FORUMula1.com

[irons_4_ever]

its weird it has a touch panel media player that i have never scene before

[myownalias]

its weird it has a touch panel media player that i have never scene before

You mean the touch sensitive buttons above the keyboard? That is becoming quite standard on a lot of laptops these days because many people are using them as portable media centres. My DV9820EA even has a natty little media center remote control that sits in the PCMCIA slot and charges when not used.

Did your laptop come with Vista 32 or 64 bit? If they gave you Vista 32 bit then the OS will not be able to address the full 4GB of RAM unless there is a patch to work around it!

[Gaz]

if you're looking for a laptop; I can recommend the HP DV9820ea. I bought one 9 month ago for £579 and it's handled everything that I have thrown at it so far! I do a lot of design work; Photoshop, Dreamweaver and two browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox 3 running at the same time. Also plays games like Half-Life2, Counter-strike flawlessly.

its an alright laptop but i think they have gone end of life now

as in no longer sold.

also its got a AMD X2 in it, the Intel Core 2's are much better chips.

The Intel Core 2 range also add an extra £50 in most cases. The performance difference between a Core 2 Duo and a Turion X2 is not worth that £50 in my opinion.

It's the same thing when it comes to Core i7 vs Phenom II. Yes, the i7 is the superior processor, but the cheapest Core i7 (the 920) is £210. The cheapest Phenom II X4 (because it's only fair to consider like-for like - the cheapest Phenom II you can get is the X2 550 at £80) is £155 (for the record, the high-end Phenom II X4 955, the best in the range, is only £2.50 more than the basic Core i7!). The £55 does not bring a significant enough performance advantage to be worth it. And my comparison is generous, since Core i7 requires you to upgrade everything in your machine (thank you, LGA1366) rather than just your CPU. AMD have always excelled in bringing performance at great value and the new AM3 architecture is certainly that - it's backwards compatible with socket AM2 and DDR2 memory, but you can run it in the new AM3 platform with DDR3 memory if you want that extra performance. It also allows you to upgrade incrementally, rather than buying a completely new system all at once.

Intel's upcoming Core i5 is another example of how ridiculous they make it for people to upgrade. You'd have thought that, with this being intended as a cheaper option than Core i7, they'd either use socket LGA775 or at least use the new socket LGA1366. Alas, no, they have yet another socket-type. Money-grabbing swines >.<

Apologies for getting slightly off-topic, but I haven't had a tech-rant for a while.

I disagree you can get a 3.2ghz Phenom II for £180 and the i7 920 2.66 for £209 so thats £30

and for that you can a cpu that is ALMOST double the speed ofa Phenom it can hyper thread for 8x cores mate.

AMD used to be better than Intels but since the core 2 thats turned around.

[Denthúl]

if you're looking for a laptop; I can recommend the HP DV9820ea. I bought one 9 month ago for £579 and it's handled everything that I have thrown at it so far! I do a lot of design work; Photoshop, Dreamweaver and two browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox 3 running at the same time. Also plays games like Half-Life2, Counter-strike flawlessly.

its an alright laptop but i think they have gone end of life now

as in no longer sold.

also its got a AMD X2 in it, the Intel Core 2's are much better chips.

The Intel Core 2 range also add an extra £50 in most cases. The performance difference between a Core 2 Duo and a Turion X2 is not worth that £50 in my opinion.

It's the same thing when it comes to Core i7 vs Phenom II. Yes, the i7 is the superior processor, but the cheapest Core i7 (the 920) is £210. The cheapest Phenom II X4 (because it's only fair to consider like-for like - the cheapest Phenom II you can get is the X2 550 at £80) is £155 (for the record, the high-end Phenom II X4 955, the best in the range, is only £2.50 more than the basic Core i7!). The £55 does not bring a significant enough performance advantage to be worth it. And my comparison is generous, since Core i7 requires you to upgrade everything in your machine (thank you, LGA1366) rather than just your CPU. AMD have always excelled in bringing performance at great value and the new AM3 architecture is certainly that - it's backwards compatible with socket AM2 and DDR2 memory, but you can run it in the new AM3 platform with DDR3 memory if you want that extra performance. It also allows you to upgrade incrementally, rather than buying a completely new system all at once.

Intel's upcoming Core i5 is another example of how ridiculous they make it for people to upgrade. You'd have thought that, with this being intended as a cheaper option than Core i7, they'd either use socket LGA775 or at least use the new socket LGA1366. Alas, no, they have yet another socket-type. Money-grabbing swines >.<

Apologies for getting slightly off-topic, but I haven't had a tech-rant for a while.

I disagree you can get a 3.2ghz Phenom II for £180 and the i7 920 2.66 for £209 so thats £30

and for that you can a cpu that is ALMOST double the speed ofa Phenom it can hyper thread for 8x cores mate.

AMD used to be better than Intels but since the core 2 thats turned around.

You have to look at the costing of the entire package, though, seeing as you can't just upgrade to an i7 CPU from your current chip. Currently, a user with an AMD-based computer (socket AM2/2+ board) can upgrade to the top-end Phenom II for £180. A user with an Intel-based computer (socket 775 board) has to buy the i7 CPU (£210 minimum), plus an X58 socket 1366 motherboard (£140 minimum) and DDR3 memory (£45 for a 3GB triple-channel kit). That's nearly £400 to upgrade to the new CPU, as opposed to £180 at the most. And with the introduction of Core i3 and i5, Intel are changing the socket-type again (as well as the chipset) and making the i7 920 and 940 chips end-of-life at the end of this year.

With the Core 2 range, Intel were king. Now they're just taking the piss. And seeing as the AM3 Phenom IIs are scoring quite well in the gaming tests (not to mention the fact that the i7s are only available as quad-cores), I think I know where I'll be putting my cash in the future.

Edit: And for the record, doubling the cores and/or threads does not double the speed.

[Gaz]

I've never upgraded a CPU ever.


i always buy a new package MB, Ram, CPU

and for 40% speed increase i'd pay the factional cost increase.

[Denthúl]

I've never upgraded a CPU ever.


i always buy a new package MB, Ram, CPU

and for 40% speed increase i'd pay the factional cost increase.

Why would you do that? If everything else in your system is perfectly fine...

For example, if your current CPU was rated as 95w TDP, ran at 2.2GHz and even with an after-market cooler sat around 50 degrees idle and you wanted to cut down on heat and power-draw whilst getting a bit of a performance boost, would you want to pay £70 or eight times as much..?

[Gaz]

I've never upgraded a CPU ever.


i always buy a new package MB, Ram, CPU

and for 40% speed increase i'd pay the factional cost increase.

Why would you do that? If everything else in your system is perfectly fine...

For example, if your current CPU was rated as 95w TDP, ran at 2.2GHz and even with an after-market cooler sat around 50 degrees idle and you wanted to cut down on heat and power-draw whilst getting a bit of a performance boost, would you want to pay £70 or eight times as much..?

I've got a Q6600 in a Gigabyte EP45C-DS3R

what can i upgrade to thats actually worth it?

it might take a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 not checked but it wouldn't be really worth it for £200 would it for a 10-25% increase.

in 12 months time when the newer intels are out or the I7 is cheaper i'll get a new system and double the performance

[Denthúl]

I've never upgraded a CPU ever.


i always buy a new package MB, Ram, CPU

and for 40% speed increase i'd pay the factional cost increase.

Why would you do that? If everything else in your system is perfectly fine...

For example, if your current CPU was rated as 95w TDP, ran at 2.2GHz and even with an after-market cooler sat around 50 degrees idle and you wanted to cut down on heat and power-draw whilst getting a bit of a performance boost, would you want to pay £70 or eight times as much..?

I've got a Q6600 in a Gigabyte EP45C-DS3R

what can i upgrade to thats actually worth it?

it might take a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 not checked but it wouldn't be really worth it for £200 would it for a 10-25% increase.

in 12 months time when the newer intels are out or the I7 is cheaper i'll get a new system and double the performance

I'm talking about a transition from one technology to the next (i.e. new architectures and manufacturing processes) rather than one from the same range. With AMD, they released a new architecture (AM3) but made it backwards compatible. Intel, however, introduced a new socket and a requirement for DDR3 memory. The difference in performance, power-consumption and heat-production between an Athlon X2 and a Phenom II X2 is worth £70. The difference between a Core 2 Quad and a Core i7 (which requires a completely new system) is not worth paying £500 for >.<

When Intel release the i3 and i5 chips and stabilise their sockets, things will likely be different. But at the moment, i7 is a joke. :/

[Gaz]

Yeh the cost is a joke the performace you get over phenoms isn't

But like i said i expect i'll go Intel again when i do my 18/24month upgade as the i7 will of come down in price by then.

i'm not an intel fanboy tho if AMD is Genuinly better i'll go with them.