Could this be my next Notebook?

[JonMarsh]

I've got funny taste in notebooks, or so I've been told- a mixture of high end aspirations and bargain basement means. Gee, that's probably something like champagne on a beer budget, right?

Well, when my Sony laptop flaked out on my last fall, and the estimate for repair time was a month plus, I was in a panic to find a good low cost notebook. Good, because I needed to be able to do CAD work and DTP on it, as well as play back DVD's; low cost, because I had NOT planned on getting another laptop anytime soon, and it definitely wasn't in my budget.

As reported in a previous post, after looking at many machines from Dell, HP, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and others, I settled on an eMachines widescreen laptop- it met the pricing guideline, at about $1100 after rebate, and it met the performance requirement, with a 1.8 HGz PR2400 Athlon, 60GB HD, 1280X800 display, DVD/CDRW drive, 512KB of memory, USB2, Firewire, Ethernet, and 802.11G wireless built in. That machine has since become my primary laptop- BTW, the Sony is in need of repair again- doesn't boot, no HD or CPU action.

But now I'm faced with the delemna of a new eMachines notebook with Athlon 64 CPU, ATI Radeon 9600 with 64MB ram, 60GB disk, DVD burner, full set of media slots, etc.



Yeah, you guys with your big 10 lb Dells would probably look down your nose at this little 7-1/2 lb puppy, but the batteries are only $110 (I have an extra for my current eMachines, and they do actually last for about 3 hours, even playing back DVDs). It actually fits in most airline tray tables, and it doesn't break my poor aging back (microdiskectomy last year) to carry around.

Oh, did I mention it's 64 bit? Hmmmm, I wonder if my daughter would be interested in a slighly used eMachines laptop to do her homework on....




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Andrew Pratt]

Nice notebook Jon...a 64 chip would likely really excel at number crunching

[aud19]

Be cautious though...64 bit chips will be great for like software but programs that are designed for 32 bit will more likley than not run slower on a 64 bit machine than a 32 bit..... :?

Jason




Need a new display? Questions about new display technologies? Visit RPTVs, plasmas, and other monitors @ HTguide

[JonMarsh]

Be cautious though...64 bit chips will be great for like software but programs that are designed for 32 bit will more likley than not run slower on a 64 bit machine than a 32 bit.....

Actaully, the AMD64's have been doing quite well in the benchmark races, just running in 32 bit mode. The only OS available widely in 64 bit mode right now is Linux, though I understand Sun is porting a 64 bit version of Solaris to them, also.

The Athlon M in my current eMachines laptop runs at 1.8 GHz with a PR rating of 2500; the mobile AMD64 runs also at 1.8 GHz, but with the additional optimizations, it carries a 32 bit PR rating of 3000+, which means the general performance is at or above the level of typical Brand "I" cpu's at 3.0 GHz.

And of course, as demend for Opteron based servers has ramped, as well as desktop 64 bit, Intel announced their introduction of IA32e at IDF a couple of weeks ago. Sort of like GM announcing they're going to deliver a car with a dead on copy of a Chrysler Hemi V8, and calling it GM-4e. What a laugh! :rf

I've already heard about folks getting the beta preview version of Windows64 running these critters, so it must be reasonably compatible, though I expect useful 64 bit software to be a year or so away.

Why I really think laptops like this are interesting is balance in performance and relatively future proof- Intel Pentium M Centrino laptops have the balance, too, as like the Athlon's, at a real freuqency of 1.8 GHz they'll usually clean the clock of a 2.8 GHz P4, and of course, do it with better battery life. Especially in a laptop, how much work you do per clock cycle or watt is very important. But, personally, I don't want to pay the Centrino tax, which seems to be about a $600 premium over non-Centrino designs at retail.



Now that the head of the Intel division in Isreal which developed the Centrino/Pentium M is moving over to the US, and scheduled to replace Barret, one wonders how far this "new" way of thinking (work, not "MegaHurts") will trickle down at Intel. Sort of like getting a does of AMD philosphy, it seems to me. Already they're talking about server blades, and possibly small form factor desktops with this CPU; they have to be careful, lest it make the P4 look rather silly. Especially since the P M is basically a PIII with a good sized secondary cache, logic path improvements, and a better branch predictor.

And Intel is still fighting a class action suit over deceptive advertising, re, claiming CPU performance is defined by clock speed, but as the suit points out, P4's do less work at the same clock as PIII's, and now Pentium M.

Of course, Athlon's have been in the same boat all along.

Now that Intel has adopted AMD64, it will be interesting to see how that fight plays out- because having the AMD64 instruction set DOESN'T convey the performance advantages from the Hypertransport links and direct memory controller that Athlon64 and Opteron CPUs have- advanatges which are felt only slightly in single CPU applications, but which really ad up in 2, 4 and 8 way systems, to say nothing of clusters.

BTW, AMD has introduced Opterons now with power specs as low as 30 watts per CPU for blade server applications. The extra years work they put into developing the silicon on insulator process with IBM seems to be really paying off- I don't think anyone imagines we'll be seeing a 30watt dissipation Prescott CPU at anytime in the conceivable future, since 3X that is the norm for that CPU! :E :E

Lest I seem too much like an AMD fan boy, it should be noted that I do have an Intel based system (for audio test) still, but it runs a "Tualitin" P3 server processer, the spiritual predecessor to the Pentium M mobile- both have 1 MB L2 caches.

Best regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[aud19]

Lest I seem too much like an AMD fan boy, it should be noted that I do have an Intel based system (for audio test) still, but it runs a "Tualitin" P3 server processer, the spiritual predecessor to the Pentium M mobile- both have 1 MB L2 caches.

Darn it! Just when I thought we had a fun old Intel bashing thread starting :P Forgive my ignorance, I was given the impression by a "techie" friend that 64bit chips ran 32bit software slower than on a 32bit system... learn something new everyday!

Jason




Need a new display? Questions about new display technologies? Visit RPTVs, plasmas, and other monitors @ HTguide

[JonMarsh]

Actually, Jason, you're friend is right, if they're talking about how Intel Itanium Processors (Intel/HP's 64 bit 10 year development project) run X86 software; it has an emulation mode and some emulation hardware, but it's there more as a stopgap than anything else; running X86 32 bit, it sucks seriously.

The Itanium (fondly known by some as the "Itanic"- draw your own inferences) is a type of VLIW processor which relies on the software to handle branch prediction and code optimization; it's just supposed to grind through the stuff quickly, presuming the compilers work as intended. The Itanic does have a very nice floating point unit; in this regard it excels. But in a number of big tin applications (such as transaction processing on large data bases), Opteron based systems sometimes come out on top. And the Opteron's seem to be ramping up in clock faster than the Itanic.

Dear, dear, what's a near monopoly CPU company to do? Compete based on performance? Might be the only thing left...

In case someone things this whole Itanium thing is something of a left turn into the Twilight zone for Intel, (something I think Craig Barret may be wondering on his poorer days), how many of you remember the i432 processor? Show of hands, please?

The i432 was the "micro-mainframe" introduced by Intel in 1981; intended to be a high performance 3 chip solution for 32 bit computing, designed for object oriented software, with fault tolerance and error correction, and requiring strong optimization of code in compilers (sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it?) it wouldn't hit it's original speed targets of 10 MHz, being initially released at 4 MHz, (hmmm, Itanium didn't hit it's speed targets either, was released initially at 800 MHx) and underperformed the lowly X86 architecture (as it existed then in the 8086 and 8088) on a clock by clock basis. Intel poured about 100 million in development into this over the years (remember those were 1970's and 1980's dollars, not the ones we spend now

This quote from Byte: (everyone who remembers who Byte is, raise their hands, too).

After completing the 8080 in 1974, Intel turned its attention to a much more ambitious device, which eventually came to be known as the Intel 432. This processor, which could support object-oriented software, was years ahead of its time. It loaded and stored data using one or more levels of pointers, giving software great flexibility in how it organized memory. Each data element had an associated type (integer, character, pointer, etc.), and the processor always checked that each data value was of the correct type before using it. The 432 also supported features -- such as memory error correction, multiprocessing, and fault tolerance -- that would not become common for another decade or more.

Due to its complexity, the design of the 432 took much longer than anticipated. When Intel finished the initial version of the chip in 1977, the company realized that wading through pointers and checking data types completely bogged down the system. Performance on typical applications was five to 10 times slower than on competitive processors. The 432, still entirely too slow, didn't hit the market until 1980, where it sank without a trace, becoming one of the most spectacular failures in microprocessor history.

When Intel realized the 432 was in a deep hole, it rushed to staff a new project that would become the 8086. The company assigned two engineers to develop the instruction set and basic design of the chip and gave them just three weeks to complete the task. The 8086 went into production in 1978, just one year after its conception. Its design became the basis for the x86s used in all IBM-compatible PCs to date.

He who forgets history, or doesn't learn from it's lessons, is doomed to repeat it.

~Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[JonMarsh]

Intel Finds iApx432 Group Still Alive
By Les Dan Tru

After they had been given up for dead almost 15 years ago, the group that worked on the ill-fated Intel 432 was found cryogenically frozen in an Intel warehouse. Apparently they were frozen when the project was cancelled, in hopes that someday the world would be ready for this highly advanced technology. The team was found accidentally when engineers looking for cooling apparatus for Itanium stumbled on the cryogenic chambers. An Intel spokesman was quoted as saying, "our advanced .01234-micron process technology has finally caught up with the original 432 design." adding "It turned out that the Moore's law automatic defrost timer, controlling the chambers, was set to expire on April 1st, 2002 anyway."

The engineers are being quarantined for now while officials decide how to explain RISC, EPIC, and Hyper to them. It's expected they will feel right at home on the Itanium III project.

Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[JonMarsh]

Back on topic.

PC Magazine gave a quick review to the eMachines 6807 notebook in the new issue I picked up while traveling to Toronto; it recorded the highest Biz Winstone and content creation benchmarks ever on a notebook for them; beating the next closest system system they've tested by over 10%. Yet the battery run down time was 2 hours 42 minutes, which apparently also impressed them. Again, consider the price, too.

Regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....