Z Series: P8600 vs P9500

Hello all. I have had my Z11WN/B (UK) laptop with P8600 processor for a week now and am very happy with it, however as always, I am wondering whether or not the P9500 would have been a bteer option. I have tried running a few games such as COD4 and Devil May Cry 4, which can run at reasonable speeds @ non-native reolutions and textures turned down. Would the P9500 have improved this or is the bottleneck all with the GPU? Any other 'real world' benefits of having the P9500?....

Cheers

 

Right, as you said, the bottleneck in gaming is the GPU.

For CPU intensive applications like math and encoding/decoding there will be about 5% difference.

Edit: Actually a bit more than 5% due to the higher cache of the 2.53Ghz.

 

Exactly, for gaming there is no much difference if your CPU is 2.0 or 2.8 GHz, as CPU doesn't play key role in games. GPU is the one to handle all graphic issues and 9300 is pretty moderate performer (I believe Nvidia classifies 9300 under "thin and light", which is the lowest category in Nvidia GPU range). Real benefit of "thin and light" is very low power consumption (so you get better battery life) and it runs much cooler than stronger GPU's (so you have less heat in your housing).

BR
Miki

 

thats great to hear, but i am kind of disappointed as the role of being "thin and light" should be played by the intel gpu

 

I think a cooler running, less-power-hungry Nvidia GPU is a good thing in such a small package. It pumps out enough heat as it is, IMHO...

 

twice the L2 cache, plus the slight speed bump, must help something <??>

i demo'd the Z570 with the T9500, and versus my SZ370, it was NOTICABLY snappier. on Vista, the performance calculations were 4.8 (of that 5.0 scale) as calculated by the os itself.

 

Only if you run applications that max out the CPU.

 

As much as it sounds "doubled" 3MB cache vs 6MB the actual difference is quite minor: you'll get some increase of 4-7% but only in applications/calculations that fully utilize L2 cache usage. So this is more marketing than a real deal.

BR
Miki

 

I wonder which cpu uses less power in running at same speed.
Anyone knows?

 

I found that when you have the GPU as the bottleneck, a stronger CPU helps maintain framerates. You won't see much in the increase of maximum FPS but your minimum FPS increases.

For instance, I went from a T7200 to a T9300 on XPS m1330 and my minimum FPS went up 17-20 fps in Rainbow Six Vegas.

 

I expect them to use the same power if they are running in the same speed.
But they can't run at the same speed.

 

What do guys you think is more worth it from those two models:

Z11WN and Z11VN. The differences are the CPU and the hard drive. The first model has the P8600 and 250 GB 5400rpm HD, and the second the P9500 and as hard drive the 320 GB 5400rpm. The difference is about 150 euros.

I hear lately that the 320GB/5400 rpm is quite noisy and slow...

 

The P9500 would not offer any gains for gaming with the exception of a flawed 3DMark06 CPU score. They both have a max TDP of 25w and really only differ in their multiplier and cache. The cache can help in some calculation intensive activity... but that is really a moot point considering the development of CUDA applications and plugins. The biggest difference between the two is the clock speed, and its minor... extremely so.

Not to mention, given that the CPU is placed with a socket vs solder, you can upgrade the CPU yourself for less than the cost of a Sony Upgrade.

 

The 3200RPM Drive that I got was quiet and surprisingly fast... only falling below the Hitachi 7K200 by 4mb/s average reads and 5ms seek. Its also significantly cooler running than the Hitachi I have installed.

That said, I wouldn't really say that the upgrade warrants the price. The CPU differences are minimal to none (if CUDA becomes widespread), and given the rapidly decline price, whilst increasing performance of SSD's I'd say it would be worth upgrading down the road with either HD choice.

 

Do you mean 7200rpm?
and do you mean 0.5 ms seek difference?
What drive is it?

 

Sorry, I didn't exactly clarify on the two models I tested. My Z540 came with the Toshiba HDD2H01 320GB 5400RPM 8MB HDD, and before I installed my Hitachi 7K200 I ran some tests on it. Its average read speed was 49.8 MB/S with a seek of 19.2 ms. My Hitachi scored 54.8MB/S with a seek of 14.2 (I quoted 4mb/s difference above mistakingly). A second test on the Hitachi was 53.2mb/s and 15.1s seek.

I also misread his post, assuming the higher end was a 320GB 7200RPM.

My advice remains the same though, that the upgrade doesn't warrant the price unless the 150EURO makes one feel better about their purchase (and I admit, its hard to buy a "lesser" model without forcing reasoning upon yourself).

 

Ok thanks for clarifying. But 5 ms is a HUGE difference. The disk is accessed thousands of times during normal use. I think you would change your mind if you run some different benchmarks. The Hitachi will load applications and games about 20% faster. ( benchmarks)

In my opinion it's hilarious that people pay money for the P9500 and then stick with a mediocre 320GB/5400rpm drive. But then again upgrading isn't easy for every one.

a fast hard drive is the SINGLE BEST upgrade one can have for their laptop, since it gives the best performance increase per buck. More than any other component upgrade.

 

No doubt its a huge difference, especially with server-like or small file activity. But that doesn't necessarily make the Sony upgrade worth it. Again, I am using my 7200RPM Hitachi in my actual Z. You can, however, pick up an entirely new 320GB 7200RPM for 160 bucks or less now. I'd suspect large SSD's will fall around $200 in the near future too.

 

So wich combo is generally better?

2.4 ghZ+250 gb 5400rpm or
2.53 ghZ+320 gb 5400rpm

 

As you know the 2.53Ghz CPU is faster in CPU intensive tasks.
If the HDs are from the same type the 320Gb is faster.

In those environments but also booting an OS or loading levels uses many files. Also in multitasking. It's in server like activity and workstation like acitivity.

It's no surprise PCMag (or what mag was it) is complaining about the slow boot time.

 

For the differences between performance with 2.4Ghz/3MB and 2.5 Ghz/6MB cache read this:

The performance increase due to the clock speed and cache size increase varies from 0% all the way up to 11.7%, with a maximum of around 4% of that being due to the clock speed increase alone - the added L2 cache does have a benefit.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3246&p=12

(not exactly the same cpu's but valid anyway.)

 

dunno if this is the right place to post this question but has anyone tried using AUTOCAD on the Z yet?

are ther any problems? is the graphics card strong enough?

thanks.

 

If i look at these requirements:
"1,280 x 1,024 32-bit color video display adapter (true color) 128 MB or greater, OpenGL®, or Direct3D® capable workstation class graphics card. For Windows Vista, a Direct3D capable workstation class graphics card with 128 MB or greater is required." it should not be any problem.
But I've never tried it.

 

Indeed there is a performance gap, albeit small. However, CUDA (or ATI's implementation) could invalidate all of this and effectively make the HDD the largest bottleneck on any system. Moreover, you can purchase a P9500 in itself for less than the Upgrade Sony charges... Obviously the downside is that upgrading yourself risks voiding the warranty if done wrong and takes time, effort, and minimal knowledge

EDIT: Anandtech's benchmarks are also inconclusive if they didn't use identical platforms. I'm led to believe it was a MB 2.4 3MB vs a MBP 2.5 6MB. And if they used their own socket P test bench, they could have easily clocked the processors to equal speeds for proper testing of the cache.

 

I don't think so. It seems to me like MBP 2.4 vs MBP 2.5 as here:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3246&p=13

 

Aye, I took a look at that previously and when it was written. But the only 2.4GHZ on the chart is the Macbook and likewise the 2.5GHZ is the MBP.
And while I don't really feel the two motherboards would alter the performance significantly, it still isn't a controlled comparison. So it remains suggestive, but not conclusive.

Now, I'm hardly suggesting there isn't a difference in performance between the two cache sizes. I just can't recommend actually purchasing that upgrade unless you have an unlimited budget as the upgrade price is best spent elsewhere in my humble opinion. Outside of the fact that cloud computing and CUDA applications are and are increasingly becoming more popular, you could put in a 2.8GHZ 6MB 25W TDP if one is released in the future for the same cost as Sony's upgrade.

 

I am bringing this up again. we haven't talked about power consumption and heat between the two cpus and 5400 vs 7200.

also someone mentioned that a 320gb is faster than a 250gb. how so?

 

check the charts on tomwshardware.com
they explain everything there