Please Help!! Confused about the 5750

I've been looking at the 5750 offered by discountlaptops and powernotebooks. The one thing that got me just now was the screens. powernotebooks says matte/nonglossy, but discountlaptops says glossy.glare. Can this be possible or is one of them wrong. I'm going to try to contact them tomorrow to see. Do manufacturers deliver two different types of the same model?

 

It is matte. It is not available in Super Clear Glossy, only the NP5760 is.

 

Thanks. I guess discountlaptops got it wrong. What about the video card?

discountlaptops say that the x1600 has 256 dedicated with up to 512 shared/hyper memory. I believe that powernotebooks isn't to specific. However, sager says 128 dedicated.


I'm calling discountlaptops when it opens today.

 

I would go with Sager's website. 128MB on the video card and the rest is pulled from system memory, however also remember that you need at least 1,024MB system memory for HyperMemory to work up to 512MB.

 

Thanks. Just out of curiosity. Does dual channel memory really need to be bought in pairs, or can you just put to same size modules?

 

Dual Channel only works if you have two pieces of memory installed.

The Dual Channel functionality is supported by the chipset and doubles the memory bandwidth. Overall speed increase is on the order of 10-15% so it is not huge, but nice.

 

Ok discountlaptops is fixing the things I found. It is a matte screen, so that will change. Also, the link from the 5750 will not go to the 5750 specs page not the 5710. And they're checking on the memory for the gpu.

Thankfully, they were rather nice to me. The last time I asked those types of questions to a manufacturer, they sent nasty emails. I was genuinely confused.

Thanks paladin44.

 

I thought dual channel memory needed two modules of the same size, but nothing else. Is that right? for example, two one gig sticks at 667

 

I think you guys should say that on your website. Some people might take it for granted.

 

Ok. it's confirmed, 128 megs of memory on the x1600, with hypermemory up to 512. The x1600 can stabilize itself at both 256 and 512, so i think one gig is not needed for the 256 stabilization.

The screen is also matte. No matter as I like the matte screen. They do seem to be a dying breed. I believe that also cost more to make as the gloss coating is cheaper, but I dunno for sure.

Thanks for all your help. Especially you paladin44. If discountlaptops reads this, you've been a great help too.

Is there a downside to the 128 meg x1600 card?

 

The two pieces of memory have to be the same size and type as in your example of 2 one gig pieces of DDR2/667MHz.

 

cool. thanks.

I think that covers everything.

 

I was told that the 2 memory sticks need to be "matched" for the dual channel memory to work. Does that only mean same size, type, and speed are needed to "match" them?

Also, we are all very fortunate to have Donald (Paladin44) on this forum to answer our questions. He is very helpful to everyone, even those who are buying from his competitors--and I think that is very honorable!

 

As long as you have two sticks of memory installed, they will run in dual-channel mode. Unlike older chipsets where you needed the two same-sized models to run dual-channel, newer chipsets support dual channel without matched sticks.

 

Thanks Chaz!

That answers my question perfectly. I didn't realize that when I was told about the "matched" memory that it was for an older chipset until you pointed it out.

 

Wow. So you don't need matched sticks for dual channel. Cool. Thanks Chaz

 

It's a feature called asymmetrical dual-channel; symmetrical dual-channel (same sticks installed in each slot) is faster by about 2.5-3.5%. In most cases, you'll have about the same memory bandwidth as single-channel RAM with asymmetrical dual-channel, so in reality it makes little to no difference.

 

Well, some would disagree. Here is a Kingston/Infineon Whitepaper on the subject that shows about a 15% performance increase, and another good read is from CPUPlanet, and yet another is from Hardware Secrets

 

Hmm. Interesting read. I guess the symmetric would be best. It's not too expensive to buy two gig sticks of the same speed.

 

One last thing, I can see that the 5750 offers a second hard drive in the modular bay. Would this mean that the second hard drive replaces the cd/dvd drive. So the trade off would be memory for media?

 

Yes - the second hard drive option is actually a caddy that you swap with the optical drive. It is very easy to do; on the bottom of the notebook there is a small latch you push and the drive slides out. You must have the notebook off in order to switch them.
Also note that the secondary hard drive is Ultra ATA only, so you can't put a SATA drive in it.

 

Ah, I see. No satas. I can live with that. Seagate momentus perpendicular write 120 ata is already shipping. Pretty good deal too at newegg.

That swap drive would be rather useful for back ups and stuff. But I would say rather inconvienent otherwise. I think that the optical drive is pretty important.

Ok I think I'm set on the 5750. Either that or the Asus Z83J, which seems to be a similar contender. However, I like the 5750 case design.

 

Well, you would think that I would do complete and thorough research before blasting bad information here...but I have now blasted two pieces of bad information in the quotes above.

I have now done further research and, if I have any credibility left, here is what I have found. Some of this is in Intel's NDA material so I cannot quote it as a source, but I have taken it up with the senior engineer at Sager, and others (including the **cough** DELL website), and this is the result:

Beginning with the Intel 915 Mobile chipset Intel has changed the way the memory is used (prior to this chipset, DUAL CHANNEL Memory had little impact on performance). Now however, with the Intel 915 Mobile chipset family and beyond, when in DUAL CHANNEL Memory mode a new channel is opened up (like opening a 2 lane highway to a 4 lane highway) so that you can read and write at the same time (two going one way and two going the other), and carry twice as many “truck loads” of data. Benchmarking software will measure it as 15-20% more productive. However Benchmarking software only uses about 20% of its testing taxing the memory, so if the application you are using is memory intense you will get even more productivity (around 20 to 30%) out of DUAL CHANNEL Memory.

The “speed” of the memory is still 533MHz or 667MHz, but you can have twice as many "trucks" moving your data, so it will be considerably faster (maybe not twice as fast because they only have one lane each way to exit, but you still have twice as many trucks in motion)

Now, with the new Mobile Core Duo (and then the newer Core 2 Duo when it comes out) it becomes even more important to use DUAL CHANNEL Memory because each core uses memory, so if you have two cores trying to read or write to a single channel of memory it will slow the whole system down.

The memory only has to match in that it is DDR2, but can be of any size (e.g. 512MB and 1,024MB will work fine together). If you have 533MHz in one stick and 667MHz in the other stick your speed will be limited to 533MHz, but you will still have the extra channel opened.

Again, I apologize for previous information that I provided that was inaccurate, but there is very little published on this subject that is outside of Intel NDA documents. However you can now rest assured that what I have provided here is not only accurate theoretically, but has also been tested to verify its accuracy.

 

This was true of the earlier models, but the NP5760 and NP5750 will both accept only SATA drives in the Modular Bay.

 

Oh wow. That just made my day. All 7 minutes left of it for me, but that's besides the point. I think that the 5750 is the best laptop for me. I've exhausted all of my concerns by now. I think... More will pop into my head sooner or later.

Thanks for answering chaz, chrisyano, paladin44, and safersephiroth.

 

That is good news. By any chance, could I take the new modular drive and use it in my 5320? I have a 2.5" SATA drive lying around.

 

Unfortunately you would need an SATA connector at your Modular Bay, and yours is ATA

 

Donald, Thanks for finding that information and sharing with all of us!

Cheers!

 

So only excepting SATA drives in the Modular Bay is a good thing?

 

It actually is, because if you ever wanted to replace the drive you had in your Sager, you could take it out and put it in the secondary bay, since the internal drive is SATA.

 

So paladin44 will it utilize the Dual Channel functionality or not?

 

Read through the posts in this thread on Page 2 and you'll find your answer.

 

Oops, I thought paladin44 was disagreeing with you.

Just a quick question, I am about to order what would be better the T2300 1.66Ghz with 2 gigs of memory or the T2500 2.00 with 1 gig?

 

i would go with the t2400 w/2gigs of ram. 2400 is usually only ~50 more than 2300, but if you can't afford that, i would say t2300 with 2 gigs. double the ram is better than .4 ghz extra.

 

The T2300 and T2400 are currently the same price. The T2500 is only about $60 more.

The T2300E, when it is finally released, will be about $50 less than the T2300 and T2400.

As for doubling the memory, there are few mainstream users who can actually use over 1,024MB of system memory, but for gamers, engineers and other power users 2,048MB is very helpful. For those users, I totally agree that double the memory is more important than an extra 170MHz on the processor, but right now the T2500 at 2.0GHz is the price/performance "sweet spot".

 

Since Intel slashed the Core Duo prices, the T2500 is attractively priced, I agree. It's the best value as far as performance goes out of the whole lineup. The T2600, while signifigantly reduced in price, is still not low enough to justify spending the ~$200 on it.