Paging computerists

Words to Fathom?

 

ISTR Mac also had an issue with laptops running very hot. So hot you
couldn't leave your palm on the rest....

 

To be fair, Quake 2 used to run *mint* on my old Celeron 450Mhz with a
GF2GTS video card.

With games like that, it`s the graphics processor which is more important
than the main processor.

As for G4 vs Athlon, hard to compare as (obviously) they like in completely
different subsystems. However, in terms of raw processing ability a site
I`ve found seems to suggest that a G4 500Mhz is comparable to an Athlon
700Mhz.

 

It's on the cards...

That means it could be some time away. Don't get excited, I'll let you
know when I need Wi-Fi ;-)

I had a 700MHz Celeron desktop before this with a 64MB GF4 graphics card
and that worked really well.

It did, but when you buy a 2.8GHz laptop with 512MB RAM, you do expect
it to perform better than something that came out in 2001.

The video RAM is shared with the main RAM and is fiddlable in the BIOS
between 32 and 128MB, and I reckon it's this that is causing performance
issues.

I could whack another stick of RAM in but the 2 slots I've got are
already full :-\

 

In

Heated grips ... kewl

--
Steve Parry

http://www.gwynfryn.co.uk

http://www.arrivedeprived.org.uk/

K100RS SE
F650
(not forgetting the SK90PY)

 

Whinging Courier <> spewed forth the
following...

A lot of laptops are not designed with high performance 3D in mind.

For example, looking at some Sony laptops with similar specs to yours, I see
there are 2 distinct video systems used. One being the ATI Radeon IGP 345M,
which is mainly 2D based and the other being based on a Radeon 9200.

The 345M (from what I can find) appears to have a similar performance to the
Radeon 7500 when it comes to 3D stuff. Not much cop, in other words.

Whereas the 9200 should probably hold its own in games like Medal of Honour
and so on, I would expect it to fall flat on its arse with the likes of Doom
3 or Far Cry. It`s probably comparable to a GF4MX or maybe an FX5200 in
terms of performance. However, with your having shared memory I don`t think
it`ll be a 9200, and if it is it will be hampered with the shared memory
bus, bringing it down to 9200SE performance levels. A GF4MX kicks the arse
of a 9200SE.


Out of interest, what model laptop do you own?

 

This I already knew. I'm not a mad-for-it gamer but do sometimes like a
go. I thought the laptop I bought would be at least as good as my old
desktop if not better.

That'll be mine then.

I know bugger all about the inside of a laptop.

What I can tell you is that an old black and white King Kong movie was
smoother than Doom3.

PCG-K115B

 

There are other compromises - laptops generally have hard drives that
rotate at 5400 RPM rather than the usual desktop 7200RPM (or 10K RPM
for some modern drives). This limits the data transfer speed (and they
generally have worse seek times as well).

They also tend to use lower-power motherboard components as well - and
sadly this usually means 'less fast'.

Phil

 

You live and learn. I wrongly assumed a computer with a 2.8 gig
processor would have hardware to match.

As I've found out to my cost.

This thing's ok, it does most stuff reasonably speedily but for the die
hard games that are coming out now, a desktop is really the only way.
There's also the dedicated games consoles, of course, but I don't spend
enough time playing them to warrant the expense or space it will take
up.

 

It's a laptop. Primary design concerns are heat, weight and battery
life.

Unless you pay serious wedge or are prepared to sacrifice some of the
portability you're not going to get equivalent desktop performance
even when things like processor and memory spec are the same.

 

Ben wrote

putting the makers label in front of suits.

 

Something like that. I thought it meant 'what the ****?'.

 

Correct.

Buying a spaztop from Lidls or somewhere else from an unknown maker
would also prove to be unworthy when the time comes for repair if the
factory that made it goes tits up.

 

Sadly no.. PC's tend to be tuned to whichever task they are meant for -
laptops for power consumption, desktops for general use and servers
tend to be optimised for data throughput (15K RPM Ultra SCSI 320 drives
- yum).

Indeed. Plus in a desktop you can easily replace the graphics card when
the flavour of the week changes.

Unlike my Dell laptop which (although it has a 64M graphics adaptor as
a plug in part) seems to have a propriatory Dell plug on it that means
I can replace it with a faster generic laptop module..

Plus the fact that a good desktop is usually faster than a dedicated
console and can do other things as well..

Phil

 

could be...

 

Oh good grief Penfold... Let me explain:
In answering WC's initial posting, I assumed a few things. First he stated
that his Sony Vaio laptop was from May this year, i.e. fairly new.

I assumed that Sony, being a well known company in this field, would
ensure that the latest hardware was in place on their laptops and USB2 has
been around for a couple of years now.
Who makes laptops *without* USB2?

I also assumed he was using Windows, I'm a bad person.

 

In that case, when it eventually comes back, disable hyperthreading.
See if it improves.

 

I doubt it. It is a humble Celeron.

Ditto. Also, the memory read/write is rubbish; this PC that I'm using
now, has the same read/write speed as a desktop that was built 10 years
ago! The CPU performs better but it is the memory that lets it down very
badly. I do have that "cure for cancer" thing running most of the time
but even in snooze mode it isn't much better.

Weird. Mine slows down if it's on batteries but that's by design I
reckon.

 

Starter for 10! Hyperthreading is disabled in the Celeron.

The Celeron 2.8Ghz only runs at a FSB of 100Mhz, therefore memory access for
the CPU is quite slow, as you have noticed. A cure (well, more an assist
really)for slow memory access is to have a large L2 cache. Unfortunately the
Celeron only runs 128K L2 cache, hitting performance again.


Pure clock speed is also not an indication of performance, especially where
gaming comes into it. Large cache and "work per clock cycle" help quite a
bit.

An example I`m looking at now is a CPU comparison of Call of Duty. Boards as
similar as they can have em, with similar memory and video cards. An 1.8Ghz
AMD (Barton 2500+) CPU outperforms the 2.8Ghz Celeron by 100%, the AMD
scoring 116fps compared to the Celerons 56fps. A P4-2.4Ghz CPU on the same
motherboard as the Celeron outperforms it by a similar margin.

Of course, this does not mean that it will be half the speed of the other 2
CPUs whilst pottering around within Windows or using some usual
applications, just that whilst running something which strains the entire
memory/bus/cache subsystem the speed difference will be more evident than it
will be using Office 2000, for example.

Intel really dropped a bollock with the Celeron CPU range, and of course the
high Mhz rating is bound to attract the buyer, when for a similar price (for
the CPU itself) better performance can be had.

 

I thought that hyperthreading was only an advantage in some sorts of
database servers.