Pentium dual-core comparable processor

I am looking for a basic laptop to play video games (Madden football, etc... nothing graphics heavy) and use for simple tasks. I keep being told that if I am buying a laptop with Vista, I want at least a dual-core processor with 1 gig ram. Does AMD make anything comparable in performance and price to the dual-core? I just want a computer that can handle the video games, occasional movies, internet usage and running simple Microsoft programs. But, I hate having to wait 10 or 15 seconds for Word to open, or the game is choppy because Vista is taking up all the memory, etc.

Am I a sucker for buying a dual-core processor for these tasks, or is it neccessary with Vista? Would a simple Celeron M 420/520 processor with more ram be just as effective at a lower cost?

My current desktop is an AMD Sempron 2.01 ghz with 640 mb of ram, and it is sfficiently fast enough for everything I have every used it for, but it has XP. Thanks guys.

 

AMD produces dual core notebook CPUs called the Turion X2 series. They tend to be slightly cheaper than the Intel dual core CPUs. However, the Intel T2060 and T2070 (sometimes called Celeron or Pentium) are actually fully working dual core CPUs except that they have only 1MB of cache compared to the 2Mb or 4MB in the rest of the series. Dual core will give smoother operation becuase there will be less queuing up for a slice of CPU time.

At least 1GB RAM is recommended for running Vista and with RAM prices having taken a recent dive, 2GB is affordable. However, while people say that the Aero interface works on low-end GPUs such as the Intel GMA 950, I would advise that you turn off the eye candy and you will get much smoother operation. The new ATI chipset with the 1250M graphics can run Vista much more smoothly.

John

 

I have a 2GHz Sempron running XP as well (albeit with 2GB of ram), and will definitely be getting a dual-core cpu for my next notebook purchase with Vista.

The Sempron does everything I need it to do, but I have noticed that it the cpu usually throttles up to nearly full speed just to play a minimized Movielink file and web browsing with IE7 (as just one example). As Vista uses even more resources than XP, I think a dual-core cpu would be the next logical upgrade. Whether it will be a Turion X2 or C2D is yet to be determined..........