Sager NP2090, which Processor??

Hi, I have just ordered one of those beautiful Sager NP2090's from Xoticpc.com. I had originally ordered it with some pretty nice specs: Core 2 duo T7500(2.2ghz.), 2 gigs of ram, Nvidia 8600gt, 160 gb 5400rpm hd, you get the idea. Unfortunately I ordered it too late and now my shipment has been bumped back about 2 weeks (the wait is killing me!). However, as impatient as I am I have begun to question my processor choice. Is the extra $95 worth the 200mhz clock speed gain, or should I have my proc bumped down to a 2ghz T7300? Will there be a noticeable difference? Thank you for helping me out with this, these forums have been a great help with my laptop decision .

 

I went with the T7300, I thought the money was far worth it for the upgrade to 4MB. However I think spending the money to upgrade past that for a little more MHz is silly because I doubt you could ever notice the difference.

So in my opinion I think the T7300 Is sort of the sweet spot for the IFL90's and It's what I went with.

Good Luck

 

I agree, the difference between the 7300 and 7500 will be hard to notice, especially if you're gaming since the GPU is determining your results, not the cpu. I think you will be very happy with the 7300, the main thing was getting to the 4mb at the 7300, like Dave said.

 

Agreed. The price to performance increase is simply not worth it. It's really a weird time to buy right now because the processor prices are expected to drop with the next couple of months and you can get a T7500 for the current price of T7300. Yeah, it sucks for those who just ordered their notebooks.

 

Alright, I think I will go with my gut and your opinions and drop down to the T7300. The upcoming price drop riffjaff mentioned sounds tempting, but I would really like this notebook asap. However, I do know how painful missing a price drop can be, I am one of those suckers who bought an AMD x2 last summer just a month prior to conroe's release

 

There is no reason to regret the decision. I don't think there is a situation where you'd know the difference...unless you are gaming THAT hard and had them side by side maybe? Even then I think your GPU would be the bottleneck.

I think it might be a little "Grass is Greener" syndrome

 

The better configuration would be the T7300 but then upgrade to a 7,200 RPM hard drive with the money you save.

Getting a T7500 with a 5,400 RPM hard drive is a mismatch.

Pricing for processors always drops 3-4 times a year...but there is no price drop coming before at least September.

 

Wouldn't upgrading to a 7,200 rpm hd add heat to an already hot GPU? Or does the rpm increase not make that much of a difference?

 

Heat, noise and battery life are of minimal concern. The thermal solution for these laptops is designed for using its maximum components...including 7,200 RPM hard drives, the T7700 processor and beyond and 4GB of memory so going with a T7300 and 7,200 RPM hard drive is not even taxing it.

 

7,200RPM hard drives are barely warmer than 5,400RPM drives. I've used both in my Sager with no issues. As Donald noted it makes no tangible difference in reality.

 

Don't forget we haven't seen all of the Santa Rosa CPU's yet. Later this year we will see the 2.6Ghz and 2.8Ghz versions. If you want the best then you might want to go low on the cpu and get a better one when it's released.

 

How much faster would a T7300 with a 7200 RPM drive as opposed to a 5400 RPM drive be?

 

The hard drive is not making the CPU faster. Just a lot of times the HDD loading is the bottleneck. What Paladin44 is saying, (Hope I'm not misinterpreting) is that having the fastest Processor i.e. T7500atm and then coupling it with a slow HDD is like having a Lamborghini and running it with no tires....or some analogy close to that.

 

I must've worded my question a little strangely, I was meaning overall performance wise, hang times, etc, if you were to be bottlenecked by a 5400 RPM drive.

 

That's still a tough question to answer. The hard drive is the slowest component in a computer by far (the next slowest component is RAM and it's 1000x faster than the HDD) so therefore any increase in speed will be noticeable whenever you need to use that component. So for booting up, loading programs, and just about anything that requires the use of the hard drive will see a speed up with the faster drive.

 

To be honest it does sometime depend on the drive...some 7200rpm drives may be slower in all honesty than a better brand 5400rpm drive. You need to find out which drives are offered and then research them. Don't always take blanket numbers and hope that it's the best. Most of the time it is...but sometimes its not!

 

Heh, much like the graphics card industry huh? They do seem to love those "big numbers are better" concept, and a lot of people eat it.

 

Exactly, contact the reseller and ask them for the brands and models they use in their configurations. Then do your homework. You'll be much happier in the end if you care about performance. + this will give you a chance to see what kind of customer care/support they have and how knowledgeable their employees are. All +'s for you.

 

That's a bit misleading. There are only two manufacturers of 7200RPM notebook drives at current (there is one other manufacturer introducing 2.5" 7200RPM hard drives but I forget): Seagate and Hitachi. The performance between comparable models is nearly identical, with Hitachi having a slight, slight edge in speed and the Seagate being nearly as fast (the difference is not noticeable) but quieter. Hitachi and Seagate are arguably two of the best notebook hard drive manufacturers out there so it's tough to justify that first statement you made.
Secondly, a 7200RPM drive is going to be faster than a 5400RPM in just about all cases. I don't see any reason to get a 5400RPM drive in a performance notebook unless you need all the space you can get.

Another thing - notebook manufacturers don't just have one brand they use for parts. They use whatever they have in stock. It could be any number of manufacturers. Usually there is no way of telling what brand you are going to get, and in most cases (especially for RAM) it doesn't matter.

What it all boils down to is this - if you want speed, get the 7200RPM.

 

would having the T7300 with 4gig ram not be a smart idea? or does it not matter

 

Most say that 2GB is enough. Ram is easy enough to max out later though.

 

Well, it's wise to keep your options open. For me, I'm going to get a 1 SODIMM 2 GB RAM stick so I can always buy another 2 GB RAM stick in the future if I needed it.

 

also is there noticable difference between 1sodimm and 2 if your going with the 2 gig option?

 

I seem to recall something about a performance advantage for 2 sticks over just the one, but I doubt it's much, and it'd prob. be balanced out anyway by the money you'd save later by getting a 2 GB stick now and not having to shell out for two 2GB sticks later. Of course, someone correct this newb if I'm wrong.

 

If you do a search on dual channel memory you'll find a good thread started by someone who benchmarked it. There is an advantage to dual channel, but I think the consensus was that it is so slight you wouldn't be able to tell in anything but synthetic benchmarks.

 

what he said (*is amazed that I was right....*). That answer your question, rofl?

 

I was going to ask the same question. I would just go for the 2gig. But I'm like atleast they would be sticking two of the same RAM in there instead of me going to buy some fly stuff and it would be one 2gig is kick ass and the other is just genrico brand. <shrug> I mean if i'm going to drop processor speed.

 

4GB of system memory is overkill for most users. T7300 + 2GB + 7,200 RPM hard drive is optimal for all but the most testosterone driven user.

 

But in a year or two, it may become the norm, eh, Don? In which case, shelling out for one 2GB stick now would not be a bad idea? That's just how it seems to me.

 

My friends call me Donald...and you are welcome to as well

Yes, I would advise getting 2GB in a single piece if you have any idea that you might want to upgrade later. The only disadvantages to this are that it that piece fails you are out of business until you get it replaced, whereas with 2 pieces if one fails you can keep going, and you won't get the Dual Channel Memory functionality...but that is a pretty minor performance boost so not a very strong reason.

 

I do open a plenty of apps at one time. lol

 

Apologies, Donald. I shall remember. And I hadn't thought of the failsafe measure that getting two sticks provides, which would certainly be handy, b/c the loss of a computer, even temporarily, to RAM failure would certainly be catastrophic for some. I shall have to keep that in mind when I order one of my own. Thanks.

 

Does ram die often. I mean the few time I've even had it happen it was take one out replace and move on. Yes I know the deep rooted one isn't cake, been there. But after that time it's not a major anymore.

 

is RAM easy to replace/add in the 2090? ive never delt with laptops before so i dont know if its difficult

 

Tinker toy easy as long as you are licensed to use a screwdriver

 

Funny. lol
I remember when I was going for the deep RAM in a latitude for the first. I had that bad boy ripped alllllll the way up. When putting it back together I seen that I did have to go as deep as I was led to believe. Technician learning exp. though so it didn't matter.

 

From my experience, no. I've had maybe one stick die (haven't verified that), and that one was 9 years old. Of all my computers, I have at least 4 sticks still working after a decade or more, another after 8 years, and another after 4. And I don't know anyone else personally who's had one die. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

Hmm... regarding the relative performance of 7200RPM vs 5400RPM for hard drives, see this chart at Tom's Hardware:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25.html?modelx=33&model1=425&model2=414&chart=142

Look at where the 7200RPM and the 5400RPM fall in the various benchmarks. You will see that some 7200RPM disks perform worse than 5400RPM disks. The point is that going to 7200RPM is not always advantageous. It really depends on the specific models being compared.

If you look at their simulations of specific workloads (Fileserver, Webserver, Database and Workstation), the 7200RPM all come ahead but sometimes the difference is fairly small. I could not find Tom's Hardware methodology for producing those benchmarks but reading the documentation on IOMeter, my understanding is that these benchmarks reflect IO performance only. So the chart for Workstation IO is not about the overall performance of the computer but only about the performance of the IO subsystem when the computer is used to simulate the IO requests that would be produced by somebody using the computer as a workstation. (Wow, that was a long sentence!) So if you see a 15% performance increase between two drives, that's an increase for IO only. The net performance increase will depend on how much the disk is used in your normal usage of the computer.

 

great post....is the second hdd,the same hdd sager is offering in the 250 gb 5,400 option

 

I have a ram stick that is still going after 12 years.

 

I can't say much about ram in notebooks, but desktop wise the stuff can outlive the rest of your parts, even when it is dead. RAM can become damaged, but still be functional.

I would assume that the difference between 5,400 and 7,200RPM HDD couldn't be that great, and wouldn't you, even if minor, be getting some heat and noise reduction not to mention a slightly lower cost, if staying with a 5,400RPM HDD?

 

well, yes. IMHO, 7200 RPM drives are for those who just really can't stand loading times. They can be slightly faster, but it seems to me that you'd want more space over slightly faster speeds. But that's just my opinion, there's prob. some hugely justifiable reason why we should all get 7200 RPM drives. :wink: