is the sonoma core worth it?

[kcthomas]

i was looking at the acer tm3002 because it is the only ultraportable that i could find in my price range. is it worth it to spend a little more and get the 915gm chipset or would it make that much of a difference over the old chipset? the dell 700m with the 750 off looks pretty sweet. the acer is 1300 and the dell (with coupon) is < 1000

 

[fbrdphreak]

Just compare which machine you would rather have despite the new chipset.

The 915 chipset MIGHT give you 5-10% more performance, but will reduce battery life as well. I wouldn't consider it a major factor, go by the rest of the features for the money

 

[Fox5]

The 915 chipset will have Intel's GMA900 instead of Extreme Edition 2, the GMA900 supports DX9 and is about twice as fast.(despite specs that say it should be like 4x as fast)

 

[fbrdphreak]

This is another good point. GMA900 is a GREAT deal faster, but still not adequate for modern games.

 

[kcthomas]

so its basically only worth it if you are gonna do gaming? (which im not)

 

[Fox5]

Well, GMA900 has the base features required for Microsoft's Longhorn's new interface, and might be able to help with watching video, but if you're not gaming there's no big need to get it.(it wouldn't game very well anyhow)

 

[trikster2]

It's more than just graphics right?

Sonoma CPU is better designed (?). More cache, better power management, higher memory bandwidth etc. Until recenlty I had both a 1.86 sonoma based laptop and a 1.7ghz pre-sonoma laptop (gosh cofee has not kicked in, what was the name of that antique chipset?) for some reason I like the 1.86 sonoma a lot better. To me it seems to run better even though the platforms are similar (d800 vs M70). Maybe it's just the extra .16.......

 

[fbrdphreak]

Yes the Sonoma platform is more efficient.
The CPU is still the same old Dothan Pentium M with 2MB Cache. The difference is in the chipset: 533MHz FSB, DDR2, SATA, PCI-E, High Def Audio, etc etc.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: trikster2

It's more than just graphics right?

Sonoma CPU is better designed (?). More cache, better power management, higher memory bandwidth etc. Until recenlty I had both a 1.86 sonoma based laptop and a 1.7ghz pre-sonoma laptop (gosh cofee has not kicked in, what was the name of that antique chipset?) for some reason I like the 1.86 sonoma a lot better. To me it seems to run better even though the platforms are similar (d800 vs M70). Maybe it's just the extra .16.......

Sonoma is a 'platform'. You can have parts of the platform without having the whole thing.
Most Centrino laptops will use a Dothan cpu, whether they use the 855 or 915 chipset.
The 533fsb Dothan cpus tend to have worse battery life than the 400fsb ones, and don't perform any better.

The 915 chipset has a lot of benefits that go along with it, but most companies don't implement them into their laptops, most of the time the only differences between Sonoma and an older Centrino laptop is the memory(DDR versus DDR2...actually 915 supports DDR too, but at much worse performance), and the graphics.(GMA900 versus Extreme Edition 2, and pci express graphics versus agp)