HP vs Compaq, Intel vs AMD 64 - Opinions

I just got my Compaq R3000Z and I'm thinking about sending it back and picking up either the R3000T or ZX5000 because these machines have the Radeon 9600 as an option. I now have a few questions to now ask to hopefully help make this decision easier.

Of the Pentium 4 3.0GHz and the AMD 64 3000+, which chip chews through the batteries faster? Which one puts off more heat? I'm not really interested in the Pentium-M, though the battery life is pretty important. The HP offers the BrightView screen upgrade. The standard screen on my R3000Z is actually pretty nice. Is the upgraded screen really worth it? Does it somehow use a lighting technique that saves battery power? Which laptop has better construction? The R3000Z feels quite solid and fairly rugged when closed and it has minimal "seams" when closed up. Does the HP fair as well in construction? Are the HP speakers really better than the Compaq speakers? For some reason, does the HP have better battery life than the Compaq with the same chip?

 

I would say they are about equal, they both use up the batteries fast. If I may ask, why no interest in the Pentium M? If performance is what you need a 1.8 Dothan will out perform a 3 Ghz P4 I believe and gives you the freedom of using the notebook for 4.5-6.5 hours on batteries rather than1.5 to 3 hopurs on the P4 and AMD 64.

Jack

The color of justice in america is green.
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

The P4 will definitely burn up battery power faster than the Athlon 64. The Athlon 64 has far better power management too. No contest there.

I know what you mean about the lame GeForce 440 Go in the R3000z. I'd check out notebooks by other vendors, like the eMachines M6800 series (see Best Buy) and Acer Ferarri 3200 (Radeon 9700 128MB, lighter than other Athlon 64's, SXGA+ res screen).

We are just getting into the back-to-school season so lots of folks should have new notebooks soon. Maybe HP will offer something better.

 

the hp does have better speakers,
they are both built well
they both get the same battery life
only differences for same config btwn the two are:
speakers,
button layout for things like volume and wireless
casing
and the touchpad, the hp has ridges on the right side for the mousewheel.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 22,856

 

Its funny that you posted this. I bought a R3000Z with the AMD 64 3400++ and a GeForce 440 go, I then returned it and just today got my R3000T and it has a 3.0GHz w/HT and 128MB Radeon 9600. The cases are the exact same, the build is the same the weight is the same. I decided to make the change because I wanted the Radeon I've only had a little time to work with it but I do seem improvment in graphics with Far Cry and Aquamark3 scores. I think the P4 gets a little less battery life with the 12 cell in both I'd say this one gets 2.5-3 hours and the AMD gets 2.75-3.5 hours. Also the AMD 64 3400+ is definitly the better CPU, but when you put it with a slower older Geforce and 4,200RPM drives its looking its advantage. I heard people complain about heat on this system but its fine far as I can tell, the CPU air is blown out the back only when you play games will the other fan come on. Oh I forgot to say, for the aquamark I went from a 10,xxx something score to a 19,xxx score, I don't know what that means I guess its twice as good? The worse thing about the P4 in my opinion is the P4 has no power managment at all! The AMD 64's have powernow which is great but that chip still uses a lot of power so its only games 25-45minutes on battery life in this series. I hope this helps if you have specific questions feel free to ask.

Compaq R3000T (CTO)
P4 Desktop 3.0GHz w/HT
1 X 512MB RAM
Radeon 9600 128MB
15.4 wide screen
WXGA (1280 X 800)
CD-RW,DVD+RW
60GB 5,400 RPM HD
Wireless b/g
Windows XP Home
12 Cell Battery

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by DaGreek

 

I only buy amd and have been looking at a r3000z 3400. I know it only has old graphics but I have a desktop that has raptors 74gb raid 0,x800xt,3200 64 oc'[email protected]. Anything I get will seem slow. I was going to get the smallest hd and put in a 7200. I have never owned a notebook before. I do not want to play games on it but maybe watch a dvd and internet when traveling. Am I barking up the wrong tree for what I want? Please help.

 

No, you've got the right idea. For anything other than heavy 3D gaming the r3000z is a great notebook and the dedicated 440 Go is far better than any integrated graphics solution. You should get close to 4 hours of battery life with the 12 cell battery. You can probably undervolt the CPU with ClockGen for even better battery life (I can, 1.8GHz @ 1.2V, 1.4GHz @ 1V, and 1GHz @ 0.85V work particularly well on my 3200+). I swapped in a 7200RPM HD too, very easy. Wireless range is outstanding, my only complaint is that the Broadcom wireless card is Linux-hostile and the BIOS locks out "unapproved" miniPCI wireless cards (other than that 64-bit Linux works very well, Fedora Core 2 in my case). The 1680x1050 res widescreen is great too.

The other notebook you should consider is the Acer Ferarri 3200. Slower but much more power-efficient CPU (Low-Voltage Athlon 64 2800+), smaller/lighter, top-of-the-line 128MB ATI Radeon 9700 video (not nearly as Linux-friendly as nVidia but great for Windows). You'll still want to do a HD swap and probably a RAM upgrade as well (comes with a pair of 256MB SODIMMs and 4200RPM HD). It's significantly more expensive than the R3000z though and you lose the widescreen and bigger battery.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by brianstretch

 

No, I pretty much got everything good that HP offered. I do wish the 3400+'s had been available (ordered in March), but that's about it. 1680x1050 res screen, 12-cell battery, 802.11g and Bluetooth (bought a Microsoft Bluetooth wireless mouse, Logitech has a nice one too), cheapest HD and swapped in a 7200RPM Hitachi, 1GB RAM... I think that's everything. Someone else here said the 1920x1200 res screen made small fonts too small, 1680x1050 seems like the best balance for a 15.4" screen. Booting into Windows is pretty fast with the 7200RPM HD and clean WinXP Home install (didn't reinstall all the stuff HP includes), I don't remember how long the original 4200RPM HD took.

I keep this forum in a Firefox tab so it's easy to check in throughout the day [ ].

 

when you say that the HP offers the Brightview, you mean the Intel notebook right? Because if the HP AMD notebook had brightview I would snag that up right away, regardless of the GPU!

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by brianstretch

 

$69? No, it's not worth that much. Bluetooth is a short-range low-power wireless protocol (about 30 foot range) for use with mice, PDAs, cell phones, headsets, and what not. It's very convenient to not have to mess with USB cables. You can get Bluetooth transmitters that plug into a USB port for very cheap (often bundled with Bluetooth peripherals), it's not as slick as having the internal transmitter but it's effective. When I bought my notebook the 802.11g card wasn't "free", so Bluetooth was a reasonable upgrade. They really ought to offer Bluetooth as a separate item, it's a separate module from the WiFi card.

 

Sounds great!

Remember I'm a newbie. Is there any way I can ghost my desktop to the notebook?

 

Hmm.. dunno. WinXP has a migration utility for copying your old stuff to your new machine but I've never tried it.

 

I just ordered a r3000z.

3400+
1gig ram
60gb hd free upgrade
wireless free upgrade
8x dvd
64mb video
12cell
1680x1050 15.4
price:$1454-50coupon=$1404-100 rebate=$1304
12 months same as cash

I know most are going to say the video is no good but I really don't play much games. I am strickly a amd and ati guy but for this kind of money I'll forgo the ati. Besides, my x800xt will do 2x a 9700.

Thanks for your help.

 

BRIANSTRETCH


Can I switch out the hd for the 7200 and then if I have troubles with something else on the notebook, put the hd that came with it back in?
Or, would it be a good ideal to wait and see if anything goes wrong?

 

Yes. Changing HDs is fairly easy but you do need to be careful with the plastic adaptor that fits to the drive (don't bend any pins!). I booted up my notebook, verified that it worked OK, then swapped drives, kept the old drive while I decided whether to keep the notebook, then sold the 4200RPM drive on eBay. The notebook will autodetect whichever drive is installed. I swapped drives several times while convincing HP support that the BIOS was buggy and that I knew what I was doing (moreso than them [ ]). (They fixed the bugs, or at least the memory chip compatibility bug, in revision F.12.)

 

BRIANSTRETCH


Have you ever benchmark sandra file system with your 7200? Or any hd benchmarks?

 

I put a Hitachi 7K60 in my zv5000z - here's a Sandra file system check. How does it compare to others?

File System Benchmark Combined Index : 27798 (total)


Stefano
HP zv5000z DP523A: AMD 64 3400 2.2GHz, 2x512MB RAM, 60GB 7200RPM HDD (Hitachi 7K60), 15.4" WUXGA (1920x1200), XP Pro.

 

Hi step-dad,
It's a great idea to buy a notebook with the smallest hard drive possible and then buy you own 7200 rpm drive to get you a big boost in performance and capacity. You can then use the original drive as a backup and use ghost every week or two to do a complete backup of your system (all hard drives will die in time and without a backup your data is most likely lost forever, also if your a tweker like me it's possible to screwup you OS and it's nice to be able to recover in 10 minutes time) You can't ghost from one computer to another unless the hardware is exactly the same(motherboard, video card, and other hardware. You can however use the xp "file & setting transfer wizard" to tranfer some of the setting. I've only had good luck in using it to transfer the email settings, everything else I do by hand(bookmarks, data and such) all programs need to be reinstalled.
As far as bluetooth, if you use it or think you will then get it, $69 is not too much; but if you don't plan on using you PDA to snyc up or anything like that with bluetooth, don't waste your money. My notebook came with BT without the option of not. I don't use it, in fact I've disabled it even to save power but it's nice to know I have it if the need is ever there.

Jack

The color of justice in america is green.
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

PS,
as far as benchmarking goes, I don't have the data but I would say going from a 60GB 4200 to a 60GB 7200 was an overall increase of performance on the order 20% or so. On cpu intensive stuff where the drive is not accessed ther is no real gain, but most applications are always hitting the drive so ther is a real gain. boot time was directly perportional to spindle speed. Like 52 seconds to boot into XP with the 60GB 4200 rpm drive vs 29 seconds with the 7200rpm drive, quite an improvement!

Jack

The color of justice in america is green.
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by bootleg2go

 

i just sent my r3000z back 2 days ago and am awaiting refund, so i can buy a r3000t. the 3000z overheated after only a few minutes of use. they could find nothing wrong after i sent it in so i returned it. nowhere else did i find anybody with a simillar problem, so i was going to just buy the 3000z again, untill i came to this forum and saw that HP has the student discount, and my GF is a student at the university here. after i sent it in for service to see if they could fix it ( yeah right i had the typical nightmare with tech support, but i aint gonna whine, just avoid it in the future) they sent me a survey and after i comleted it, they sent me %10 off anything over $50.00! so if i add these together with the $30 mail in its under $1100.00! so i guess its a good thing that the first one was a POS, but now i have to wait another 3 weeks to get the new one. waaaa!
i liked the r3000z enuff to almost have bought it again, but after i saw i could get the ati 128 meg for less $$$ than the one with the nvidia 4 440 card, well ...
the gforce 4 440 ran all the games i had very well, so i cant wait to see how the 128 runs!
peace[ ]

 

I just ordered a 7200 hd for the r3000z I have coming.
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100519

$189 with free 2nd day is a steal. I looked on ebay $209 + shipping.

Having never had or really used a notebook, I am really pumped up to get this thing. Is there anything I can tweak on it? Can you oc the cpu on a notebook? How about memory? I know it has an old graphics but can it be oc'd?

 

See my message about undervolting in this forum. The same info applies to overclocking, but undervolting is much more useful.

You can overclock the video card, same trick as with the desktop nVidia cards. It won't do you much good though.

Very nice deal on that HD. That was the first upgrade I made, along with the memory. I swapped in a Toshiba 4X DVD burner too. I'm running out of things to upgrade [ ].