Latitude E5400 Review

Dell still offers previous Santa Rosa-generation processors (T7250 being the only one) on Centrino 2 gen machines?

 

Yes and no. The T-series are 35 W maximum TDP processors and the P-series are 25 W chips, but those values correspond to what the CPU consumes when fully loaded because the P-series chip requires a lower voltage to get to its top speed than the T-series unit. An otherwise similar T-series and P-series chip MAY however have the same idle voltage and thus consume the same amount of energy at idle, so the difference in battery life would only vary when the CPU is being loaded.

However, the unit I have is the T7250, which is one of the older 65 nm Core 2 Duos. Your P8700 is a 45 nm unit and will consume less power at any load due to its smaller transistors, even if the voltages are exactly the same.

 

No. The Santa Rosa processors were Socket M and ran on a 533 MHz or 667 MHz FSB, whereas the T7250 is Socket P and runs on an 800 MHz FSB like many of the rest of the Centrino 2 CPUs. The T7250 *is* however based on the same 65 nm "Merom-2M" processor die as many of the later Santa Rosa CPUs, whereas most of the Centrino 2 CPUs are 45 nm Penryn/Penryn-3M units. I guess the best way to describe the T7250 is that it is a bridge between the older Santa Rosa units (because it is a 65 nm unit) and the newer Centrino 2 units (because of Socket P and the 800 MHz FSB.)

 

I believe you are a little off with that. What you described in the beginning is the even older Napa platform since Socket M = Napa.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_M
I wonder why such a comparatevely old chip (came out in Sept. 2007) is the "bridge" when all current Centrino 2 processors are based on variations of the Penryn core...I mean why not T8100 or T8300, for example.

 

I just got an E5400 with P8600 2.4ghz processor. It only came with 1 gig of DDR2-800 RAM.

I have 2x2gigs of DDR2-667 RAM, and I installed it on this laptop. Will this affect the performance of my lappy?

 

Thanks for this review, glad to see someone reviewed the E5400.

I'm not sure if you're still keeping up with this thread, but does the screen lid flex or cause ripples in the screen when pushed or prodded?

Also, I'm guess there's no backlit option for the keyboard is there?

 

also, how are the trackpoint and trackpoint buttons?

 

I'm still keeping up with the thread. The screen lid is pretty stiff, thick, and doesn't flex all that much, so there are no ripples that I can see.

No, there is not. The E5400 has a standard laptop keyboard.

It does not have a trackpoint (aka the little eraser-head joystick pointer made famous by IBM on ThinkPads.) It has an ALPS touchpad, which works fine. The buttons are fine as well. I think the E6400 may have an option for a trackpoint and I know the older Latitude D630 could come with one, but not the E5400. I personally do not like trackpoints and am glad the E5400 does not come with one, else the first thing I would do is figure out how to disable the thing, so I don't accidentally move the cursor when I am typing. Trackpoints seem to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing, and I know a few people who swear by them instead of at them like I do.

 

Oh, that's a shame. Personally I'm a big fan of of the trackpoint, once you get used to it, it becomes really fast and convenient. It would've been nice for them to at least have the option of having the trackpoint for the E5xxx.

According to the visuals on the dell site :
http://www1.ca.dell.com/ca/en/busin...?refid=laptop_latitude_e5400&s=bsd&cs=cabsdt1

The E5400 appears to have the trackpoint, but maybe these pics are a bit of false advertising.

 

I ordered E5400 with P8700 processor, 3 GB RAM,Win7Prof/WinXPProf and Eport Dock.
Hope it performs well.
Anyone has any previous experience with same config ?