Laptop Gaming Q's

Is core 2 duo really a lot better then Turion X2?

Based on this chart it is.

Whats really annoying is that a lot of high end gaming laptops with crazy graphics cards are with AMD processors... thoughts?

 

The Core 2 Duo mobile processors are generally better across the board; don't run as hot, perform better, and get better battery life.

Some of these issues don't matter as much if you're talking about a high-end gaming laptop though (i.e. battery life).

 

The trend of AMD-only high-end gaming (by which I expect you mean SLI) notebooks should see a bit of a break. I know the upcoming/newly released Alienware is going to be the first C2D-based gaming powerhouse with SLI (I think it's the m9750).

But there are powerful systems like the Clevo M570U (aka Sager NP5760) that are C2D-based as well.

Also, zadillo makes some very good points about the CPU differences above.

 

Thanks for the link, very nice numbers and charts from Tom's Hardware as usual. Yes, the Core series of processors really do blow AMD X2's out of the water, especially in the mobile computing field. In some benchmarks, the Core 2 Duo will score almost twice as much as similarly priced X2's, which translates to significant differences in real world performance and applications.

About the AMD dominance of gaming oriented DTR type notebooks---not sure but I think it has to do with motherboard compatibility and manufacturing for notebooks. As far as I know, the high end nVida SLI capable chipsets such as the nForce 500 and 600 were never well accepted in Intel notebooks for reasons beyond my understanding. AMD however readily adopted it for their notebook line and now dominate in the heavy duty gaming notebook arena.

 

If it comes out soon, I'm buying.

I saw this on rjtech.com - you can build that clevo with 7950gtx card and 7600 core 2 duo for ~$3000. Honestly don't know if it's worth it when you can just get the dell m1710 (same processor & card) for around the same price (with a coupon or two).

Any guesses on how much an alienware notebook with c2d 7600 *and* SLI is gonna cost? It'll probably come with a fire extinguisher, too.

 

Oh its worth it, and it is cheaper obviously if you aren't going t7600 etc.