Np8662 T9800 vs P9600

Out of all of the games I plan to play when I get the NP8662, the most demanding ones will be GTA IV, Supreme Commander, Crysis, WIC and BIA.

I cannot decide between the two high end types of Core 2 Duo available which are:

1) Price £340 Intel Core 2 duo T9800 Dual Core 2.93 Ghz 6mb cache or

2) Price £140 Intel Core 2 duo P9600 Dual Core 2.66 Ghz 6mb cache

Which one would you configure your laptop with for gaming?

I am leaning towards the 2.66 Ghz since I think it has a better price to performance ratio, lower TDP, lower heat output etc.

I wonder if the 2.93 Ghz Vs 2.66 Ghz will make much difference in GTA IV performance. I hope 2.66 Ghz is enough to keep up with the powerful GTX260M.

 

to get the best performance for games like GTAIV (that is multi-threaded), go get yourself a quad-core CPU.

look towards a Q9100 at least.

 

Stick with the P8600 and get yourself a Q9100 off of eBay. You can get an ES Q9100 for £282.12. I usually don't recommend a quad, but every game you play will benefit from the four cores of the processor.

 

I have found that although the Q9100 is not usually listed as a possible configuration, if you request it from some resellers, they may offer it. My NP8662 will now have the Q9100 assuming it passes all of the testing. I think a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9100 2.26GHz 12MB Cache will be great in a 15.4 and is a good compromise in terms of power and potential.

 

The 12MB Cache speed is possibly the reason why the M860TU motherboards can't handle the new Quad-core chips, except the Q9000 (which uses 6MB anyway).

 

will p9600 help much with battery life?

 

thats not the reason.

Clevo just does not want to push any added heat to the system.

But from tests from others.... the other quad-core CPUs seem to work fine.... since they all have the same TDP and temp specifications.

and Sager only does what Clevo recommends.... while other vendors and OEMs will give you the option of the Q9100, QX9300.... and they will support it with their warranty.

 

will p9600 help much with battery life?
did anyone see my question?

 

the P9600 will help with some batterylife, but marginal.

remember to use Silent Mode to get the most batterylife.

 

is that because the power consumption difference between these processors is small compared to the power consumption of the graphics card?

 

^^ pretty much.

 

This is the answer I've been waiting for-

I've been hemming and hawing between T9800 vs QX9300-

Gophn, so you think the difference in power consumption bet Q9100 vs QX9300 will be negligible?

 

not really.

 

Which is better overall...P9600 2 core or Q9000 4 core...They are same in price but i have heard that it's best to go with the new technology...But i want to know what is best for my machine on order....Thanks

 

The p9600, the q9000 is just too slow. Yes it has 4 cores, but it's only 2.0ghz, which isn't great for gaming. You want at least the q9100

 

Yep i went with the Q9100...it was a walllet buster but hope it will be worth it...Hey Gophn..I'm kinda new at gaming with high performance computers, you look like you've been around a while...You think this set up will do fine?....Thanks

 

No I think you're wrong, in a game that supports quads, it's 2 x 4 vs 2.66 x 2. The P9600 will get overrun in the future. It's about cores, not flat numbers.

 

in a game that supports quads
Not all games support quads, but yes, IF it supports quads of course it will outperform a dualcore.

 

It's not just about support. It is also how quads are supported because support my different from application (game) to application.

 

Wouldn't it be just great if I could get the rest of my programs and OS running on other cores and have my game running on one or two?

Perhaps that's the way to look at it Defcon, and not to get EVERY game spread out across all cores (for the games that don't support multiple cores).

 

Actually, most games would play pretty well on a 2.0 GHZ core 2 quad. I remember playing recent stuff on a Core Duo 1.8 GHZ and having no issues, it was just the graphics card that was the main limiter. And the Core 2 Duo is supposed to be 60% faster than the Core Duo so....there you go.

Q9000 is a good processor until proven otherwise.

 

I think all of this is a oversimplification. Just because a game is multithreaded, that doesn't mean each thread is created equal. Thus far multithreaded games are really only splitting different parts of the engine off such as physics, audio and the like. However there is still one heavy duty thread for graphics and other things. So really, this heavy duty thread is your limiting factor. I can have a 40 core processor but if those cores aren't running fast enough for that heavy duty thread then I have a bottleneck. In which case a 2.66Ghz dual core will perform better than the 2Ghz quad core. Personally I wouldn't get a Q9000 unless you have a way of overclocking it. Some people are recommending quad cores because they will be more future proof. This is true only to an extent. A year from now that heavy duty thread is going to grow more before it gets parallelized more. We will have to see fundamental compiler or library changes to see more lower level parallelization. Thats not going to happen over night.
Don't get wrong I'm not saying quad core = bad. If you've got the money for the faster quad cores then by all means get them and it'll be great. I'm hoping to pickup a QX9300 or the like off ebay soon.

 

It really depends on the game. For instance, Age of Conan can be surprisingly CPU bottlenecked if you have view distances cranked.

 

allright then now I have changed from the P9600 to the Q9000 now to the Q9100 then to the X9100...haha...I'm sticking with the X9100 no matter what anybody else says

 

Just order the unit without CPU---

 

Order it with the processor that is most likely to sell and that you find sold on here the most. Then order you a new fast processor and take this one out and prepare it for sale.

 

I have heard so many people recommend users avoid the Q9000 because it is only 2.0 Ghz which really doesn't make much sense when you look at what really makes the difference in the majority of game performance.

I came across a review about Crysis on the Tomshardware site and the reviewer had done some benchmarks using different CPU's, this is some of what they said:

So it is easy to see a 2.93 Ghz Core2Duo along side the Q9000 2.0 Ghz Quad Core and to forget all about the real facts because you can easily convince yourself that the higher clock rate will automatically make a better performer.

Of course, with highly CPU intensive games that are not Quad optimised, a higher clock will make a bigger difference but that is not the case for most games.

I really look forward to comparing game fps with someone who has a higher clocked Core2Duo to my Q9000. A good test will be a Dual Core optimised game.

 

At 1680x1050, even a game that's only dual-core optimized won't bottleneck. People need to face the fact that most of our mobile cards aren't fast enough to bottleneck a CPU.

 

I agree with you. I suppose the debate is mostly moot.

 

I wonder why resellers who know a lot about gaming, performance, bottlenecks, computers etc recommend everyone purchase a 2.66 Ghz P9600 (or other higher clocked Core2Duo) over a 2.0 Ghz Q9000 for gaming at a maximum of 1680 x 1050 along with the GTX 260M then. Of course when the price of higher clocked mobile Quads comes down then these debates will disappear for the most part.

In another forum thread here http://www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=723&page=2:

 

I don't know why he'd say that. Uneducated? I have a list of games which support four cores.

Bioshock
BloodRayne2
Call of Duty 4
Civilization: Beyond the Sword
Company of Heroes
Crysis
Dawn Of War II
Devil May Cry 4
Dirt
Empire Total War
Far Cry 2
GTA4
Half Life 2
Hellgate: London
Lost Planet
Medal of Honor
MS Flight Sim X
Portal
Rainbow Six Vegas
Splinter Cell Double Agent
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl
Stranglehold
Supreme Commander (with tweak)
Team Fortress 2
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2
Unreal Tournament 3
World in Conflict

 

KJ PWNz once againz

 

The speaker suffers from the classic tale of the five monkeys syndrome--

http://www.creativity-portal.com/articles/michael-michalko/tale-five-monkeys.html

or Plato's "the Republic"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_Republic

 

Why would anyone ever want to put a quad into a laptop? Go with the P9600. It uses less energy, generates less heat, and when gaming, unless you care about all 2fps, the P9600 will generally preform just the same! My notebook games with a P8400 in it... and its great! I get battery life, and preformance!

 

Because it's there--

 

I also provided them with a similar list and the response was http://www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=704&page=2