hi all!

so basically... which one is better? pentium 4 HT or AMD 64 athlon? i'm planning to buy a laptop for i usually do a lot of autocad works with 3d's. which one is better? any recommendations? any specific brand? videocards? memory? thanks guys!

sophia

Both chips are great, but personally i like AMD chips. But Mobile Pentium would be good for u for the work u want to do.

For laptops... Pentium M all the way.. its a phenomenal CPU.... low on power consumption but high on processing power.. I hear that the AMD turion 64 will be in par... but thats yet to be proved.. so Pentium M laptop... possibly a Toshiba satellite series.. and ur good to go... just make sure that the card ur getting is atleast ATI 9200 ... thye usually give u the mobility radeon 7500 series... thats good enough but the 9200 packs a mean punch.
AMD 64 laptops drain the battery and get bloody hot.

so you mean... pentium M is better than pentium 4?

for a lap top the PM uses 65% less batterie and offers speeds like AMD @ lower MHz with more kick.

so.... i have to buy a laptop with Pentium M instead of Pentium 4 then? But P4 is faster than PM or... basically just the same?

PM matches the P4 on speed.

Pardon the Interjection of a Possibly Dumb Question (PIPDQ)...

Why a laptop?

I'll wait for your answer before explaining the pros and cons of notebooks in regards to this issue, but when you put "running autocad with 3D applications", a bunch of alarms went off in my head. I work(ed) for an engineering department, and have wildly varied experiences with 3D apps & notebooks.

Dual core Pentium 4 won't work on 925 & 915.

Intel is in trouble because many waisted there money on the 925's & 915's, when want to ubgrade to Dual Core.

Luckilly I have myself an Athlon 64 S 939 based system, so that I can go Dual Core anytime I want 1000%.

Never, ever buy a laptop that uses a Prescott CPU, it will heat a lot of power, probably more then the Gallatin Extreme Editions

I think you are being RUDE Max.

First of all, I'm not DUMB for I'm a graduating student in Architecture here in NYC. Why I need a laptop? I'm doing my thesis in Glaslow, Scotland. I need to be in Scotland once a month to update my book. For short, I need to bring my files to Scotland too. Why I need a 3d? I'm using Architectural Desktop for my interior designs & 3D studio viz and max for my presentations in urban development. I also use Photoshop for my 3D's. I need to rotate my project 360 degrees - a 64.40-hectare of land with buildings and landscaping - with water and sky as my background.

So you work as an Engineer? As if you are telling me Max that all Engineering firms uses ALL THE SAME softwares and applications - which is not. This is a forum. It's not nice to say that people here posts dumb questions. We all need help once in a while. I know about computers but not as good like you guys. Maybe if you let me design your house, that's where I'm very good at.

Let's treat people here with respect guys.

-Sophia-

"First of all, I'm not DUMB for I'm a graduating student in Architecture here in NYC." Wow! You have went to school that long and you didn't understand what he said... I believe he was referring to his question being dumb and not yours. "which one is better? pentium 4 HT or AMD 64 athlon?" was your question...

Anyway, if you are going to buy a laptop, you should get a Pentium M processor. If you are buying a desktop, I would recommend an AMD if you want to get the most out of your money. I have learned that faster clock speeds don't compare when the data travels a shorter distance.

slim shady, I knew what max meant by that. I posted the initial question here. is this only a guys forum btw? i think you are all being rude...

Dont think i was rued. i was honest and strait to the point. the Pentium M is better than Pentium 4 for laptops.

Pentium M has the same power and runs cooler and uses less power. But costs more.

Sophia

-Do you want the laptop to be both protable and have a long battery life?

If you do not need to lug the laptop around with you, you could get a Desktop replacement notebook.

You can get these in virtually any flavour of Proc/Graphics card configuration

Basically you are only limited by your budget here and they perform on a near par with their desktop counterparts. Personally, for CAD the Pentiums tend to perform better at this role, as they do with encoding and similar raw number-crunching tasks. Basically you would want a decent vidcard with independant ram. The make is not quite so important here, but the RAM size will be. For CAD you will be better off with a higher clock and a ton of main system RAM.

I don't remember coming across any conventional level notebooks with workstation graphics cards. But if you happen to find one, I would recommend a FireGL just for overall image quality. This is generally true of all ATI products though IMHO.

If you need portability and battery life, then the Pentium M is your best bet. Of course that is only with the current chips available. you may want to see how the Turion 64 fares once it is released if you have that long to wait.

Good luck!

Alot more...

-HardToHit

_My_ question was the Possibly Dumb Question (PDQ), not yours. And if you look at my question just as "Why a laptop?", it can sure seem dumb to ask, being that you're already here asking about different notebook/laptop CPU's.

I have eleven years experience in computer graphics, with the bulk of those spent in the employment of a university engineering department (and a big, multi-discipline one at that), wherein our office not only did exactly what you're describing, but set up & maintained machines (desktop & notebooks) for faculty, grad students, and corporate partners to do exactly what you're describing. I'd break the forums here listing how many different software packages & apps we've tested. I'm not stating this to impress you... I'm stating this to show you the reasoning behind my question. Here's the primary factor...

Notebooks are convienient, yes, but until recent, were not as powerful as their desktop kin. This is especially true of complex computations such as rasterizing, rendering, multi-polygon modeling, etc. Also, their memory capacity is slim and slow compared to their desktop kin, and the price skyrockets when you go to start adding memory, either on your own or through a configurator/upgrade. Besides that, you're severely handcuffed by the integrated video "cards" that most midrange notebooks employ... There are some upper-level models that employ high-end integrated video chipsets, and they have latest-generation screens, and they can specialize in streaming video. They do great at _displaying_ an assembled movie file. However, I've seen them take a tumble when _rendering_, assembling, or editing said file, or, worse yet, if you have to make an "in-flight adjustment". You've got this building completely decked out, and you're asked to show it from an angle you didn't anticipate while you're giving a presentation to a faculty focus group. Grind... grind.... grind... chug... chug.... chug. Errrrrgggggghhhhh. There.

Our solution for our faculty and grad students became equipping them with external hard-drives (and very survivable ones, at that), and focusing on 2 types of desktops... A powerful desktop machine that would be the host for the majority of their processing, modeling, constructing, and other day-to-day work, and another very accomodating machine that would be in the labs, lecture rooms, and auditoriums. That way, they could maximize output on a powerful machine, store it, tote it, and present it on an equally powerful machine.

My other concern with notebooks is repairability and survivability. On average, a notebook is valued at $4000 after its first 6 months, based on the price of the physical notebook, but also on the time spent installing progs and planting/creating data on it. It's also reflective of how much repair and support would be, factored in. Most often, it's not an internal malfunction of the notebook, but instead a fall from a desk, a spilled cup o' java, a momentary lapse of conciousness and leaving it atop the car (seen it happen!), or, worse, the bozo at the airline concourse flinging it down the imaging conveyor, or passing that funky wand too close to it, or something.

All in all, I'm not intimidating your question... I'm just making certain that you, like anyone else that is seeking out a solution, have a full grasp of what it is you're asking for, and the factors facing you.

What came to mind was a highly portable, fully-decked out Small Form Factor PC (SFF... aka "lunchbox"), constructed around a desktop CPU, desktop RAM, and a desktop vid card, but in a box that is the size of a mid-sized purse or running-shoe box. You'd get your computing power and video quality and responsiveness, and be using primarily desktop PC parts, such as harddrives and optical drives (which are less expensive than their for-notebook siblings). Team this SFF up with a 15" or 17" flat-panel monitor (~$200), get a padded sleeve to put the monitor into, stick a handle on the SFF, and you're portable. If there are resources over in Scotland, you might even be able to just get by with a robust External Hard Drive, and put all your projects on that. Most are USB 2.0, some are FireWire 1394, and just about every PC will recognize one, once formatted correctly.

If this cantankerous approach (not for the un-adventurous) is not ringing bells with you, and you still want a notebook, I would _strongly_ recommend ones that include either a nVidia Quadro FX-Go or an ATI Mobility FireGL video card.

Specific models are linked off of these two pages:
nVidia http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx_go.html
ATI http://mirror.ati.com/products/mobilityfireglv5000/index.html and
ATI http://mirror.ati.com/products/mobilityfgl9000/index.html and
ATI http://mirror.ati.com/products/mobilityfglt2/index.html

I can almost assure you that a notebook that has one of these cards in it is going to have a more-than-adequate processor in it, or if it doesn't outright, it can be added as an upgrade.

"slim shady, I knew what max meant by that" - You didn't know what he meant, or you wouldn't have been offended. You saying that you knew what he meant makes it even funnier. You practically wrote an article on not being rude because you thought someone was being rude to you. Are you honestly going to tell me that you went off because he was being rude to himself? I would have to call you a liar, if you did.

(You have to admit that you saying you aren't stupid, in an effort to defend yourself over a statement that you misunderstood, is kind of funny.) I'm not trying to be rude. I'm just saying that you should read more carefully before you jump to conclusions. You started a discussion about being rude that has resulted in this, and it is all because of your misunderstanding. Take a deep breath, relax, realize that no one is out to get you, and continue with the original topic. You made a mistake. Big deal. We all do. I was simply trying to point it out before you got out of control. I'm sorry if it insulted you, but sometimes the truth hurts.

Ok, sorry max and slim... I apologize. I read max's reply with a quick glance so I haven't picked that up right away. Again, I apologize - especially to you max.

Going back, Yeah, What i really wanted is a notebook that replaces my desktop. I'm in a tight budget right now and I'm considering the HPzd8000. But I heard that it has a battery that drains fast because of of the pocessor? So far, the battery life is just a minor for me. I mean, not really minor. Basically, I do my works in my hotel or in my apartment. I just use the battery when I'm at school. But anyways, I still need a good battery life when I needed most just in case.

I don't know if this is possible. I'm looking for a computer that's around 1,500 bucks which I need for my projects. I'll be only using this basically for only 2 quarters - i'm being practical here right now but at the same time, i hope this practicality pays off.

can you recommend for a brand guys? i'm just going to order this on the internet and i have this hard time juggling my work loads and looking for a good notebook.

If possible, can you give me the brand of the notebook (or model) and the specs so that I have an idea?

Thanks guys!

_sophia_

what Max & Shady said.

and I don't like you calling us (HWA) "rude" for nothing. you only prove that you yourself have some kind of an attitude problem hence that reaction.

plz try being more comprehensive next time before jumping to conclusions, and I hope you are well mannered enough to apologize as Max and the others took effort, experience and knowledge to help you in the best ways possible. while you closemindedly called them rude.

edit: THUMBS UP SOPHIA!!!

like max said.
laptops are always behind in technology, less performing, severely limited in all ways (upgrading, life, power, versatality in usage etc) and above all more expensive than their desktop counterparts, so IMHO it if you factor out a need for it must "being able to be mobile", a desktop, or SFF PC, will always be a better solution.

imo laptops properly serve only business men who travel around 24/7 and need something to organise presentation and document, or hackers trying to hack in a accesspoint and in need of getting mobile when their illegal activities are discovered.
for all else desktop delivers far more performance per buck to be put down for it being les mobile.

and cheap, technology and power for a notebook don't go well together...

Sophia... read and accepted. Forget it happened. I already have...

I'm now curious, though, as to what kind of desktop you have. Is there perhaps a way of improving/upgrading that to handle the majority of your 3D rendering work, compiling it into presentations, and then transferring it to a notebook/laptop that is able to display it well? You could do remedial tasks with that notebook, and display the presentations, and collect some data and stuff with it, but it comes to chewing on a render, your box at home handles that.

One of my longtime friends in the business is a sound engineer. He's outfitted his laptop (a rather spartan IBM ThinkPad) into a roving sound recording studio, just for collection. He then brings all that raw recording back to his super-desktop workstation, and does all the mixing and mastering there. He's then able to load the rough-draft results back onto his notebook, take them with him to see the client for approval. He then has a remote login (I'm not expecting just anyone to understand how to do this) back to his desktop to already begin chewing on the tweaks and refinements the client wishes to have happen.

Otherwise, if we focus on _only_ a notebook (and, you saying you want to "replace" your desktop... you might be able to sell it on down the line to someone else, giving yourself a bit more spending cash to work with)...

I'm sure others here will have suggestions, or they'll make comments about these suggestions here:
HP nw8000 [ http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-64295-893...64189.html ]
HP nc8000 [ http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-64295-893...64182.html ]
HP nc6230 [ http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-64295-893...47349.html ]
Dell Precision m70 [ http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/p...&s=biz ]
Alienware MJ-12m [ http://www.alienware.com/Configurator_Pages/mj-12m_7700.aspx?S...KU-DEFAULT ]

Everything I've stated up there has the video card that can handle 3D Imaging & Rendering.
Ow... the more and more I look at 'em, the more I'm getting nauseus at the prices. Well, a thing to consider is to try and get an educational discount. It goes a long way.

This one is way beyond any of us (with the exception of, like, Lost Faith, who has deep pockets), but it is just so awesome to look at and imagine:
Voodoo Envy [ http://www.voodoopc.com/system/quoteKitchen.aspx?productID=100...TechID=1## ]