Dual Core Notebook CPUs Explored

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Intel: Mobile On Desktop Motherboard By Gigabyte

We selected Gigabyte's GA-8I945GMMFY-RH, which is a Mobile on Desktop MicroATX motherboard. Mobile on Desktop means that it uses a mobile chipset (the 945GM) and runs a mobile processor (Core Duo or Core 2 Duo) despite being used in a desktop system.

The board offers integrated Intel GMA 950 PCI Express graphics with shared memory, two PCI slots, one x1 PCI Express, and one x16 PCI Express slot for upgrades. You can install only two DDR2 DIMMs and only two Serial ATA/300 drives, but this is enough for our purposes. Also integrated are Gigabit Ethernet, High Definition Audio and the usual interface suspects such as USB 2.0 ports, a serial port and a Firewire controller; these make this solution very comparable to a well-equipped notebook.

Although the Gigabyte board offers integrated graphics, we chose an older ATI Radeon X600 to provide fair testing conditions when compared to the AMD platform in Acer's Ferrari 1000 notebook.

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Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.