Is Turion 64 X2 TL56 much faster than a Pentium 4 @ 3GHz ?

[valos]

Hi,

I want to replace my 3 years old DELL laptop (P4 3 GHz, 512 MB RAM) with a new one (Inspiron 1501):

Turion 64 X2 TL56
2 GB DDR2 RAM 533
120 GB HDD 5400 RPM
8X DVD+/-RW
ATI Radeon® Xpress 1150 256MB HyperMemory
15.4" Wide Screen XGA TFT Display with TrueLife™ 1280x800

The new one costs approx. 650 EUR + VAT.

I'm just wondering how fast is the TL52 comparing to the old P4@3GHz...
Any thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[corvetteguy]

Well, it is a dual core, and that will increase the speed of the "feel" of your experience. It will pretty much be like having a dual core version or your p4 clocked at 3.6ghz. Plus the laptop is much better with 2gigs of ram vs 512mb and so on, so i'd say a big improvment.

 

[m25]

A TL56 runs at 1.8 GHz if I'm not wrong and in single threaded software you will get no performance advantage at all; I've had an Athlon64 3000+ (1.8GHz) and sometimes it slightly lags behind 3GHz a P4 (media encoding etc) and sometimes it's ahead (games, scientific and computational software).
The advantage you get is:
-the added 80% of performance of the second core
-longer battery life (mobile P4s are really battery hungry as you might know)
-better and larger RAM as corvetteguy said

So at the end; go for this upgrade if you really feel your actual laptop is missing something.

 

[valos]

OK, thank you.

I think I'll buy it.

 

[InteliotInside]

Ouch, a Pentium 4 right on your lap... *bad thoughts*

What's your budget for a new laptop. Core Duos are going really cheap out the door (Core Duo, not Core 2 Duo).

 

[cb62fcni]

I have to agree. If you can find a system with similar specs based around the Core CPU's, go for it. If the AMD system is significantly cheaper, go for it. Either way, you'll notice an improvement.

 

[cb62fcni]

I don't think the hard drive bottleneck will be a huge issue when comparing the performance. Any newer model should have a newer SATA HDD, which when compared to a 3 year old IDE model should have improved seek times and data transfer bandwidth.

 

[tekzor]

Actually, I think the hdd would be so much of a bottleneck, that for only real cpu power applications would you notice a difference, so boot times would be the same, but you would notice a considerable difference for most applications that aren't hdd related severely

our current HDD hardware is incredibly slow compared to DRAM. Thus, little or no performance hit while using 2 GB of ram. Does nto matter if HDD is 5400 RPM.

TY

 

[InteliotInside]

I noticed a huge difference going from 1GB to 2GB in games, especially in games like BF2142, Command and Conquer and FEAR. :/

 

[tekzor]

I noticed a huge difference going from 1GB to 2GB in games, especially in games like BF2142, Command and Conquer and FEAR. :/

ditto

 

[MU_Engineer]

I don't think the hard drive bottleneck will be a huge issue when comparing the performance. Any newer model should have a newer SATA HDD, which when compared to a 3 year old IDE model should have improved seek times and data transfer bandwidth.

The difference in performance is SOLELY that of a new drive versus one that is 3 years old. A new SATA and IDE drive of the same capacity and rotational speed will perform exactly the same as there is nothing special about SATA that makes it work better than IDE, unless you perhaps run a server and SATA-300's NCQ could help out. SATA has higher possible throughput capabilities, but notebook drives are so puny that the very fastest one won't even come close to saturating an IDE connection. Desktop drives are a little closer to saturating the 133 MB/sec barrier of PATA IDE, but they're still quite a bit away.

 

[valos]

Ouch, a Pentium 4 right on your lap... *bad thoughts*

What's your budget for a new laptop. Core Duos are going really cheap out the door (Core Duo, not Core 2 Duo).

My budget is about 800 EUR.
Of course I would like an Intel CPU, but I need a 64bit CPU that supports virtualisation and 2 GB RAM because I want to run some other OS in a virtual machine (VMWare).

As far as I know, Core Duo is a 32 bit processor.

 

[gOJDO]

The 3GHz P4 will perform slightly better in more singlethreaded apps. For multithreaded apps the TL56 is much better. Also if you are running more apps at same time, the TL56 will perform better.

As an system upgrade, the new(with the TL56) system is much better than your old.

About Core Duo being a 32bit CPU: right now and in near future, there is no advantage of having a 64bit CPU. There are only few 64bit applications, but every 64bit app is available as 32bit and there is NO PERFORMANCE difference between the 64bit and the 32bit. Also, there is a great lack of 64bit drivers(for example, there are no 64bit Windows XP drivers for my HP Compaq nx6125 notebook). Core Duo performs slightly faster than Turion64 X2 at same frequency, but consumes less energy. Core2 Duo is faster further,at same frequency and more energy efficient than both, but is more expensive.

Because you need a CPU with virtualization and your budget is 800EUR, I guess you are limited to Turion64 X2. Anyway, wait for Intel price cuts on 22nd this month.

 

[rammedstein]

I don't think the hard drive bottleneck will be a huge issue when comparing the performance. Any newer model should have a newer SATA HDD, which when compared to a 3 year old IDE model should have improved seek times and data transfer bandwidth.

The difference in performance is SOLELY that of a new drive versus one that is 3 years old. A new SATA and IDE drive of the same capacity and rotational speed will perform exactly the same as there is nothing special about SATA that makes it work better than IDE, unless you perhaps run a server and SATA-300's NCQ could help out. SATA has higher possible throughput capabilities, but notebook drives are so puny that the very fastest one won't even come close to saturating an IDE connection. Desktop drives are a little closer to saturating the 133 MB/sec barrier of IDE, but they're still quite a bit away.

You both seem slightly confused, IDE stands for independent device enumeration, both PATA and SATA use it, so what is the point of talking about it? PATA drives can operate at the same speed as SATA as the drives will not hit a limit imposed by the interface, unless it is burst speed, but that isn't really important. The difference will be basically seek times and power consumption and that is all.