Buying an M17 - Which CPU? help!!

also. with sli, aren't you already down to only 3gb anyway with this machine? and... weren't some (17x) stuck to a little over 2? I mean, not to say anything jellybeans, but if you are running vista there is no way that was running well with that much open. i mean, my desktop with a quadcore, 8gb ram, vista64, and sli has issues with all that.

 

I don't quite understand what he is saying? Can someone explain? It seems something important.

 

64bit being the key word. 32bit doesn't have enough adress lines to adress all your RAM and two GPUs and everything else. 64bit has more than enough.

 

didn't know 64bit effects sli.

 

It doesnt affect SLi/Crossfire performance at all. It affects your memory.

2 ³² (i think that's the equation) is equal to 4,294,967,295.

That's in bits, so thats equal to 4GB. Thats the overall amount of bits ANY 32 bit OS can use. Every component in your system needs to have a address given to it, if it's on the motherboard (or PCI(-E/X/etc) expansion).

So you have the CPU, Northbridge, south bridge etc, those take away some of those bits of data so your 4,294,967,295 is now less.

Taking the fact that RAM is the last thing to be addressed your Graphics will take the data slots before the ram.

1GB of video ram is leaving your OS, with around 3'000'000'000 (Don't get technical on that number ) of bits left to give to your ram. That's why you'll see no more that 3.5GB in any 32bit system.

With 4GB and a 32bit OS, your looking at loosing just over 1GB of the RAM because of the GPUs.

My main PC for example with 32bit running 4GB only shows 3.3GB in Windows because 768MB is being used by my GPU.

So your GPU performance won't be affected, only the amount of RAM usable changes.

64bit for comparrison is 2 ⁶⁴ which is roughly equivalent to 17.2 billion gigabytes, 16.8 million terabytes, or 16 exabytes of RAM. Oh and a exabyte is big. 1 exa = 1024 peta = 1024 tera = 1024giga.
64bit won't limit you, except Windows has built in limits.
Vista home premium 64 bit is self limited to 16GB of ram (iirc) and others to 128GB. Can't remember exactly.

That might just confuse you more or explain it.

 

Has nothing to do with SLI - it has to do with the fact that in SLI you have 2 vid cards and the assumption is that you will have more memory that will be taken out of the 32 bit address space. Net is that if you have 4GB ram and you have 1GB video memory(2 512's) your 32 bit OS will not see all of your system ram. If you want to see/use it all you will need to go with 64 bit OS.

 

So with the m17, crossfire is say 1gig and you purchase 3gig equates to 4gig of ram = need 64bit to get the best out of it? Or would you still get maxium use from 32bit?

I didn't know RAM was linked like that, as one is for graphical purposes. Maybe i'm just confusing myself haha

 

still 32bit.

3GB of RAM And 1GB of dedicated on the GPUs will use all the avaliable address space in the system overall if you get 3gb you might see around 2.8GB useable in a 32bit OS. 64bit you'll see it all but a few programs won't work with 64bit especially older 16bit apps if you have any.. Also some 64bit programs require the 32Bit version to be installed too taking up more HDD space.

 

90% of my programs works with 64bit windows. But I still have some problem with drivers over network where other computers are with 32 bits.

 

CPUS bottleneck, especially on SLI setups, i have my x9000 on my m1730 and as i increased all the way to max OC 3.4 the performance kept goings up, it still bottlenecks my 8800m GTX SLI

 

32 bit vista SP1 sees 4 gigs or ram, not sure how the GDDR mem factors in but i believe its seperate.

 

The Quad Core 2.5 cpu in m17
is equal to or better to which from the below list

Intel® Q6600 2.40GHz QUAD Core™ CPU - 8MB L2 Cache 1066MHz FSB
Intel® Q6700 2.66GHz QUAD Core™ CPU - 8MB L2 Cache 1066MHz FSB
Intel® Q9550 2.83GHz QUAD Core™ Penryn CPU - 12M L2 Cache 1333MHz FSB
Intel® Q9650 3.0GHz QUAD Core™ Penryn CPU - 12M L2 Cache 1333MHz FSB

Thxs for Explaing

Also will we be able to upgrade the Cpu latter on in AW ?

 

well, if you compare the clock speeds, you'll see it's between Q6600 and Q6700. remember though that it's a mobile processor, and you want to compare it to desktop CPUs.

in regards to upgrading, probably.

 

I thought desktop cpu owns mobile cpu by a huge margin.

 

that margin is becoming very small.

In just about every measurable way, the mobile CPUs have been catching up to the desktop CPUs. (or maybe it's the other way around?)

since we've started sacrificing the push for more Ghz for more power overall, it's been a bit of a different race. more ghz can mean more speed, but it also means a huge amount more power and heat... the past few generations of CPUs have not gotten any faster in Ghz, but have established a much more efficient standpoint, with stronger CPUs at the same speeds, using less power and generating less heat.

1066FSB for CPUs is established in both the Desktop and Laptop fields. Current desktop CPUs can run as fast as 1333Mhz FSB. the new i7's can't even be measured according to the same rating system.

All this boils down to IMO, is that eventually the gap between the mobile and desktop markets in terms of performance, will no longer exist. Mobile systems will still cost more, due to the micronization that occurs... but beyond that, the systems will be approximately equal.

 

but the desktop cpu still beat mobile cpu.

I know the margin is much smaller than before, but it's large.

 

Thank you guys

 

Actually the mobile Quad Core should perform better pound for pound than the Q6600. They both run on a 1066mhz FSB so they can somewhat be compared. The mobile chip runs 153mhz faster and has 4 more mb of onboard cache. The mobile chip is also made on a 45nm chip compared to the Q6600 which is made on a 65nm chip. This means the mobile chip will run cooler and consume less power. The only advantage the desktop part has is being able to be OC'd being that you have more leeway to do so on Desktop PCs. Most laptops are locked down when it comes to OCing due to thermal restrictions.

 

Did you do some benchies with your asus?