Is it worth waiting for SXPS 16 till Christmas ?

Hi Friends

For the past couple of months I'm tracking SXPS16. Dell had a signature event 2/3 weeks back and SXPS16 had a good deal but I missed that deal.

Now Is it worth waiting till Christmas for SXPS16 ?
Any leak news about the SXPS 16 with a new modified version with the heat issue fixed ?

Again, I could not understand ... How an i7 processor of 1.6GHz is better than a P8600 processor of 2.4GHz ?

Thank you.

 

If you're not desperately in need of a laptop, I would suggest you to wait, just my opinion though.

If you are doing intense video encoding, you would see a difference. Otherwise, for gaming, core 2 duo is sufficient.

 

Yes...

I'm not in hurry for the laptop as I'm doing well with my PC. And also I'll not use the laptop for video encoding, yeah may be once in a blue moon. My primary requirement is a desktop replacement multimedia laptop.

Still want to understand technically ... How an i7 processor of 1.6GHz is better than a P8600 processor of 2.4GHz ?

 

An i7 processor is a quad core with each core running at 1.73 ghz I.e. 1.73 x4 compared to a dual core running at 2.4 x2, however an i7 also has higher fsb and more L3 memory as well as being able to overclock all 4 cores to 3.06ghz each on 820qm aleast and you would notice it on some games the ones that can take advantage of quad core I.e Resident Evil 5

 

there's a good deal right now through EPP.
$1300 with Core i7 and RGBLED...
Hurry up

 

How do i take advantage of the EPP?

More importantly,
What is the advantage of waiting till xmas vs waiting until Oct 22nd? Or is the reason to wait for xmas is to wait for a good deal?

 

Yes... How to avail the EPP offer ? (edit: got it through their FAQs)
Oct 22nd ??? What is on that day ? (edit: got it, its for Windows 7 launch) I think offers will come during xmas.
But with i7 and RGBLED its around $1550 after EPP discount and before TAX !

And about 4 cores of i7 processor. Its fact that till now many application are taking advantage of 2 core CPUs and forget about 4 core. yes, as Mkelliny said, few games and video encoding applications do make use of it.

 

yes. With i7 proccesor, woho, enough said

 

Don't you think by Xmas there will be yet another improvement just over the horizon? Faster video card, new CPU. There always is. You can wait forever.

 

If you dont mind a refurb there have been pretty good deals on xps16's lately. Picked up a P8600/4g/500 7200rpm/4670/16" RGBLED/BlueTooth/5100 wifi for $950 shipped priority overnight(free) earlier this week.

 

Refrub means polished second hand laptops ? I want a brand new one. All my requirements are in SXPS16 but the HEAT problem is forcing me decide again And I'm not a frequent buyer. I'll use it for years. And people have commented that, the kind of heat it produces will damage the laptop internal components and the screen in a couple of years

 

You can't look at the i7 as a 1.6ghz. It will constantly be adjusting its clock speed between 1.6GHz and 2.8GHz depending on cpu utilization and thermal load.

What this means is it gets better battery life because when you are typing on a message board you arn't processing your type at 2.8GHz. However when you load up a single core game (World of Warcraft, and MOST other games) the single core that is getting used will crank up to 2.8GHz. Plus it has more L3 Cache.

So what you really should be looking at is"
Dual Core 2.66GHz/3MB Cache VS. Quad core 1.6-2.8GHz/6MB Cache

So on single/dual core games alone, the i7 will be faster. if the game or program uses 3-4 cores then its even faster. If the game or program starts using multi-threading, you will have essentially an additional 4 cores for that because each core processes two distinct threads at a time. Multi-thread apps will essentially make this "LIKE" an 8-core laptop. with all cores running up to 2.8GHz.

 

Well, at least you got the quad core part right. Everything else is pretty much wrong.

Core i7's do not have a FSB. period. end of story.

Intel's Turbo Boost is basically a method for over or underclocking cores based on usage. When you're running nominal apps, surfing, etc the core i7 will use one core, and overclock that single core to ~ 3.06ghz. Here's how it plays out with respect to cores..

820QM:
3.06GHz = 1 core
2.80GHz = 2 core
2.00GHz = 4 core
1.73GHz = 4 core (non turbo boost)

As it stands right now, there's no way to manually overclock a core i7.

 

Just so all of you know, there is 20% coupon on the dell outlet, and I have seen some impressive xps 1640 configuration for $750 after coupon + taxes with 6gb ram, rgbled screen, fully loaded, p8800 or more. they will be on fleabay very soon or you can try to use a coupon today if you got lucky to got one and are not scared of the dell outlet ( I am not) . I honestly think that the core i7 will be way too much for this laptop even if i want one badly.

 

all cores will not run at 2.8ghz, at this speed it is only one core.

 

It is not based soley on the number of cores running, but also on utilization, thermal dynamics (how hot it is) and number of threads (1 or 2) per core.

It is probably a true statement to say that you wont usually see 4 cores running at 2.8GHz, but if the conditions are right, the turboboost will do up to that speed. I would expect to see 4 cores running at 2.2-2.4GHz on a full-utilization scenario if the temps were not excessive. the temps are supposed to be very manageable on these new chips so we'll see.

 

Again, do not mixup multi-core and multi-threading programming. Multi-threading programming was for single core processors to maximize the CPU cycles. But multi-core programming is the actual distribution of INDEPENDENT tasks among the available cores. Hence even if an application is written with multiple threads it may not take the advantage of multiple cores. Correct me, if I'm wrong.

 

i7 has 4 cores that operate at 1.6 GHz
P8600 has 2 cores that operate at 2.4 GHz

So total processing power of i7 is 1.6 * 4 = 6.4 GHz
Total processing power of i7 is 2.4 * 2 = 4.8 GHz

Also the cache is more in the i7 as a result, it can preform some operations faster than the core 2 duo. So...hope that helps