Having 4 cores on a laptop

[josephfuentes]

I am looking to purchase a high end laptop with extreme performance. Therefore I am looking for a 4 core laptop (Windows type only, not Mac) rather than a dual core laptop.

I know of recent that Lenovo and Toshiba are offering intel quad core laptops (Lenovo just announced this). I guess these are really desktop quad cores because as far as I know just very short while ago Intel announced some upcoming quad version for laptops.

I think in PCWorld or one of those mags, a Dell laptop (its model number I can't recall) was announced with 2 (two) dual core centrino based processors. That is a total of 4 cores spread out in two processors instead of one quad core processor. In either scenario it's a total of 4 processors.

So my question then is there an advantage of one architecture over the other? Will one offer better performance over the other?

Please note, I am not a gamer nor am into heavy duty graphics or media encoding of any kind. I just like fast and powerful.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Originally posted by: josephfuentes
Please note, I am not a gamer nor am into heavy duty graphics or media encoding of any kind. I just like fast and powerful.

Do you run any CPU intensive programs? You really might want to thing twice if you don't - it's unlikely that you'll really notice any difference between a dual and a quad if not.

 

[stevty2889]

It doesnt' sound like you plan to run anything that will even take advantage of a quad core. It doesn't really make sense to get a quad core in a laptop, if you aren't going to run anything that CPU intensive. It will increase heat, and reduce battery life, but for no real gain. Usually the limiter in a laptop peformance wse, is going to be the hard drive. Make sure you get a 7200 rpm hard drive, vs. a 5400 rpm if you are worried about responsiveness. If money is not an object, and you don't care much about storage capacity, you could go for a solid state hard drive.

 

[Foxery]

Also note that these will drain your battery faster, and heat up more than the typical 1 or 2 core CPU. If you don't have a use for the extra processing power, there are more cons than pros. As others said, more RAM & a faster hard drive will give you a more noticeable boost.

 

[aigomorla]

Ive seen the lappy quadcore.

Dont underestimate it.

It wont fit in socket P and requires a new heat sink on laptops due to the double die.

But there absolute low wattage monsters.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Just stumbled acrossed this site. I wish my wife would give the ok on this.

Just gotta watch out for that $1200 8 gig ram upgrade.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Ive seen the lappy quadcore.

Dont underestimate it.

It wont fit in socket P and requires a new heat sink on laptops due to the double die.

But there absolute low wattage monsters.

You mean an official Intel laptop quad-core, not a desktop quad-core in a laptop? Tell us, what kind of wattage estimation and speed do they have? It sounds nice if they finally come out with quad-core laptops, but I still think that the battery life is going to suck. I'd rather have an AMD quad-core on a laptop, with seperate voltage planes for each core, it would save power over an equivalent Intel laptop.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Ive seen the lappy quadcore.

Dont underestimate it.

It wont fit in socket P and requires a new heat sink on laptops due to the double die.

But there absolute low wattage monsters.

You mean an official Intel laptop quad-core, not a desktop quad-core in a laptop? Tell us, what kind of wattage estimation and speed do they have? It sounds nice if they finally come out with quad-core laptops, but I still think that the battery life is going to suck. I'd rather have an AMD quad-core on a laptop, with seperate voltage planes for each core, it would save power over an equivalent Intel laptop.

I need to get permission.

But there very close to the half cache Q9400.

The new Extreme Chip for lappys will also be a quadcore.


And yes larry, im talking about the socket P lappy quadcore ment for laptops which require a new heat sink fixture.

Otherwise id be running an ES of it right now.

That part i bolded is a killer since were at the mercy of the OEM product vendors on that.

 

[josephfuentes]

well I went back and did some more research and there are some genuine quad core laptops, toshiba qosmio G50. A new lenovo thinkpad whose model I promise to obtain - it's that new. Xtreme 917V and the Rock XSL8. In fact the XSL8 has xeon quad core not just these wimpy regular quad cores.

What's still unanswered is which would offer better performance? two duals or one quad?
Which brings me to the next question. I hear about this X processor is better than this Y processor. What is meant by better? Are the benchmarks, Photoshop, games, real time media encoding, solid 3D modelling, real time metereologial simulations? What?
Final note, Intel has announced plans for some new 6 core processor. Whew!