Laptop processor

grab a turion or centrino, good speed, low heat, and they don't suck up your battery. :D

Unless I am mistaken, isn't "Centrino" and Pentium M the same thing. Centrino is a marketing scheme that requires the uses of a M-class processor(Celeron or Pentium) and a specific chipset and wireless adapter. So I would go with a P-M or "Centrino". Personally I suggest looking at Apple when their intel line comes out unless you plan on using your laptop for hardcore gaming.

Edit: Doah forgot you mentioned what you wanted it for. Anyways if Apple is not your cup of tea, then possibly go with gateway. Remember to get XP Pro though because it extends battery life. I am tired of magizines testing for battery life using XP - Home and complaining. Unless they added the power saveing features to Home without me finding out.

A 64 bit processor would be able to run a 32 bit application, but if your only real use for the laptop is gonna be gaming, and app dev, dont bother with a 64 bit cpu, people have this misconception that a 64 bit processor will be faster, and it will.. to a degree, mostly it will be faster at data movement, but only for 64 bit apps, for 32 bit apps it might actually run slower.

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Original post by Shae Unless I am mistaken, isn't "Centrino" and Pentium M the same thing. Centrino is a marketing scheme that requires the uses of a M-class processor(Celeron or Pentium) and a specific chipset and wireless adapter.

I was going to say that they are not the same thing but then you answered your own question. O.o

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Original post by BleedingBlue [...] mostly it will be faster at data movement, but only for 64 bit apps, for 32 bit apps it might actually run slower.

Unless benchmarkers are getting 64 bit versions of apps like Doom 3 and various other games, I think the Athlon 64s are actually faster (than 32-bit AMDs) for all apps. Of course, the reason that is true would be because they're a completely new core using newer technology and much more cache, but they're still faster.

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Original post by Extrarius Quote: Original post by BleedingBlue [...] mostly it will be faster at data movement, but only for 64 bit apps, for 32 bit apps it might actually run slower. Unless benchmarkers are getting 64 bit versions of apps like Doom 3 and various other games, I think the Athlon 64s are actually faster (than 32-bit AMDs) for all apps. Of course, the reason that is true would be because they're a completely new core using newer technology and much more cache, but they're still faster.

Right, but not because they are 64 bit. Thats just a marketing scheme that seems to work quite well.

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Original post by tstrimp Quote: Original post by Shae Unless I am mistaken, isn't "Centrino" and Pentium M the same thing. Centrino is a marketing scheme that requires the uses of a M-class processor(Celeron or Pentium) and a specific chipset and wireless adapter. I was going to say that they are not the same thing but then you answered your own question. O.o

Actually I did not. Intel uses "Centrino" to sell laptops to the computer illiterate. Actually some non-centrino P-M based laptops have better battery life because the required wireless card for "Centrino" is a power hog compared to others on the market. I hope that you do not become caught up in the masses of people thinking that it MUST have "Centrino" on it to be good. Correct me if I am mistaken.

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Original post by Shae Quote: Original post by tstrimp Quote: Original post by Shae Unless I am mistaken, isn't "Centrino" and Pentium M the same thing. Centrino is a marketing scheme that requires the uses of a M-class processor(Celeron or Pentium) and a specific chipset and wireless adapter. I was going to say that they are not the same thing but then you answered your own question. O.o Actually I did not. Intel uses "Centrino" to sell laptops to the computer illiterate. Actually some non-centrino P-M based laptops have better battery life because the required wireless card for "Centrino" is a power hog compared to others on the market. I hope that you do not become caught up in the masses of people thinking that it MUST have "Centrino" on it to be good. Correct me if I am mistaken.

You said isn't Centrino and Pentium-M the same thing. Then you said that Centrino is the marketing scheme packaging a pentium-m with a chipset and wirelss adapter. Therefore they are not the same thing. Doesn't that answer your first question?

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Original post by BleedingBlue A 64 bit processor would be able to run a 32 bit application, but if your only real use for the laptop is gonna be gaming, and app dev, dont bother with a 64 bit cpu, people have this misconception that a 64 bit processor will be faster, and it will.. to a degree, mostly it will be faster at data movement, but only for 64 bit apps, for 32 bit apps it might actually run slower.

Well, for 64 bit processors in general, that is true. But in the case of Atlon 64, it just so happens to be pretty well designed, meaning that in 32 bit mode, it is still faster than both Pentium 4 and Pentium M.

Anyway, I don't think data movement is the primary advantage of 64-bit mode. Doubling the number of registers is a pretty good thing too. But that's a bit irrelevant since so few apps are actually able to take advantage of 64-bit mode.

If you just want performance, go for something Athlon 64-based (which means Turion).

If you want battery life, it's harder to say.
There's a huge lack of tests comparing battery life on the two platforms though, so it's hard to say which is lower.
Here's the only one I've found.
Interestingly enough, this one actually shows Turion having better battery life under normal laptop use (when the CPU is mostly idle), while Centrino lasts longer under full load.
The Turion also performs a bit better.

Still, Centrino (or Pentium M) is the tried and true laptop solution.

I think you'd be happy with both. :P