Laptop Processors?

[Walzber813]

I've been researching laptops for about 2 months now, and my last decision is going to be: which processor to go with. I am going to be wanting to game, manage music and photos, and do school work. I didn't know if the Centrino Duo or Turion would be preferred. Or possible waiting on a Turion Dual Core?
Thanks

 

[kknd1967]

right now, Core duo is the best choice

after Turion X2 launch in June, we will see its performance. I heard Turion X2 does not have independent per-core power management like Core Duo. If this is true, this does not sound good. But I might as well be wrong. Performance wise, I see it is comparable to Core Duo given initial benchmarks, a little slower at clock-to-clock base. But it has 64 bit if you like, which may not be very useful anyway untill at least next year.

Then if you can wait further, Merom will be out and most likely that would beat both current Core duo and Turion X2 if it keeps its promise.

Another thing is the platform optimization for power saving (check out the power saving it can offer in the lastest THG's review of 945GM). Intel has done good on Centrino. Not sure when AMD Yamato will be available.

 

[v8envy]

If gaming is part of the equation, your choice of GPU will be far more important than your choice of CPU.

Most laptops come with absolutely asstastic Intel video, or ATI Radeon IGPs. While 600 3dmark05s these bad boys top out at looks good on paper, you have to realize that's about 1/2 of a 9600, and you have a relatively high res LCD to view the output on. None of your other tasks look intensive enough to demand a high power CPU, dual or single core.

AMD64 is useful if you're doing Java dev on Linux, but that's about it. I couldn't live without it, but if you're 100% Windows then Core is definitely the way to fly right now.