Santa Rosa vs. Montevina: How much should I prioritize?

I'm in the process of looking for our first laptop and have been doing as much reading as I can on this excellent forum. One thing continues to confuse me a bit though and I was also hoping for some perspective.

First a basic question just to make sure I'm straight. the T6400 is the Santa Rosa platform while P8600, P7350, T9550, etc are all the Montevina platform (and thus Centrino 2 as opposed to Centrino), correct?

Second, and I guess more importantly, other than it being obviously a little faster, how important or how much better is that leap from Santa Rosa to Montevina? When shopping around I find myself to knowing where to prioritize the jump in platform. For instance, I really like what I've seen from the Vaio FW, but it typically comes with a T6400 unless I jump up significantly in price. The laptop will be used for your basic stuff and with some light to moderate gaming on principally older games like CIV 4 or Call of Duty 1 and 2, but I can't rule out a COD 4 down the line. I'm trying to make sure I have a discrete GPU, but find myself confused on the processor.

Do you all think the T6400 would generally be fine in my case? Does anyone know of any big problems with the Santa Rosa and principally the T6400 where I should put moving up to Montevina a high priority?

Thanks for the help!

 

The T6400 has a Front Side Bus of 800MHz, and thus qualifies as a Centrino 2 processor. However, it will work in either Santa Rosa or Montevina-based notebooks. The P8600, P7350, and T9550 are also Centrino 2, but they will only work in a Montevina notebook.

The main difference between Santa Rosa and Montevina is the chipset. Santa Rosa uses the older 965 chipset, which supports maximum processor FSB of 800MHz, and DDR2 memory of 667MHz. If you get an integrated graphics card on a Santa Rosa notebook, it will have the GM965 version of the chipset, and the Intel X3100 integrated graphics.

Montevina uses the newer 45 chipset, which uses 1066MHz FSB processors and 800MHz DDR2 memory, and can use 1066MHz DDR3 if the motherboard supports it. If you get an integrated graphics option with this chipset, the GM45 version, it will be the Intel 4500MHD, which is considerably more powerful than the X3100, and can handle HD video and even some games on its own.

The T6400 will be more than enough for CoD4; it relies much more on a good GPU than processor. 2.0GHz will be more than enough for just about anything unless you do a lot of hardcore video and audio editing.

My Studio 1535 is a Santa Rosa notebook, and used to have the T5750 processor, which was 667MHz FSB 2.0GHz, so it was even slower than the T6400. I could still play CoD4 and TF2 on it. You'll be just fine.

 

Very good points. Montevina's ICH9M+ I/O chipset no longer has a PATA interface. So all the optical drives on the newer systems are SATA. This means a nicer integration if wanting a SSD + HDD via optical bay caddy setup.

 

Thanks! You've definitely helped clarify some things I've been wondering about like the integrated graphics option and particularly how I was getting the chipset confused with the processor.

One more question, though if you'll allow me. When you're looking at laptops, what do you look at to immediately know what chipset you are getting (if the processor is a T6400, thus can be in either SR or Montevina)? Like I said in my first post, I mistakenly thought I could tell by looking at the processor.
In newegg, for example, it will sometimes list in the specs 'Intel PM45' which, thanks to you, I now understand that this is Montevina. However, here are two other laptops where chipset isn't listed and, as I understand it, could be either SR or Montevina:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834117872
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834117870
Is there something else I can key on other than the integrated graphics card since I'll be hoping to get a dedicated GPU?

Similarly, here is a link to a Dell machine and a Sony Vaio from their websites:
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dndwba2&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&kc=laptop-studio-1555
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/SYCTOProcess?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&LBomId=8198552921665729701&categoryId=8198552921644564390 (Hopefully the Sony link is up again, but it is a VAIO FW with a T6400 processor)
Is there any obvious way to tell chipset?

Thank you again for helping me to clarify this. This is really helping me sort out how to prioritize and, of course, know what I'm paying for.

 

Both notebooks on Newegg are Centrino 2, you can tell because in the specs it says "Intel GMA 4500MHD". And the Dell is Centrino 2 also since it gives options for P series processors.

 

Ah, ok on the Dell one. I've been looking at a lot of systems that are T6400 with, say, a Radeon HD 3450 or a Radeon HD 4530 GPU. Any advice on what to look for there if chipset isn't explicitly listed?

 

If the processor can be either/or, and the graphics card is a dedicated chipset-independent type, and the chipset is not specifically listed, it can be tricky. See if the RAM speed is listed. If it's DDR2 667MHz, or PC2-5300, then it will most likely be a Santa Rosa/965 chipset, since that's the highest RAM speed it can use. If it's DDR2 800MHz or PC2-6400, then it's Montevina/45 chipset, since it can use that speed of RAM.

Also, see if it says "Centrino" or "Centrino 2". To be Centrino 2, a notebook must have the Montevina platform/45 chipset. If it's just "Centrino", it's probably a Santa Rosa.

 

Awesome, I can see this RAM speed difference on a few notebooks I'm looking at with dedicated GPU's and now I can tell which is which. I'm printing your post out.

Also, what your post has shown me is that there really doesn't appear to be that many new laptops out there any more using the Santa Rosa chipset...at least from what I can tell.

Thanks again for all the help and good info.

 

If you can, I would wait a month or two for the "Back to School" releases. The newer stuff always comes out mid-end summer and the older stuff gets a price cut if you can't afford the new tech.

Best times to buy are back to school and holiday season...

 

Yeah, Santa Rosa is an outdated platform. New models coming out are pretty much exclusively Montevina (unless they use ATi or nVidia chipsets, but that's a whole different thread), and many companies are phasing out their Santa Rosa stock. Dell, for example, is discontinuing their Santa Rosa-based XPS M-series notebooks, including the M1330, M1530 and M1730. They are all high-performance notebooks for their size, but there's nothing more to be done with the old Santa Rosa platform. They are being replaced with new Dell and Alienware models, like the Studio XPS series and M17X, all using the Montevina platform.

This is true, although this isn't really a "when to buy" thread.