Athlon mobile 64 X2 vs 64 FX?

[Christopher Nichols]

I bought this one:

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?seg=HHO&coid=-30600

 

I haven't turned it on yet. I had the memory changed from the stock 1GB to 2GB. The store couldn't find any 2G modules, so since I wanted it right away, I bought what they had. Are the 2G modules even available? This was at a computer store in one of America's bigger malls (yuck, and I went there).

 

I will report back on how it does.

 

what speed proc does it have? how heavy is it? don't know much about the 7300 processor, but I am sure it will be more than enough. BTW, the ultrabight style monitors are awesome.... good choice on that one.

[AJLynn]

Nice choice. I was realizing that there were a couple of annoying things not resolved yet about the MacBook keyboard in Windows - I'm okay with sticking it out but I was regretting telling you it was all good.

[CHE]

So how is it running? I am thinking about buying a new laptop in the next couple of weeks. So far these are my options:

 

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/HP-Pavilion-Notebook-PC-DV8280US-/sem/rpsm/oid/149460/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/6334002/wo/N45dOTiRtrKn3xS6BHQ9sji8GPf/2.?p=0

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?seg=HHO&coid=-30600

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Toshiba-Satellite-Notebook-PC-M105-S3004-/sem/rpsm/oid/147200/catOid/-12963/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

[Ernest Burden III]

So how is it running?

 

Fantastic.

 

My only complaint is that since its a consumer laptop, it comes loaded with a bunch of crap, which I haven't had time to clean out.

 

The laptop is on pretty much all the time, it has spent the last seversl days rendering, so its at 100% CPU and memory usage full-time, and its doing just fine.

 

The screen is big and beautiful. I only wish I had time to watch a DVD on it.

 

 

$3,000 well-spent.

[AJLynn]

Looks like there are some good options there. A couple things -

 

-Your Apple link timed out so I'm not sure which one your were looking at, but basically all Macbook Pros are good (but do a bit of research on whether licensing of Max works properly under Bootcamp, I've seen conflicting reports but I can't tell because my old time-limited student license ran out and I don't have Max right now). I'm using mine mostly under MacOSX and I love it. Intel iMacs are also good for real work, they come with the same ATI x1600 video. Macbook non-Pros and Mac Minis are not suitable for serious 3D work because...

 

-Machines with Intel GMA video cards and shared RAM, including one of those Toshiba links and the aforementioned lower-end Macs, are not sufficient for serious 3D work.

 

-Laptops with 2 hard drives may or may not be a good idea. I have one hard drive and find it quite fast enough. My studio workstation has RAID and it's nice but I'm not sold on it being worth the added weight and power consumption in a laptop.

 

-WXGA (1440x900) screens are okay but now I have the Macbook Pro 17 1680x1050 and I would not go back. The laptop with the 17" WXGA will seem low-res to you, and it's not worth the added case size.

[CHE]

Hi AJLynn,

 

I am looking at the 15.4" 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo 2GB RAM Mac Pro. (Around $2,800 all together). I would be working in Modo 201, Maxwell and Sketch up. So MacOSX is not a problem. I will have to re-learn it; I haven't touched a Mac in years so I hope it doesn't take me too long. The booth camp feature sounds good tough. It would be great if I get my 3dsmax 6 copy to run.

Now, I have some questions. Approximately, what is the battery life like? Does it ever over heat? How heavy is it? Does it have an in-build LAN port? What common problems will I encounter if I am working across platforms (file sharing between Mac and PC for example)?

 

Thanks,

Ernesto

[AJLynn]

Here's what I'd recommend. Unless size is a priority, get the 17" model - it has a lot more pixels, the faster CPU, the larger hard drive and a higher capacity battery. I haven't done much battery life testing but with this one I've gone over 4 hours doing light work without wireless and 2.5 hours playing DVDs (DVDs, rendering and wireless are CPU hogs).

 

Don't buy the RAM upgrade from Apple, instead get this: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820145012 and save $200. To install, remove the battery and look under where it was, there are 4 screws, small Philips (I think it's a 0 or maybe 00), remove these to access the RAM slots.

 

It does get hot. I recommend using it on a flat desk so some air can get underneath - it's an aluminum case and the heat dissipation strategy is a combination of the aluminum and air flow, not just air flow, so the aluminum gets hotter than most plastic cases.

 

The 17" about 6.5 pounds, for reference it feels a good bit lighter than a Dell Inspiron 8200/Precision M50; the 15 is about 5.5 pounds. It has built-in gigabit LAN, 802.11g and Bluetooth (all work in MacOSX and Windows). File sharing is a problem. The Mac side can read the Windows disk, but can only write if the disk is FAT partitioned - doing that imposes a size limit, I think it's 32 gigs, on the Windows partition. For the Windows side to access the Mac disk you need a program called Macdisk, which can copy the files back and forth - not much of a workflow. I recommend an external - I have a Western Digital USB2 hard drive and it works fine both ways. I also recommend a Windows program called Keytweak, since the Mac keyboard has a different set of keys - I use the right Apple key as Delete, small Enter key as right Control, left Apple and Option both as Alt, F11 as Printscreen and F12 as Mute.

 

I'm going to see if I can figure out a way to test Max, but I can tell you Cinema works flawlessly. Maxwell would be difficult - you'd want to use it in Windows until they do a Universal Binary for Mac. Slowest render software ever conceived, and running it under emulation... don't bother. But Modo should be good, and apparently they let you use both versions with one license.

 

Oh yeah, and it's fast

[CHE]

Have you ever experience over heating to the point in which the laptop crashes or shuts down without a warning? Thanks for all the info.

[AJLynn]

That's never happened to me, and I've done some heavy rendering work on one of these.

[CHE]

AJLynn,

 

I am going to go ahead and buy the MBP 17 this afternoon. Thanks for all your help. I might have some more questions later on. Would it be ok to contact you via PM?

 

Ernesto

[Ernest Burden III]

Have you ever experience over heating to the point in which the laptop crashes or shuts down without a warning? Thanks for all the info.

 

My old Dell laptop has done that a few times. Nothing was damaged, but cooling it down was needed to restart it. I sometimes put an engineering scale under the back edge to add airspace underneath...and anglr the keyboard which is nice.

 

The new Tosiba is pretty hot, but as I said its running at 100% for days and its still on and nothing has melted.

[AJLynn]

PM away Ernesto. Oh, one other thing, if you want Windows you can get the Bootcamp software from the Apple web site but the Windows disc needs to be a new (not upgrade) Home or Pro (not Media Center, and Pro is better on dual-cores) that has SP2 already on it.

 

And tell me if you try to install Max.

[3DMARUBA]

Che,

I have a Laptop Toshiba Tecra (almost 3 years old). I live in the Tropics and every time when I forget to turn the A/C on and put a Ventilator on the Laptop, it shuts down just like that. Nothing melts, but hours of Rendering gone and I have to startup agian. Maybe I should move to the North Pole.

 

Ronnie

[AJLynn]

A bit of an update:

 

I don't have a copy of Max to install on the laptop but I do have Viz, from back before I knew any better. It works perfectly, as does Vray. I did a Vray test scene that took 17:52 on the Athlon64 3000 desktop, and it took 5:24 on the laptop. I stared at it it disbelief for a while, ran it again, and again, timing it on my watch. I think Intel finally got it right.

[CHE]

Yes, I got mine yesterday and I have to say that I am very impressed. It is the best laptop I have ever had. I still have to get me a copy of windows xp to give boot camp a try. I installed Modo 201 last night (OSX). I'll let you know more later. I gotta get back to work.

[AJLynn]

Shop around a bit - stores sell XP Pro for $300 but you can find it online (from legit sources even) for less than half of that.

[CHE]

[quote=

Don't buy the RAM upgrade from Apple, instead get this: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820145012 and save $200. To install, remove the battery and look under where it was, there are 4 screws, small Philips (I think it's a 0 or maybe 00), remove these to access the RAM slots.

 

I just read some of the reviews that customers posted in the website. It looks like the memory is unstable in MBPs. Have you experience any problems with it? I hope it works for me because I ordered it last night.

[AJLynn]

It's works fine for me. I had it in my 15" before I traded it in and that was fine too, and the Apple Store Genius (that's the guy's title) told me that non-Apple RAM should be fine (while telling me I really should get the Apple stuff, because they buy RAM from the center of the silicon wafer... as if that does anything).

 

The only stability issues I've had were with software with known bugs or Rosetta compatibility issues but none of the BSODs or other real cashes that would be symptomatic of bad RAM.

[manta]

Does anyone have any insight on whether the Toshiba satellite laptops with core duo, are the same in terms of performance to the mac laptops, like do they use the same CPU's or are they radically different, also why is it taking them so long to create a desktop version of the same chip, isn't it alot harder to do it in reverse, and what do you all feel about the turion x2, sorry I'm just alittle confused by all this, since I don't really need a laptop or the expense of one, when I could hopefully build a desktop for alot less...

[AJLynn]

Actually, I've seen the chips and micro (or mini or something) ATX motherboards for them on Newegg, so you could build a Core Duo desktop or small form factor desktop even, but you probably wouldn't be getting as good a price/performance deal as with AMD - the main advantage of the Duo is laptop usefulness. As to why it's a laptop chip, two things I see - they already had the Pentium M and this is a dual-core version of that, so maybe a laptop chip actually was the easiest thing for them to make, and they already have desktop dual-cores - for desktops, compared to what's already out there this isn't really all that exciting, but in laptops it's a huge jump.

 

As far as differences with the Toshiba, I think the biggest one is that it's not an Apple - the tech is basically the same, except that the Apple has Intel's next generation BIOS replacement (not really a big deal, at least not yet). All these Duo laptops perform well, but the others aren't as sexy or able to run MacOS.

[manta]

hey thanx for the info, but here's my thinking, I've heard that one of these laptops are as fast as a dual 3GHZ Xenon system, and considering I could pickup a toshiba laptop for $1,000, then it should be much cheaper to build a desktop system, because the most expensive part in a laptop is the screen, so if I could build a desktop for like $600 that would be faster than a dual xenon, wouldn't that be a good price/performance...

[AJLynn]

It's nowhere near that price point yet, but not entirely bad. From Newegg:

 

NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI Model ND-3550A - OEM

$35.99

COOLER MASTER Centurion Micro ATX 541 RC-541-SKR1 Black Aluminumm bezel, SECC chassis MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case 380W Power Supply - Retail

$69.99

Seagate NL35 ST3250623NS 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

$94.99

SAPPHIRE 100144L Radeon X1600PRO 256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

$99.00

CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Unbuffered System Memory Model VS1G667D2 - Retail

$138.99

ASUS N4L-VM DH Socket 479 Intel 945GM Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

$144.99

Intel Core Duo T2500 Yonah 667MHz FSB Socket 478 Processor Model BX80539T2500 - Retail

$393.99

 

 

Subtotal:

$977.94

 

That would be basically equivalent to that Macbook Pro 15" 2.0 but with a larger hard drive and no screen at half the price, and I don't think you'd find a Toshiba that good for the money. But part of the problem here is that the Duo is almost exclusively a laptop chip, so in the context of being sold directly to a consumer it's a low-volume item without a healthy market.

[manta]

So this would be a pretty good deal then, its not the 2Ghz but it should be pretty fast right ?

 

http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=714523&N=1000000447+10324+4294959403&An=browse

 

There's a $150 rebate which brings it down to $999

[AJLynn]

Three things I don't like about that one-

 

-It's a Core Solo (not a dual-core)

-The screen resolution is not at all high - 1280x800 is not enough for working in a 3D program with multiple views. I briefly had a Macbook Pro 15 with 1440x900 and that was barely enough, what you really want is 1680x1050 or more.

-The Intel GMA video adapter is not good enough for 3D work. You want an nVidia or ATI product with at least 128MB of dedicated (not shared, "TurboCache" or "HyperMemory", which are euphemisms for "slow") memory.

 

If you're one of the people who don't mind Dell, I did just get some email from them about 35% off some Inspiron notebook $1499 and up, good today only, I'll PM you the coupon code.

 

Edit: Actually, I just noticed, by the criteria I mentioned the sale appears to exclude the model that is reasonably priced and good for 3D work. But anybody who likes weird computers should have a look at the new Inspiron XPS offering - they've got this thing that looks more like a slim-form-factor desktop that folds into its own carrying case than a laptop, like they're trying to compete with the iMac by making one that's "portable" and expensive and marketing it as a luxury item.

[manta]

There is a misprint on that page, it is a core duo, I was actually thinking of using it for a render node, and it can also double as a portable for presentations etc...