i7 laptops? Anyone tried? Experience? suggestions?

[Santilli]

Hi
Has anyone used the new i7 laptops? Experiences? Opinions? Suggestions?
Recommendations?

 

[Handruin]

Take a look at the Lenovo T510 series notebooks.

 

[ddrueding]

I don't have one yet, but I'm considering. My current laptop is by far the oldest computer I own (CoreDuo CPU...note the lack of a "2" in there).

I'm tempted to hold off until the 32nm chips show up, to see what kind of efficiency gains can be had.

 

[LunarMist]

They are pretty the much the same as any laptop computers as far as I noticed in use. What exactly are you looking for?

 

[Santilli]

I'm thinking of replacing the Panasonic CF-51. I'd love to have a SSD based laptop, but, the Panasonic has only a PATA interface.

I noticed the i7 laptops are supposed to be about 10X faster, processor wise, and, an SSD in a laptop might make a HUGE difference?

Just wondering...

 

[LunarMist]

I'm thinking of replacing the Panasonic CF-51. I'd love to have a SSD based laptop, but, the Panasonic has only a PATA interface.

I noticed the i7 laptops are supposed to be about 10X faster, processor wise, and, an SSD in a laptop might make a HUGE difference?

Just wondering...

10x faster for what? The i7 CPUs are not that much faster than the Core 2, so there is no miracle. Of course the CF-51 is only a single-core (2GHz?) P-M machine, but not 10x slower. There are some recent PATA SSDs that help old notebooks perform better. I tried the X25-E in my notebook last year. It was fast, but not a critical difference over the 7200 RPM notebook drive for my purposes. These days a 160GB X25-M might be a good compromise for capacity, price and performance in a new notebook. Depending on the apps needed, 8GB of RAM may be a better optimization.

 

[Santilli]

Intel Pentium M 1.60 Ghz. Problem is it has that stupid battery saving software, that runs the processor at lower, much lower, 590MHZ when it boots. Just figured out why, and how to turn it off, I think.

Now, to the topic at hand.
Intel Pentium M 1.60 Ghz Passmark score: 358
Intel Core i7 720QM: 3264
3264/358=9.1
OK: 9 times faster.

Huge jump going in the 51 going from 4200 to 7200 RPM hard drive. Still, it's only doing about 50 MB/sec.

Getting a Vertex Turbo in there would increase this by around 3-5 times.
Which PATA SSD did you try? Any idea why the X25-E didn't give you a big speed boost?

 

[Handruin]

I think you're focusing too greatly on the single PassMark score to base all your systems on. You will feel big jump from the Pentium m 1.6GHz, but if you want to save a few bucks, you will still feel a huge jump if you went with a little slower CPU. The i7 720QM is also @ 1.6GHz. Unless if you plan to do lots of multi threaded work on your notebook, you might be better served with a core 2 at a higher GHz. If batter life is a great importance, then the i7 is probably a good choice.

 

[LunarMist]

WTF the Passmark is I don't know/care, but I seriously doubt that a 30 minute job on your current computer will be done in about 3 minutes on the new one. I have not delved into how well the turbo boosters work in a notebook, but there are usually limitations on battery power if decent run time is expected. A lot depends on the compromises bewteen size/weight, performance and battery life. You have not made clear the purpose of the new laptop computer.

 

[udaman]

I don't have one yet, but I'm considering. My current laptop is by far the oldest computer I own (CoreDuo CPU...note the lack of a "2" in there).

I'm tempted to hold off until the 32nm chips show up, to see what kind of efficiency gains can be had.

^Sandy Bridge "tock"? 1Q2011, integrated GPU, rumored to be noticeably faster. Wait until ~2012 and get the next 'tick' in Ivy Bridge @22nm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Sandy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3763&p=3
^Intel RM chart, but doesn't give TDP for common CPU's used in laptops.

I'm waiting until I get a damned decent OLED screen in a laptop...seems I'll have to wait a long, long time ..maybe by then a BR drive will be available on the Mac


http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/14/intels-huron-river-32nm-laptop-platform-to-pack-wimax-in-2011/

It's not easy to be a buyer of computers with all these technology roadmaps flying about, but in case you're brave enough to peer into the future, Fudzilla has word on Intel's upcoming laptop chips. The "Huron River" platform will replace Calpella (the current crop of mobile chipsets), and continue Intel's fine work with WiMAX and WiFi integration, in addition to new Intel Bluetooth connectivity and that crowd-favored Intel Wireless Display. The platform will be powered by the new Sandy Bridge 32nm processor, a followup to Nehalem's Core i Series of chips. We should be seeing this in Q1 2011, which will probably be minutes after Apple finally decides to upgrade to Core i7.

^oh man, the Apple h8trs are a tough snarky crowd

 

[udaman]

You have not made clear the purpose of the new laptop computer.

...and now Ur doing impersonations of me?

 

[LunarMist]

Huge jump going in the 51 going from 4200 to 7200 RPM hard drive. Still, it's only doing about 50 MB/sec.

Getting a Vertex Turbo in there would increase this by around 3-5 times.
Which PATA SSD did you try? Any idea why the X25-E didn't give you a big speed boost?

I don't use PATA SSDs. I mentioned that there was still some development in that area.

I'm not running a server from the laptop, so the demands are not so high. I also don't place much stock in the scaling of STR benchmarks. IOMeter random reads/writes are a better, but still rough, indicator. One issue to consider is that some laptop ICH ports do not work at full SATA 3Gbps speeds. Of course if there were an affordable NLT 640GB drive I would get one.

 

[LunarMist]

You might search for a laptop that accepts two drives - one fast SSD for C: and one larger drive for data.

 

[Santilli]

Anyone care to test their SSD's in their laptops to see what kind of through put they are getting???

My laptop functions as a back up to our computers, and a test bed. Speakers are blown, so that is a problem.

Still, when something goes down on the other machines, it's nice to be able to get on the net, and find a solution.

 

[Pradeep]

Greg, you don't need a quad core to browse the web. Do you care about graphics performance? Environmental specs - another Toughbook perhaps? As mentioned, a faster dual core will be faster on single threaded apps. Think of the current quad @ 1.6 as the same kind of tech intro as the 1.6 p-m, not a good time to jump on.

 

[Mercutio]

Passmark is a benchmark. It has very little to do with the day-to-day reality of operating a computer. I'll glance at benchmarks when I'm evaluating a purchase, but most of the time I'm far more interested in subjective performance, which comes down to the simple question "Is this machine fast/tolerable to use?"

I have a couple high-end Thinkpads that are two years old. CPU-wise there's probably zero subjective difference between those guys and a T410 for anything I do on a notebook.

I'm still tempted to purchase a T410 because they have nicer screens and longer battery life, but I'm not operating under any delusion that an i7 will be subjectively faster than the 2.8GHz C2D I have now.

As far as SSDs go, I stuck a G1 X25-M in a T61. It cuts boot/wake-up time down to about 20 seconds vs. maybe 50 seconds on a 500GB 7200.6. It also gives me anywhere from 20 to 40 extra minutes of battery life. Application start times are as one would expect.

I wind up using network connections much more heavily on that machine due the limited amount of local storage, but my software and essential documents do fit in that space.

 

[Santilli]

My major objection to the CF-51, is that when loading anything, including booting, it was working at 590MHZ, thanks to the power settings. With a bit of research, I've got it running at 1.6 mhz from boot, and, that makes a BIG difference.

I do notice The Beast uses a LOT of ram, more then 2 gigs with a number of programs, on a consistent basis. I was wondering if moving to a 64 bit system, and components and 4 gigs of ram might seriously increase the speed of a laptop, and, the SSD capable SATA is huge for me, as well. Still have an unopened 30 gig Vertex Turbo sitting in the
other room.

Odd that folks that said my 2.8 ghz Xeons are worth half the GHZ of a modern chip are saying the Pentium M GHZ are equal to the i7 GHZ? This kind of stuff is why I like benchmarks...

One thing I have learned is often old technology is not capable of enough bandwidth to handle what a SSD ca handle. Hence wondering if the 64 bit i7 stuff can?

 

[LunarMist]

With only 4GB of RAM, a 64-bit OS will do very little if anything better than a 32-bit one and I doubt that you need 8GB in a notebook. However, it doesn't hurt much if your apps work properly.

 

[Santilli]

Any benchmarks, with a decent data base, that establish how good the processor is at a single threaded ap?

 

[Mercutio]

Odd that folks that said my 2.8 ghz Xeons are worth half the GHZ of a modern chip are saying the Pentium M GHZ are equal to the i7 GHZ? This kind of stuff is why I like benchmarks...

The only thing that matters at the end of the day is subjective performance. If you can sit in front of a computer and don't feel that a particular computer is better or worse than other computers you use, it's probably fast enough.

There's something to be said about the expected workload of that machine vs. the hardware specs. I sometimes need to run Virtual Machines on my notebooks, but other than that I don't think I ever hit the hardware any harder than word processing + flash video + umpty dozen tabs in Firefox; I recognize that workload as being reasonable even for a netbook.

 

[Santilli]

Passmark is a benchmark. It has very little to do with the day-to-day reality of operating a computer. I'll glance at benchmarks when I'm evaluating a purchase, but most of the time I'm far more interested in subjective performance, which comes down to the simple question "Is this machine fast/tolerable to use?"

I have a couple high-end Thinkpads that are two years old. CPU-wise there's probably zero subjective difference between those guys and a T410 for anything I do on a notebook.

I'm still tempted to purchase a T410 because they have nicer screens and longer battery life, but I'm not operating under any delusion that an i7 will be subjectively faster than the 2.8GHz C2D I have now.

As far as SSDs go, I stuck a G1 X25-M in a T61. It cuts boot/wake-up time down to about 20 seconds vs. maybe 50 seconds on a 500GB 7200.6. It also gives me anywhere from 20 to 40 extra minutes of battery life. Application start times are as one would expect.

I wind up using network connections much more heavily on that machine due the limited amount of local storage, but my software and essential documents do fit in that space.

Mercutio: Keep in mind that you, and industry professionals, get to try, and use many more computers then someone in my arena, and, I'm WAY above most of the folks I know that use computers.

With the myrid different chips, sockets, etc. it's difficult for a non-pro, or dabbler, to have any idea of what kind of comparing you can do with different systems. Passmark is a HUGE help, because it gives ball parks for a LOT of different chips.

With my limited experience with laptops, it's ALL about hard drives and bus speed.

I'll time the CF-51 on boot, and to log in, then to full function right now:

This with the processor working @ 1.6ghz, not 590 mhz: 47 Seconds to boot screen, 7200 rpm seagate drive.

To full function from password: Another 30 seconds before it stops loading off the hard drive.

Other then that, and blown speakers, it should be ok for awhile for the stuff I use it for.

I'm pretty sure an SSD would bring any laptop into this time zone...

"As far as SSDs go, I stuck a G1 X25-M in a T61. It cuts boot/wake-up time down to about 20 seconds vs. maybe 50 seconds on a 500GB 7200.6. It also gives me anywhere from 20 to 40 extra minutes of battery life. Application start times are as one would expect. "

This is pretty key for me. If I can get stuff to load 2x or more faster, and, put the pagefile on a SSD, I can't help but think that's going to make a major improvement over a standard drive.