Real benefit from Santa rosa platform??

Experts claim that processor has become matured (i.e. hardwares have been developed so fast recently that software could not cacth up). Is that true that santa rosa lplatform-based laptops could bring about a signifigcant performance for regular laptop users compared to the current one?

 

It certainly can be argued that most consumer software cannot take advantage of or does not need the speed of the latest processors, but Santa Rosa goes beyond just performance. Yes, there should be a performance jump, but there should also be battery life savings. I think they're arguing that it could extend the life of hard drives b/c they won't have to run so often.

 

Yes, probably. The Santa Rosa platform is optimized for Intel Core 2 Duo processors, and, in turn, those processors are optimized for multiple application use. Therefore there's not going to be too many software applications that max out your processing power, but if you run multiple apps at once you'll notice a difference in the ability to multitask. And, then of course there's the problem of being able to fully decode HDTV, which still does max out processing power in some instances and setups.

 

Many applications are starting to use multiple threads as that's the only way to really increase performance more than just incrementally. You won't notice any major "performance" increases except slightly more speed along with hopefully better battery life because of some of the tuning of the chipset for mobility.

 

Just to refresh my memory and correct me if I'm wrong but is it true that Santa Rosa is going to be available in mid 2007?

 

1st Quarter 2007 from what I heard.

 

Ditto on what Pitabread said - also, there should be a performance gain due to FSB increase.

 

Santa Rosa will be more powerful first because of the faster FSB, partly because of minor improvements in the technology, and because it will supposedly incorporate flash memory into the notebook (512mb-1gb) and use Windows Vista's superfetch feature to improve performance. It should also feature integrated DX10 graphics (GMA X3000) which although possibly crappy, will at least be passable DX10 on the notebook market. It may not neccessarily be worth upgrading to for casual users, but it will have an impact on the market after its release (1H 2007).

 

I know, holy thread revival batman but I'm just curious. How is the X3000 supposed to perform? Similar to a 64 meg Radeon X1300 Mobility or slower? Almost none of the 3000's hardware features are enabled for the desktop version so far or so I heard. Any estimates? Sims 2 @ 1280x800 full detail at playable (>25fps) framerates perhaps? The 8 programmable pixel pipelines sure sound promising.

 

the increased fsb will cause more realized performance from the dual cores.

 

im kinda a noob with the processor, video card compatability, but will they need to develop a whole new line of video cards just to take advantage of the santa rosa or was the santa rosa developed to use current video cards?

 

Santa rosa is just a motherboard chipset. It works with existing graphics cards, sound cards, network cards, RAM and pretty much anything else. Except processors.

And performance? Battery life?
We'll see. Nothing is certain.

They are making tweaks that reduce power consumption.
But they also add in a very complex new onboard GPU (DX10), which could easily consume more power. They raise the FSB, which also tends to consume more power. The onboard flash member has got to use some power as well. And the chipset itself *may* be a power hog like many recent chipsets are.

So overall, it is fully possible to get *lower* battery life.

Performance?
Well, there's the higher FSB, but we already know that's not a big bottleneck in the first place. So it might give you 5% or so, but not much more than that. The onboard GPU? Who knows how it'll perform. All they've promised is that it'll run DX10 software. Not that it'll do so at a decent speed, or that it's faster than the GMA950, even.

Santa Rosa *will* be bring a performance improvement, but it'll probably be in the 5-10% range, and no more than that.
(Of course, boot times are an exception to this, because the onboard flash stuff should speed that up drastically)

But don't expect miracles. See it as a new motherboard, not a new miracle next-gen PC standard.