Looking 4 years into the future, T7xxx useful?

I'm about to enter college in a month and am buying a laptop that will hopefully last me all 4 years

I've read in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=147799

that for the things that I will be using my laptop for, the T5xxx will suffice and I will hardly use the capabilities of the T7xxx for basic work.

However, will this change over the next 4 years? Will a T7xxx last me longer than a T5xxx (in terms of being able to handle latest apps, not in terms of durability)?

 

No.
The 2Ghz is only about 25% faster than 1.6Ghz.
And that is in the worst case, for general use, CPU use rarely goes to 100%.
If, you do come across such programs, it will just take them 25% more time to complete, no big deal. Instead of 10 seconds, it'll be 13 seconds.

 

I'm currently on a 4 year old t40 and everything is running just fine except for battery life. Anyways, point is order whatever you want. Applications like word processing will never require that much power. If you're using it to take notes during lecture, I would recommend getting a notebook with as much battery life as possible since you wont always be right next to a power source

 

CPU usage does not have to reach 100% before you feel the benefits of having a faster CPU. Boot times are faster, programs open faster, you can multi-task much more efficiently. For instance, I went from a Pentium D 805 to an Athlon 64 X2 5600+ and instantly I could feel the benefits. Is the Pentium D find for "general use?" Sure as hell, but the 5600+ blew the 805 away in boot times, loading programs, etc.

My mother has a laptop with Pentium M 760 on it. Is it fine for general use? Surely. But can you say with a straight face that even in general use you can hardly tell that a T61 with T7300 is faster? Hell no.

 

I dont belive the differences will be felt between processors of the same family.
Your athlon rig was probably faster because 1)Faster HDD 2)Faster ram 3)Higher FSB 4)More L1 cache of athlon (128kb compared to 32/24kb) and 4)Faster CPU speed.

But OP is looking for the difference in the same processor family, the only difference being 0.4Ghz extra, and 2MB extra L2 cache.
Will it make a difference ? Yes. Will it make a significant difference ? No

 

More like a miniscule difference.

 

In 4 years, both T7xxx and T5xxx will be complete crap considering their ability to run the latest apps.

 

Same family. Both were AM2 Socket-CPU's. Everything was the same. It was a drop-in operation. I literally took out the 4200+ and dropped in the 5600+. And then there was the difference.

So yeah, attribute the difference to CPU speed and more L1 cache, and in the process, concede to my opinion.

 

If by 'latest apps' you mean 'latest games', then you are probably right. Other than that, it should be perfectly fine.

 

Sure, no problem, but 32->128kb L1 cache increase makes a significant difference.
The increased cpu speed, not so much.

 

Boot times and how fast applications starts are most effected by hard drive speed not the CPU. They're both dual core CPUs which is the biggest factor in multitasking, not the over all speed. Now sure if you're coding audio and video or crunching Access databases, get the fastest CPU you can. The OP is doing internet, light gaming and photo organizing. There's not a huge difference there in my experience.

 

the thinkpad with a santa rosa chipset will get you through those 4 short years of college very nicely. it will also keep you away from games, which is a good thing.

My awesome ATI Radeon DDR(32mb) tied up with an intellimouse explorer and Counterstrike ruined my 1st semester gpa lol.(i know...i'm old lol)

 

I concur.
Uptil last year, I was using a P4 M 2Ghz processor (5 years old), until the laptop died. It ran everything fine. Compiling programs was a bit slower, but it did not impact my productivity.
I expect the next 5 years to be even worse in terms of cpu performance increase.
It is getting extremely difficult to get around the heat dissipation problem -- this is basically why cpu manufacturers are sticking in more cores, they dont know what else to do.
What WILL impact notebook performance in the next 5 years are SSD drives and their much higher speeds.

 

You will be just fine with today's 7x00 cpus for a great number of years. Unless you're a gamer, then you probably won't even be happy today.

 

You're mistaken.
In the next few years we're gonna see TREMENDOUS CPU performance increases. Multi-core tech is just one thing among many others, like the continues shrinking (to the 45nm and then 32nm) of the manufacturing process and dramatic improvements in the core design architecture.

 

No, I mean applications, not games.
And I don't include web browsing and word processing in those...

 

Agreed. I find it strange how wearetheborg can claim that the next 5 years can be "even worse," implying that these 5 years tech innovations have been bad. Give me a break! In the mid-to-late 90's, the only CPU advances were mHz increases. The advances in power consumption, thermal performance, and the advancement of multi-chip/multi-core processors this side of 2000 gives much to write home about. The moving from Netburst to the Core architecture is already a lot to be proud of. Remember when power hungry & hot Pentium 4's were in laptops?

 

look back to the cpus of 4 years ago. Now will you care about a system with P4 1.8 GHz or 2.4 GHz?

 

I guess you can't compare the T7XXX series to cpus that will be available 4 years later since by then intel would have released several new series of cpu already. But from experience, I would say a cpu 4 years old is okay for daily applications as long as you are not using it to run the latest games or expecting lightning performance from newer applications.

 

This discussion has now been rendered pointless as Lenovo never really offered the T5xxx series in the first place.

 

The pentiumM's were realeased around 2003-2004. And it was a significant improvment (in terms of power consumtion).
But since then, what else has improved ?
Multi-core sounds nice, but it does not impact most applications (as they are single threaded).
At 45nm, intel is running out of atoms. The 45nm process was made possible by using a new compound at the gate. Getting further improvments is going to be hard.

 

Intel is not "running out of atoms".
Otherwise they woudn't even consider switching to the 32nm process.

 

More and more applications are becoming multi-threaded every day. That cannot be contested. In the future, most if not all applications that need to be multi-threaded will be. Making more applications multi-threaded is that one step to make generations and generations of future CPU's relevant because once your applications knows how to distribute loads to different cores, then two cores, four cores, eight cores, or whatever will become useful.

Can you put 2 and 2 together? That means multi-core CPU's will be relevant when improved upon in the future. "Gee, most programs today aren't multi-threaded. That must mean adding cores to CPU's in the future will be useless." You can't use today's software technology to marginalize tomorrow's CPU technology!!!! What are you thinking?!?!?

Most importantly, you make a silly assumption that applications have to be multi-threaded in order for users to benefit from multi-core CPU's. What about multi-tasking? Ever try to do an anti-virus scan, download torrents, listen to Ludacris, and argue with us about CPU's at the same time on a Pentium M-boasting laptop? Didn't think so.

 

Unfortunately, it is not straightforward to create multithreaded versions of single threaded programs. Its an extremely hard thing to do, and has been studied for years in the context of parallel processing, so its not like this is a new problem.
They dont even teach parallel programming in undergarduate CS programs.

Multi-tasking - it requires support from the OS, in that the data spaces need to be kept seperate. With the inherent complexities, the OS designers will choose someting very conservative, so utilisation of dual cores is not as widespread as you might thing.
On the surface, yeah, dual core=2x the single core work, but unfortunately the reality is different.
I HAVE heard about the virus checker being assigned a core to itself though.

What have I done on single core pentium4M (6 years old) simultaneously?
1)Run OS
2) Firefox with 30+ tabs open
3) 8 Command terminals open
4) Azureus bittorent client
5) Play music
6) Run Eclipse (Jave IDE)

 

I don't understand why you keep talking about the present to belittle the future of CPU technology.

Yes it is. Check benchmarks from Maximum PC for details. I'm pretty sure other hardcore tech websites have it, but I've only seen the multitasking benchmarks from Maximum PC.

Well obviously you can do it. It's just a lot easier on your hair to do it with an Intel Core 2 Duo.

 

i think this convo is becoming a little beyond what i can handle, as i stopped understanding many things

in conclusion, i think im gonna get the T5470, since im just using it as a History major in college.

edit* oh but thanks for all the intense attention!

 

That's fine, but it better be a real commitment of 4 years. If you try to upgrade the CPU in the future, you'll be wasting your money and regretting today's decision.

 

I have a Athlon XP 2500+ upstairs on my fixed PC. Time spent on thinking about upgrading: 0. With only 512MB it does everything it should.

 

I thought notebook cpus are generally permanent and cannot be upgraded (unless you like giving your notebook a surgery and voiding your warranty)

 

As did my ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 w/32MB DDR. Ahh the good ol' days of setting CS to 800x600 to smack around the n00bs