Santa Rosa: Don't Bother Waiting?

I know a lot of people around here have been waiting for Santa Rosa (now officially Centrino Pro) to be released, in some cases a very long time. However, what I've read recently has started to make me doubt that it will be worth the wait at all.

To recap, the main improvements in Santa Rosa look to be:

1. FSB speed increase to 800Mhz
2. Draft-n wireless support
3. Integrated HSPDA support
4. "Robson" Onboard NAND flash memory cache

Regarding the FSB increase, it's never been the bottleneck anyway so I doubt much performance improvement will be seen there

Regarding draft-n, it is still "in-progress" and it looks like there are a lot of issues to be worked out. I'm personally not a fan of beta-testing untried equipment.

Regarding HSPDA, most people won't use it anyway because connections cost so bloody much, and I don't think it needed to be integrated onto the motherboard at this point in time.

And finally the technology I think most people were holding out for, Robson. With promises of boot-up times ranging from 150-200% faster, along with faster program access times AND improved battery life, it certainly sounded like it was worth waiting 2 or 3 months for. But now I read that preliminary testing by Lenovo employees has been pretty disappointing. With these, admittedly preliminary results, looking fairly negative, does anyone still think the wait for Santa Rosa will be worth it?

 

Nope, sure don't however Montevina seems promising

The FSB speed increase will have little performance

The NAND Flash memory? LOL

Just replace your Hard Drive with a Hybrid Hard Drive when they come out.

and yes the draft N....

when it finally is fully functional without glitches and bugs just get a new card and pop it in...

 

Well, the author of that article hasnt really tested so no hard benchmarks and numbers to draw a conclusion from.

I decided not to wait. The cost of first gen technology is higher not to mention, bugs and other issues that need to be fixed.

 

yes, when i heard that santa-rosa will only feature the DRAFT-N and not the full wifi-N it was really a let down. though there is something on the horizon which i didn't see coming. as soon as the middle or late this year; more and more notebooks are supporting,

and yes, penryn and montevina seems promising, but so do santarosa. seing how windows vista just came out, it is not a wise idea to buy computer just yet. not just because vista is a new software and we like to have the bugs iron out first, but also because how windows impact the hardware industry, i think very soon we'll see a significant price plunge in hardware prices, most noticeably the RAM component.

 

yep. It's far better waiting for montevina, than for Santa Rosa. It's been a bit of a let down, for sure.
Besides, the incremental increase won't be as much, as was when the core duos took over from the pentium m's

 

I would, however, wait for a DX10 GPU. Whether for personal use or resale down the road, that could be a big deal.

 

I think the fsb is the bottleneck so it will be a big increase.
But its not a huge difference like the switch from single core to dual core.

 

As evilsheep already stated...and hes right...the fsb wasnt a bottleneck. Desktops would be where fsb mattered a little, not laptops.

 

No.. actually i m not interested in Santa Rosa spec. I m just interested of the DX10 GPU coming along with it.

 

1. 800MHz FSB, admittedly, isn't going to help all that much; but at least if nothing else you can get some compatibility with newer CPUs that come out down the road. This is also the first chipset that is specifically built around Core 2 Duo...

2. Nothing can be done about draft-n, really - but when Santa Rosa comes out, draft-n will be in revision 1.10, and it goes a fairly long way to ensure compatibility with previous wireless networks as well as taking care of problems with the first revision. If you don't want to 'test' draft-n now, you will be forced to wait over a year and a half from this point to have the final standard. Therefore this, for me, wouldn't be a reason to hold off of buying into Santa Rosa. In fact, with the schedule for the final standard, even Montevina probably won't come out with 802.11n final support.

Please refer to this link at SmallNetBuilder for some pretty recent information about Intel's 802.11n platform. In addition, wifinetnews concludes that chances are, any forthcoming changes that they make to the 802.11n standard from this point onwards are likely able to be handled in firmware, rather than by replacement hardware.

3. HSDPA is here and is fast. Is it expensive? Yes, officially, it is fairly expensive compared to a standard DSL connection - but what did you expect for a technology that will let you have high-speed Internet practically anywhere? In addition... if you know a little more, you can buy a $20/month unlimited media plan (such as Cingular's MediaMax) and still use it with the laptop for Internet, despite it being aimed at cell phones only... I'd say $20/month is a pretty good deal for high-speed internet totally unattached to any wires or even a wireless access point. You will see HSDPA really take off within the next 2 years, so it can't be too bad to buy in now...

4. Robson technology has a lot of potential. The main advantage it has at this point is that it will be available with a lot more cache (up to 4GB) than the flash hybrid drives (256MB) for now...

Of course, Intel's own benchmarks are probably going to be optimistic, but even so, I think you're still in for seeing significant gains in loading performance. Lenovo's blog says they're disappointed - but they don't actually quote any performance numbers, so it's really hard to tell to what they actually saw and make a judgment on that.

 

Correct... The biggest thing to come along with Santa Rosa is Direct X 10 Graphics support!!!

That's something really worth waiting for.

That's it... As simple as that... So I will wait whatever time it takes them to deliver.

Period.
RayanMX

 

$20 is pretty sweet for wire free internet. I pay $22 per month for a 256 ADSL connection.

 

I just feel the same about Santa Rosa. Like "betatesting" wireless access. Not something I would like to wait for. The new technologies like NAND is promising, but only time will tell how well it will prove itself.

And because the next thing after Santa Rosa is so far away, I decided to go for a current Core2 equipped model (ASUS V1JP), which I actually bought about a week ago.

 

I already bought a W2P so Santa Rosa isn't of great interest to me. Nevertheless, it is disappointing that an 800 MHz FSB doesn't add much to performance, because I am struggling to run post-processing and I need more powahh

 

Me too, only interested in the DX10

 

Hehe.. u might as well get this...

Designed by porsche.. lol

 

I work with Porsche, didn't know they had their own notebook lol.........That look ugly though. Prefer the ASUS V2X

 

I agree with Hyperluminous - the bigger issue at hand is the advent of DX10 GPUs for notebooks (perhaps by then Santa Rosa may coincide as well, so it'll only benefit the waiters, not hurt them).

If you can wait, wait. There really is no need to buy a laptop is you can do without one for the moment.

Regarding "just popping in a wireless card" - I don't know of *anybody* who doesn't mind carrying around a stupid card and having to attach it into the PC card slot every time you use the laptop. Integrated wireless is FAR better than having to lug around a card (and have it stick out if you never take it out, thus exposing it to possible damage). Unless you have an X-JACK wireless card from 3Com, which would cost upwards to $100.

On top of that, you don't even have to beta-test the N-draft if you don't want to. It's backwards compatible with B/G.

 

Do you think Santa Rosa DX10 is as powerful as go 7400 or x1400?
I am looking for thin and light notebook so if yes that's very good news.

 

You mean will the integrated DX10 solution be more powerful than the Go 7400? The answer is no. Even though the Go 7400 is only DX9 compatible, it's a much better video card in general. It's similar to how the Geforce 7300 is not as powerful as the Geforce 6800. Even though the 6800 is older, it was top of the line in its day, and still packs a lot of punch compared to budget cards.


Regarding Santa Rosa in general, I won't need a laptop until May or June. That's after the Santa Rosa release, so I'll be buying my laptop sometime around then. The HP dv6000t has caught my attention, as well as the Dell XPS m1210 and the Asus V1/V2. Depending on how the price of the V2 turns out, how Asus might fix the battery problem on the V1, and how quickly the prices for Santa Rosa laptops drop will influence my purchase.

 

Thanks FREN.

I am looking for ASUS W7j or Sony SZ and maybe ASUS A8Jr because my E-machine 6507 starts to have power connector issue.
I try to prolong the life of my 6507 to wait for DX10 GPU and Santa Rosa.
If integrated GPU is still not so good, A8Jr may be the only option if my 6507 stop working today.

 

At the current time I would recommend the A8Jp and the A8Js over the A8Jr, since those DX9 cards blow that DX10 card out of the water. Wait until nVidia/ATI release the Geforce Go 8600 or Radeon X2600. Those will be worth buying.

 

It seems like everybody is missing the point here about DX10.

DX10 it's not just about performance (which will be great to begin with) but it's about the new shader set that it introduces (Model 4.0). For those who don't know jack about shaders, Shader Model 4.0 is the next big thing in graphics particularly for games!!!

Search Youtube.com for a DX10 game called Crysis and you'll see a bit of what it can do.

I'm still wating though...

 

I think so, not many ppl know much about DX10. That including me lol.....

Search the Crysis, looks cool with DX10 card.

 

I think the real point many of you are missing is that when we talk about DX10 in Santa Rosa, we are talking about integrated graphics NOT dedicated graphics. Dedicated DX10 cards are independent of Santa Rosa, and quite frankly, if you want to game then integrated graphics are not worth the time. DX10 is great...but it's not like the integrated DX10 to be found in Santa Rosa will be capable of playing Crysis.

 

Is there a definite date of when Santa Rosa will launch?

 

You are correct Evil_Sheep and thanks for clarifying the point!

But let's remember that DirectX10 (integrated or dedicated) cannot exist on anything less than Santa Rosa at least on laptops*, so the bottom line is that Santa Rosa will bring great new stuff for gamers.

* However Alienware live support just told me otherwise, they say that some pre-Santa Rosa Laptops will be getting video card upgrades soon!

 

No, but insider leaks have confirmed that Santa Rosa will be released sometime in May.

 

My birthday present!

 

Well, after all the fuzz and me recommending waiting for DX10/Santa Rosa platform, here I am about to order my very first ASUS G1.

I made my mind based on the following:

1.- I'm on a tight budget right now and I bet the newer refreshed G1 will cost even more, which is understandable since it will incorporate newer technology.

2.- Freelance work was somewhat nonexistent for the last few months but just recently I got a few clients so I need a mobile workhorse (I have a Mac at home but need mobility to visit the clients).

3.- I guess it's better to purchase new technology once it matures a bit, I mean, first gen technology it's not always a good idea right?

4.- Experts say that DX10 will take it's time to mature and become mainstream - actually M$ is the only one creating hype about it which is understandable.

Cheers!
RayanMX

 

Anyhoo...

I took the plunge I ordered mine... so there's no turning back hahahahahaha...

 

HSDPA is gone as well

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6115

 

nothing on robson technology?

 

I finally got mine.... The longest wait ever!!! LOL

I haven't even take it out of the box yet, but will do that ASAP...

By the way, for those hesitant of purchasing the G1 today, here's an interesting read...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=109155

I'll post my first impressions later, once I find the time to unpackage the G1...

Cheers!
RayanMX

 

Done!

Just one word can describe it...

AWESOME!!!

I'm really happy about everything so far about the G1...

It's everything I thought it would be or even more!

Thanks 2 all for your recommendations...

 

Anybody knows if Santa Rosa is goig to have 800 MHz DDR2 support? The reason I am asking this is because 800 MHz FSB and 800 MHz DDR2 means that the processor does not have to work with dividers etc.

 

Actually, that's one of the major strengths of Santa Rosa... It will run at 800 Mhz FSB amongst other things...

 

LOL I just saw this post... looks like an old Volvo.

 

Yeah, but a really old squareish Volvo....

Ugly as hell...

 

No, your calcs are way off. DDR2 runs at double data rate, so 800 mhz is 400 mhz.

The Intel FSB's are all Quad Pumped, so a FSB of 800 is actually 200.

There was a point in the past few years where memory speeds were much lower... the days of DDR 400 basically, but latencies were also much much lower, so the difference in performance between a 2-2-2-5 DDR 400 vs 5-5-5-12 DDR2 800 is basically nill. Those were the days when 200mhz FSB matched 200 mhz memory speeds, and overclocking via FSB increase meant overclocking memory to keep up, or running a divider.

Nowadays, the FSB is way behind memory speeds, especially on notebooks. Its possible though, to overclock the crap out of the Core 2 Duos (E) on desktops to reach 500 mhz FSB... and thats about where DDR2 1000 matches its speed well.