Originally posted by: pantingdeer
Trying to buy Sony Vaio S380. As I am customizing my own laptop, these questions arose. Will anyone please answer:
* How fast 1.8GHz to 2.0 GHz Centrino processor compared to just regular Pentium 4 processors?
* 2MB L2 Cache and 533MHz FSB are the basic configuration and non-changeable. I have to make a choice for the processor between 1.8GHz and 2.0GHz and also a choice for the memory between 1GBx1 and 512MBx1. Which configuration will be better because I know just having higher numbers for these sometimes doesn't mean that the computer will work any faster?
* Additionally, what's L2 Cache and 533MHz FSB as well as DDR-SDRAM (DDR2-400)? I just don't know what they mena. Can somebody help me on this?
well basically your not going to notice a dif between 1.8 and 2.0ghz but id always go for the faster one, money permiting.
the pentium M's have a much shorter instruction pipeline than regular desk top P4's so the get more work done per clock cycle much like AMD's chips. for most things i would say a 2.0Ghz Pentium M would be up there mixing it with the 3Ghz + Desktop P4's
itll be much faster in games than a P4 would be, and i believe the Pentium M is even more than a match for the Athlon 64 in some games, but dont let this fool you. when it comes to things like content creation and CAD etc its much better to have the P4.
so
1) 1.8 -2.0ghz pentium M is more than up there with 3Ghz+ P4's on regular stuff and better in games
2) you deffinately want the 533 bus, this brings the new intel 915 chipset to the laptop and also much needed dual channel memory (older banias cores had to make do with the 855 chipset, and single channel ram on a 400fsb)
also a gig of ram would be nice, but if your doing nothing heavy with your laptop it would probably be a waste and you wouldnt see the difference. again games would see the difference and so would thngs like heavy use of cad, photoshop etc
3)L2 cache is a memory located on the cpu die. this runs the same speed as the CPU so as u can imagine this is very fast memory dedicated to keeping the pipeline full of info. the more L2 cache there is the more data can be stored directly next to the cpu. transfereing data from L2 to cpu is much faster than going from the main memory which runs much slower. so in theory the more cache u have the more data you can store next to the cpu and the faster things get done.
4)DDR2 is the newer DDR technology, but at the moment its higher speeds come also with higher latencies. the 400 just stands for its DDR speed
DDR 400 is called PC3200 (jedec spec) the 3200 standing for the memory bandwidth provided.
the actual speed of DDR400 is 200Mhz, (DDR stands for Double Data Rate so it can transfer 2 bits of info on the same clock pulse, therefore 200Mhz DDR is EFFECTIVELY like having 400Mhz memory)
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