AMD vs Intel keeping the future in mind

If 64 bit processing does take over in a couple years...will any laptop we buy now (centrino or core duo) be obsolete? Should we just go for the intel line and forget the turion64? And what about the rumors of the core duo being compatible with future 64 processing? I'm looking for a laptop, but I can wait, should I? Thanks for advice.

 

No, 32bit will be around for a while and going to 64 bit is a progress but then again it will take sometime for the whole industry to change. 2 years from now, most laptops sold now will be on the verge of being obsolete.

Consider both and choose the system which suits your needs. Its not all about the cpu. If you have a good allround system, it is going to be future proof.

The Core Duo is not 64bit. Even if the 64bit is disabled then there is nothing you can do to enable it.

Buy the laptop when you are ready to buy, you can always keep on waiting for the next best thing and you"ll never be able to get the laptop.

 

is the turion64 already set for the future though? I mean 2 years down the road, other than being slow, is it going to be able to handle all the new software, etc?

 

Yes, it should. I mean it is one of the top 2 - 3 top mobile processors you can get today. The other 2 being the Core Duo and the Pentium M. The differences between these 3 are very little. The benchmarks might show something different but in real life usage you wont be able to differentiate between a comparable Pentium M and Turion.

In any case the future compatibility depends on many other components as well(a good graphics card for example). So your processor might be fine but the graphics card might not.

 

Thinking about the future and laptops don't mix. Unless you buy immediately after a model has come out, there will always be something to look forward to.

Take for example, Merom processors. People will be waiting then for the updated Santa Rosa chipsets and 802.11n wireless chips coming out in 2007. There's always something to wait for.

 

If you are comparing the Core Duo and the Turion 64 then they are by no means similar. The Core Duo will show significant performance increases over the Turion 64 right now and has significantly better battery life.

In my opinion, by the time that 64 bit becomes beneficial it would not be worth the money to upgrade a laptop that you bought in 2/06 because while you may see some minor benefits from going to 64 bit, it won't be like getting a new computer and expecting another 4 years out of it. On the other hand, the benefits of a dual core processor can be realized today and will definitely translate into a performance increase now and in a few years as more and more multithreaded software comes out. But in addition to that, even without multithreaded software having 2 cores can still show performance increases since one core may be handling background applications while the other working on what you're actually doing.

As always, if you can wait do so. Supposidly in May Intel is going to lower their prices for core duo's and a couple months after that they will be releasing their next dual core processor merom. Also, AMD is expected to release their own dual core processor sometime inbetween. However, if you need a laptop now, and money is not an issue, I recommend the Intel Core Duo.

 

So are we saying that it isn't worth going for a 64bit AMD laptop over a pentium-m as by the time 64 bit takes over the AMD will be out of date anyway?

I was thinking of going for the Acer5024wlmi as it has 64bit processor and ATI X700 256mb graphics. I was hoping this might be a good stab at a futureproofed laptop?

 

Hillfly, I think what people are saying is, it depends what you need right now, the main "ideology" behind laptop buying is get something that does everything you need it to now, and try your best to future proof it.

While 64bit is definately coming, the timeframe for when it's coming seems to be fairly questionable, also while your processor might be upto it when Vista eventually appears it may be other components aren't upto it, eg: Maybe 4GB of RAM will be the norm by the time 64bit processing really kicks in, who knows.

If you don't want to go Dual Core, then a 64bit AMD will most likely be the most future proof (preferably the 25w version at least IMHO) and a 256MB dedicated graphics card should be reasonable for at least a little while...

 

Trying to future 'proof' a laptop is almost hopeless since in a year or two wireless-n will be the new standard among other significant changes that you can't really predict or prepare for. Also, be aware that windows vista is not primarilly a 64 bit OS. There has been little hype by Microsoft about the 64 bit version of vista and the only real mention of it is that it is going to be released AFTER the 32 bit version; 64 bit processing is obviously not the focus of Windows Vista nor is it its main selling point. Like Arla said, the best thing you can do is buy what you need now and see how long it'll last.

If you are looking at Pentium M vs Turion then choose the laptop with the best configuration overall. Those two processors are very similar with the Pentium M having just a slight edge overall. However, if you are willing to spend the extra money to get a Core Duo then do it because the Core Duo will vastly outperform both the Pentiun M and Turion even in single threaded tasks. I'm confident to say that a Core Duo processor will comfortably last you 3 years and probably as many as 5 if the other components of your laptop don't die out first.

 

...in Battery performance.

Isn't there quite a concensus that Turions are better processors?

 

It depends on which benchmarks you look at but the Pentium M has a slight advantage in overall performance. THG has a couple of articles about this and if you dig a little you can find them.

 

I would take THG reviews with grain of salt. Most of their reviews are Intel biased (as everyone knows), some of those to the point, it is ridiculous.

P-M and Turion are on par performance wise. P-M has advantage in battery life because of optimized chipset( not more than 5-10% max), but turion is much cheaper at this time( Most likely Intel will slash P-M prices beore Dual-Core Turion lauch though).

For Value and performance I would suggest AMD( and with 64Bit), but at this time, if you just want performance, only way is Dual-Core P-M( Core Duo) and it has excellent battery life on par or better than P-M.

If you can wait until June/July we can compare Dual-Core Turions. I am guessing performance wise I would think they would be on par/little better than Core-Duo, but I am not sure if it would outperform core-duo in battery life race. Anyways we have to wait and see for that.

 

Yes, if can wait till june/july it would be better, like chinna said.

But if you can´t just take a look a these MSI-1039 to be released in few weeks:

MSI - 1039 description:

- 15.4" - WSXGA
- TURION 64 - MT - 44 - 2.4 ghz 1mb l2 - 25W (Mt-44 is expected in june)
- 2GB DDR 400
- ATI X1600 - with 256mb
- 1.3m pixel webcam (embeded)
- Wi-Fi card + bluetooth
- Dual Layer DVD-RW
- battery 4800mAH (~10% more than compaq? + low voltage of the MT series - hope it lasts 3.5 hours)
- Price? U$ 1.400???? (the 1029 with atix700/MT-36 i can buy for U$ 1200.00)

 

Jutjut, you have it backwards. Read both of the below links.
AMD Turion gives by far the best performance per dollar. And is cheaper too which allows the users to upgrade the memory and HD for even more performance. It can also run both 32bit and 64bit OS's whereas the Coreduo and Pentium M can only run 32bit os's or 64bit OS's in 32bit emulation mode which will probably be slower than even Windows XP.

Benchmarks.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1.../index.x?pg=13
Costs savings of Turion platform.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article300-page2.html
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Everyone pay attention to chinna's post because it is a very fair representation of both sides. This is obviously and argued topic, but I would only add that the current performance benefit of a core duo over a Pentium M is marginal at best and we need to see benchmarks comparing it to a Turion to even see if it can tie it or beat it.

If you are still set on a core duo, try to wait for as long as possible, because the prices on these things will soon get slashed tremendously.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/pentiumm-vs-turion64/index.x?pg=13

 

Turion dual core is scheduled for November not June. Have a look at the road maps at amd.com, and by then P-M would have been completely phased out. (Correction: I was wrong about this, CPU is expected this summer, no exact date, as for actual notebooks, it is all speculation)

As for Turion versus coreduo, you cannot take one test and say that is it. There are applications written for multi core that will have the core duo demolishing the competition (PM and Turion) but you have applications that will not be optimized, on those I expect the core duo to be slightly better than PM just due to the higher bus speed, no more! (It is still the same basic architecture after all)

Edit: correction

 

Like i said in the other post, it´s very curious the release of the dual turion in taiwan in june and that MSi is located in Taiwan tooo.

You know it is knows to first show up with new stufff. I wouldn´t get too surprised if they released a version at that time.

And their roadmap showed it too.. as the MSI 1042.

 

its to bad AMD is geting into the dual core business so late, i would've liked to have tried out a AMD for once....oh well...

 

welll they will skip a step, if you look by another angle. They are directly going to release a 64bit dual core.

I think it´s a risk strategy, but might work and take intel by surprise for 6 months......

 

i do have an amd bias, so take my observations worth a grain of salt, but, as far as performance/ battery life is concerned, turion should offer a far better mix for the price then pentium M, and im guessing then core duo, for most things, the reason comes down to price, and the way power now works. although several reviews have been done that bring equivalent clock speed turion, and pentium M's to a near draw, they often forget the price difference. for a laptop that is running a 1.8 to 2 ghz pentium M, an equivalent laptop could be built with a turion mt40 running at 2.2 ghz, and im guessing the 1.66 coreduo falls in about this same price range (the laptops ive looked at with comparable builds, seem to fall in this range, i didnt do a tight cost comparison but i know the turion is far cheaper then either). im not sure how the powersaving features on pentium M or core duo work, but i know that power now means the processor runs naturally at 800mhz and overclocks up to the advertised clock speed when neccessar. also a mt running at max speed is using 25 watts, compaired to 27 watts for a pentium m at 75% power. now where the price difference becomes important
a turion Mt40 will be more efficient at 1.8 or 2.0 ghz then the mt37(full 25 at 2.0 as opposed to the mt40 running lower then the full 25), or the mt34(will be using 25 at 1.8, while the 40 will be far lower). what this means is although a 1.8 gig pentium m, may have compairable performance and battery life to a 1.8gig turion, its priced closer to the 2.2 gig turion, which will either run at the same clock speed for far less power, or run at a higher speed, deliver more power, and not have to do so as long, resulting in better performance and battery life. the result it seems that turion does trump dothan in both speed and battery life for an equivalent price. the core duo is definitely a quick processor, and the benchmarks show it to perform beautifally against amd desktop processors, but the fact is when on a budget yoru dealing with a 540mhz advantage to turion. thats roughly 1/3 of the low end core duo's clock speed, and while i havent seen comparable benchmarks, and still have a feeling the advantage might tilt towards core duo, its no longer the massacre that is expected

 

Actually, AMD was first to have a dual core chip, they just made it for the server market first since that is where the highest margin is and where the most power is needed. First Intel copied AMD's dual cores with a rigged job Pentium D and then later released Yonah.

Check out this thread that discusses Dual and Multicores
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=43058

Here's a link showing Intel's multicores against AMD's multicores.
http://www.aceshardware.com/SPECmin...=2&nct=4&cpcf=2&cpct=2&mf=250&mt=3800&o=0&o=1

 

I think they meant Intel beat AMD into the notebook industry first.

 

If we mere mortals know, or think, this will happen, how is it going to get by Intel?