Buy Intel Core Duo now or wait for Merom?

[hrcs]

What do you guys think? Will the benefits of Merom be worth the wait?

[nmX.Memnoch]

What do you have now? If you have a decent PC now I would wait...

[hrcs]

What do you have now? If you have a decent PC now I would wait...

I have a decent PC now (Athlon64 3500+) but I wanna get a laptop

[nmX.Memnoch]

I don't think you would be disappointed at all if you went ahead with a Core Duo setup. If I remember right, Merom isn't schedule for release until closer towards the end of the year anyway.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29605

Edited April 1, 2006 by nmX.Memnoch

[teqguy]

The benefits of Merom will be that of waiting 4-8 months for anything related to technology; that is, time waited is exponentially proportional to the "wow factor" of new technology.

In terms of current availability, however, if you were to get a CoreDuo based system, your best bet would be a MacBook Pro.

As far as I'm aware of, offerings from other companies still have diminished battery life, as I have yet to hear of Microsoft releasing a fix for that USB2.0 issue.

[Zxian]

As far as I'm aware of, offerings from other companies still have diminished battery life, as I have yet to hear of Microsoft releasing a fix for that USB2.0 issue.

USB 2.0 issue? I heard about something, but that only applies when devices are plugged in, doesn't it?

As for the Core Duo having diminished battery life, my friend just bought a Dell Inspiron E1705 (the 17" model) with the 1.83GHz Core Duo, and he gets at least 5 hours of battery life with average use (med screen brightness, wi-fi on). From what I've heard, AMD isn't aiming to be anywhere near that mark with any of their laptop platforms.

[nmX.Memnoch]

Yes, it does only apply if USB 2.0 devices are plugged in. And if you're thinking a mouse would do it...USB mice aren't usually USB 2.0.

By the time Merom is released there will be something else on the horizon. If you keep waiting for the "next-best thing" you're never going to purchase. Buy the Core Duo setup now. It should easily last you for several years.

And Zxian is right, AMD's power envelope for their current and planned future mobile CPUs isn't anywhere near what the CoreDuo can do now. If there's one thing that can be said for Intel it's that they definitely got their mobile CPUs right. Even Transmeta couldn't compete and they were supposed to be the "next-best thing".

[ssmokee]

AMD's power envelope for their current and planned future mobile CPUs isn't anywhere near what the CoreDuo can do now. If there's one thing that can be said for Intel it's that they definitely got their mobile CPUs right.

Huh? The 25 and 35 watt turion chips still fit the bill. The new turion x2 variants wont have increased power requirements either.

Even Transmeta couldn't compete and they were supposed to be the "next-best thing".

Actually in power requirements they were the lowest of all (~5 watts). The performance wasnt up to the competitions standards though. The thing that made the transmeta chips so cool is that they werent even x86 chips internally. They were 256bit VLIW and used "code morphing" to translate x86 instructions into its native language on the fly.

[nmX.Memnoch]

AMD's power envelope for their current and planned future mobile CPUs isn't anywhere near what the CoreDuo can do now. If there's one thing that can be said for Intel it's that they definitely got their mobile CPUs right.

Huh? The 25 and 35 watt turion chips still fit the bill. The new turion x2 variants wont have increased power requirements either.

You're right...they are low power. But from my understanding (and I will admit I've never used an AMD based laptop) they don't have all of the power saving features of the Centrino/Core Duo line.

Even Transmeta couldn't compete and they were supposed to be the "next-best thing".

Actually in power requirements they were the lowest of all (~5 watts). The performance wasnt up to the competitions standards though. The thing that made the transmeta chips so cool is that they werent even x86 chips internally. They were 256bit VLIW and used "code morphing" to translate x86 instructions into its native language on the fly.

Their power requirements were lower...but, as you stated, the performance wasn't there. Hehe...it doesn't do much good if the battery lasts for 10 hours but you can't get as much done as you would in 5 hours on a Centrino/Turion setup.

The "code morphing" is what made them so "slow" because every instruction had to be translated before it could run. It's the same problem Intel had with running x86 code on the Itanium and why the ultimately dropped that support.

[Zxian]

Huh? The 25 and 35 watt turion chips still fit the bill. The new turion x2 variants wont have increased power requirements either.

25W and 35W, eh? According to Notebook Hardware Control, I'm discharging my battery right now at 23W, with full screen brightness and wifi on. Just turning screen brightness down makes it 18W, and wireless off makes it 16W. I have never once seen an AMD system match these numbers. The great thing about the Intel Core Duo chips is that they've got the exact same power requirements as my Sonoma core.

The bottom line is that when it comes to low power consumption, Intel wins.

Just for the record, I played Civilization 4 this weekend for 2h and 15mins on battery. That's with full screen brightness, and decent game speed. I'd love to see an AMD system be able to match that kind of battery performance.