What determines if laptop has quad core SB or dual core SB?

if quad core SB now has a TDP of 45W, what is stopping manufacturers from offering them? is it price? Which laptops so far have quad core SB? Are gaming laptops the only ones?

Can anyone speculate on when quad core will come to high-end ultraportables? (it seems like only dual core SB is offered right now)

I'm specifically interested in the upcoming vaio z, but since that's not out yet, let's refer to the just released thinkpad x220 which only comes with dual core option, whereas I don't see why it doesn't have the option for quad core

 

Power draw, cost, heat, need.

What can you do with a Quad-Core CPU on an ultraportable laptop like the Sony Vaio Z that you can't do with a Dual-Core?

If you want better gaming performance, you pump up the GPU. If you want faster application performance, you get an SSD. The CPU actually has very little impact on how a machine performs, unless you are doing some very specific tasks (databases, multiple Virtual Machines, CPU-based video encoding). And the people who buy ultraportable laptops like a Sony Vaio Z will not be doing those things on their laptop.

 

Mobile quad cores always had a 45W TDP as far as I can remember. It's a lot more power efficient than previous Clarksfield, maybe a bit cooler too but still it can't fit in ultraportable notebooks. I guess Ivy Bridge is when 35W quad cores are happening.

However there already are multimedia oriented laptops that pack quad-cores SB and there will be more to come. See Dell XPS 15/17 and MBP 15/17 for example.

 

Well that and if the laptop can cool the processor. Not recommended putting in a 45 watt quad core into such a slim notebook like the Z. I would speculate at least Ivy Bridge or wait for Haswell/Rockwell.

 

What do you need a quad core for, apart from the fact it's a bigger number and a more impressive spec to boast about?

 

Every laptop is a series of compromises. In the case of the Vaio Z series or the smaller Thinkpads, these trade-offs are made to favor low weight and long battery life over raw power. More power to the CPU requires bigger battery and more cooling, adding bulk and weight.

 

ahh, interesting stuff

anyway, i'm interested in a quad core for the same reason people are interested in dual core over single

and the fact that i think it's nice to see how quad core compares to dual in everyday computing

 

Quad cores are not mainstream yet. SB quad cores are more efficient but consume too much power for ultraportables where battery life is important. They are also a lot more expensive which is why we usually see them in gaming/workstation notebooks

 

I mean don't buy a quad core just because everyone else is. You need to know what you need. If you don't do rendering or like PS or CPU intensive tasks, quad cores are only going generate more heat and decrease battery life.

 

yup, i thought that quad core SB cpus have reached drawing around the same amount of energy as my p8700, but i guess not =(

 

So your answer is 'nothing', then?

 

Well unfortunately mass media wants us to believe more is better, bigger is better, faster is better. As we learned from the Phenom II mobile quad cores, more isn't better because without Turbo Boost they get eaten alive on single threaded applications. Most people automatically assume quad cores are better because there are more cores.

 

oh far from it, if the battery life werent an issue, i'm sure quad core would be useful, can never have too much speed. for example, a 1.8ghz core 2 duo is good enough for most people, but it's still beneficial to have a faster cpu

especially now that the frequency for quad core are closer to dual core, i believe that when you factor in everything that a person does on their computer, quad cores should outperform dual cores the majority of time now. whereas this wasn't the case with arrendale, where the dual core frequencies were much higher than the quad cores.. and chances were that the dual core would have outperformed quad core the majority of time

but again, since battery life is still a problem, i guess dual core will be better currently for ultraportables

 

Quad core is obviously faster than dual core, no doubt. And will improve as people get more used to proper multi-threaded programming. But I think, and especially considering the big jump up in price, that for >90% of use cases the money would make much more difference to performance if spent elsewhere. Like on more RAM, or a SSD, or a better GPU if you're a gamer or whatever. & that's before we get into the reduced battery life. And extra cooling required, and so on. There's disadvantages as well as advantages, same as everything in life.

I've just ordered an i5-2520M in my new laptop. I would consider myself a power user - I do quite a lot with VMs, Visual Studio, audio editing w/ Pro Tools & such, and I am expecting that processor to be more than ample for my needs in an ultra-portable - especially considering how much they wanted for the i7. If it was truly essential to have ludicrous amounts of power on the move, then I'd have to move up a size of laptop.

 

That's true. I suspect that under budget constraint many people would rather choose to spend the money on quad-core when they wouldn't notice a difference nearly as big as with replacing their old HDD with a SSD. You even got me thinking, I think I'll say screw quad-core CPU for now and take the SSD path instead.

 

Wrong! The Core i5 decimates Phenom II mobile quad cores in single threaded applications. Sure as programs become more and more multi-threaded, but how long have we been saying to ourselves since quad cores became available for consumers to purchase?

 

Well, it also depends how long you are going to use the laptop for. If you are like me who likes to pull more than half a decade from a notebook then I would recommend go with something a bit more high-performance like the quad-core. But if you see yourself getting another laptop within the next 2-3 years again, I would recommend getting a really high end dual-core processor. Personally, I would recommend a laptop (Dell XPS 15/Dell Inspiron 15R) with a strong second generation i5-processor (i5-2540M/i5-2520M).

Now, of course the quad-core processors maybe irrelevant (to the bulk of society) right now but that's where the software is heading in the future and you'll see those multi-threaded programs becoming more and more prevalent. So if you see yourself with the same laptop in more than 3 years, then I recommend sticking to quad-core.

 

hey mihael, where did you create your sig?? i really like it! does anyone know where?

 

I think the "CS5" icon is reason enough to assume it was created in Photoshop...

 

Hey Brawn, thanks and actually yes, I did end up creating it in Photoshop as the guy above me stated.

 

We were comparing i7 dual core to i7 quad core, as they are on the same architecture - the i5 may 'decimate' (hint: that word doesn't mean what you think it means) the Phenoms, but that's not necessarily entirely due to the number of cores.

And more and more programs are becoming multi-threaded. You can't argue with that really.

 

wow it looks very professional! thanks for the heads up, ive seen similar images that can be customized and simply saved from a website, and as your's looked so perfect, i thought it was made automatically