1 appears to have kept its original date.

 

[TrailerParkKing]

agreed.... I will say that this machine (core duo) is a bit faster at loading certain things. in all honesty I am typically an AMD guy but my last HP P4 was such a trooper that I decided to stick with Intel. You won't be disappointed in either chip but all in all the core duo is probably better...

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: Trevante
Anyways, which would be better, an Intel Core Duo, or an AMD Turion? I imagine the Turion would have better battery life, but the Duo would perform better (for general use and some video encoding, I don't plan on gaming). Any input would be appreciated.

Core Duo would use less power than an equivalent clock Turion MT.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article313-page5.html

 

[Dulanic]

I haven't used a Turion but my Core Duo laptop lasts oh about 5 hours with normal usage of web surfing and stuff.

 

[halfadder]

I have a coworker who is going for a Turion because of ethics. He used to be an Intel fan, but just switched to AMD because he can no longer stand to do business with a company that sells CPUs to Apple.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: halfadder
I have a coworker who is going for a Turion because of ethics. He used to be an Intel fan, but just switched to AMD because he can no longer stand to do business with a company that sells CPUs to Apple.

How moronic.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: halfadder
I have a coworker who is going for a Turion because of ethics. He used to be an Intel fan, but just switched to AMD because he can no longer stand to do business with a company that sells CPUs to Apple.

uhhhh no, because apple never made there CPU's. They always used a manufactor like IBM to make the processors for them. But because of recient demands and the ability if IBM not to provide apple with enough cpu's not to mention they never could find a way to shrink a G5 in a laptop, apple basicaly took the next biggest contender's CPU and marketed it in the macbook pro's.

to me honestly i think thats a marketing suicide because now your admitting that your processors were REALLY REALLY crappy when benched against INTEL. :X Thats basically telling the mac users with older mac's your PC blows when compared to a comparible INTEL. :X

But thats just my two cents.

Anyhow id get the core duo, or wait for the merom processor to come out. There crazy fast and with two cores, id be hard to make that thing lag in processing area. :X

 

[Walzber813]

i'm in the same search process as far as laptops, and comparing processsors. but i do know that the centrino's battery will outlast a turion.

 

[ValuedCustomer]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
to me honestly i think thats a marketing suicide because now your admitting that your processors were REALLY REALLY crappy when benched against INTEL. :X Thats basically telling the mac users with older mac's your PC blows when compared to a comparible INTEL. :X

If we were talking about the average earthling then you'd be right on the money.. but we're talking about Team Mac. - you could slap an illuminated white Apple icon on an old toaster-oven and those folks would gobble it up like hot-cakes and declare Steve Jobs to be, once again, the Messiah.

 

[totalcommand]

since when did turion lappies last longer on battery than core duo ones.

 

[6000SUX]

Originally posted by: totalcommand
since when did turion lappies last longer on battery than core duo ones.

Since never. The only question is how powerful the dual-core Turion chips will be in comparison, and what their battery life will be like. It may wind up like the older Turion chips, a decent value for the money but with a little worse battery life than the comparable offering from Intel.

 

[imported_haris]

I know I'm a bit late for this topic, but I just thought that it is worth mentioning that AMD laptops can be upgraded to VISTA or any 64Bit OS. Dual core is nice to have, but there is no OS upgrade potential. If not being able to upgrade your OS isn't a problem then the Core Duo's are definately the way to go. IMO, If you have to have a machine now, go AMD. If you can wait, I'd still go with a dual core AMD, at least until you see something from Intel that can do 64Bit and actually perform on par or better in a 64Bit environment.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: haris
I know I'm a bit late for this topic, but I just thought that it is worth mentioning that AMD laptops can be upgraded to VISTA or any 64Bit OS. Dual core is nice to have, but there is no OS upgrade potential. If not being able to upgrade your OS isn't a problem then the Core Duo's are definately the way to go. IMO, If you have to have a machine now, go AMD. If you can wait, I'd still go with a dual core AMD, at least until you see something from Intel that can do 64Bit and actually perform on par or better in a 64Bit environment.

You know Vista will be released in a 32-bit format too, right?

Also, getting laptop drivers for 64-bit Vista for a notebook released under XP might be a big hassle that you won't want to deal with.

 

[rainypickles]

let's revive this thread! anyone now have experience with both turions and core duos? my question is: which one generates less heat and noise? it would seem that the intel offering would be better, but maybe the amd tech has improved. any insights?

 

[Ruptga]

I don´t know about single core, but I understand that Core Duo generally beats the Turion X2 in everything except gaming and such, but Core 2 beats both of them at everything, though not by the insane margins that it is on desktop platforms. Core 2 is ten-thirteen percent better than Core, clock for clock. Core 2 is being sold by Intel at the same prices as a Core at the same speed, I doubt retailers will do the same, but it shouldn´t be too much of an increase. Anyway, if I needed a lappy, I´d wait about a month until Core 2 works its way through the system and to the shelves. Oh, last thing, Core 2 has the same battery life as Core at the same clock, though like I said it´s about ten percent faster at processing, so if you process faster you´ll have the system loaded less and it´ll idle more, having more battery.

You could just read the review they just posted today, I pretty much just copied what they did. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2808

 

[corkyg]

In laptops, AMD is an "also ran." I'm on my 5th one since 1994 - and I dwon't even consider an AMD CPU for a laptop. They use more power and are hotter (silly P4 laptops excepted!)

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: ADDAvenger
I don´t know about single core, but I understand that Core Duo generally beats the Turion X2 in everything except gaming and such, but Core 2 beats both of them at everything, though not by the insane margins that it is on desktop platforms. Core 2 is ten-thirteen percent better than Core, clock for clock. Core 2 is being sold by Intel at the same prices as a Core at the same speed, I doubt retailers will do the same, but it shouldn´t be too much of an increase. Anyway, if I needed a lappy, I´d wait about a month until Core 2 works its way through the system and to the shelves. Oh, last thing, Core 2 has the same battery life as Core at the same clock, though like I said it´s about ten percent faster at processing, so if you process faster you´ll have the system loaded less and it´ll idle more, having more battery.

You could just read the review they just posted today, I pretty much just copied what they did. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2808

I've seen some other reports somewhere else (I conviniently forgot the webpage), claming that htere's barely any overall difference between Core and Core 2 in laptops.

Now Core 2 has 14 stages pipeline and Core has 12. As we remember, Penitum 4 had 20 and was significantly slower clock per clock compared to everything else. I'm surprised that intel managed to pull 10% more speed for same clock. I guess more L2 cache helps.