HDX 16 - dual core or the HDX 18 - quad core for video ?

Hi guys,

I have a dilemma

I want to upgrade my old laptop to something nice, and am torn between to systems.

An HDX 16 with:

2.40 Ghz dual core duo ( P8600 chip )
6 gigs of ram

OR...

An HXD 18 with
2.0 Ghz QUAD core ( QX9000 chip )
4 gigs of ram

both systems have the same video card ( Nvidia with 512megs of ram )
500 gig hard drive.

What would be the faster machine for doing video ?
and what would be the overall faster machine ?

I realize that not all applications will take advantage of a quad-core chip like the QX900, so this is why I"m asking.

Perhaps some of you have bought either of the system, perhaps you have some info, or insight that could help me out.

I'm basically wondering if the dual-core P8600 chip @ 2.40 Ghz in the HP HDX 16 with that 6 gigs of ram will actually be faster overall than the quad core would be, and perhaps even be faster at rendering video ?

thanks for any help, and information.

 

The quad will be faster but I would not think that is the bottle neck, I would go with the duo with more ram because I think it is the video card that matters more.

Or you could get the HDX 18 and upgrade the ram yourself to save money and get the best of both worlds.

 

hi Drummer101, the video card in both the 16 and the 18 are the same, both are Nvidia cards with 512 megs of ram. I don't understand what you mean.

 

Personally I dont think there will be much improvement (if any) going with the quad. It also depends if you programs and run multi cores.

But if you still want the quad and the ram you would get the quad and upgrade the ram yourself and save some money.

My choice would be the Duo and upgrade the ram yourself.
I have a 2.4GHz cpu and it is not the limit when doing anything and mine is an "old" 2.4 (not as many calculations per tick).

 

Can you tell us which card it is ???

I would go with the 18 as it has more brute force which helps in converting
Also, as mentioned above, the RAM can easily be upgraded later

 

the 2 HP laptops are here:
http://h20386.www2.hp.com/CanadaStore/SubCategories.aspx?pid=C32476

you'll notice that HP Canada gives us absolutely NO options... it's very disappointing to know this, after I looked at the American HP website, where you have so many options it makes you head spin

The video card is an NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT

Seems HP Canada's site isn't working great at this second, so here is BestBuy Canada's info on this laptop: ( the 18" Quad Core )
http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFS10118223&catid=26975

Seems this laptop is about $600 more in Canada, than in the States ( ouch )

 

What exactly do you mean by 'doing video' and 'rendering video'?

If you mean video editing, I think you should only choose the quad core if you use quad core optimized software.

If you mean gaming, both the RAM and the CPU choices are unimportant because the 9600m Gt with DDR2 is going to be a huge bottleneck. So even the few quad core optimized games would not benefit at all.

 

Off topic here, but I've tried to get this question asked over and over again. Is it possible to upgrade the HDX16t CPU to a Core 2 Extreme QX9300?

 

The laptop must be built for quad cores, as I believe the die is twice the size, the socket is different, and the smaller heatsink won't suffice. That's just off my head, I'm no expert, but I'm sure it's out of the question.

 

I only know this:
For the 8530w/8730w it is not possible unless you also replace the mobo, because the higher TDP is not supported by the dualcore mobo. So it is a hell of a job. You also need another heatsink. Read the service manual of the hdx16t to see what the maximum processor is and what heatsink/mobo it uses?

 

QX9300 will not work on HDX16 - you can do a X9100 - see this thread for a guy who did it http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=356499