Core 2 Duo for laptops?

Fido

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Jan 15, 2005
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I have a few questions about how the core 2 duo will affect laptops.
After reading the review of the Core 2 on this site, it seems to address every concern about laptops. The power consumption is lower, the heat is lower, the fan is lower, and it has a great integrated power saving mode. That is practically perfect for laptops.

Now my question is how much of the battery life is eaten by the processor anyways? And how much of the heat is attributed to the processor, and how does the mobile version of the Core 2 Duo seem like it will match up to the desktop version?
 
Thanks.

So the battery life wont improve that much with Core 2? That's kinda disapointing. What about heat? And will SpeedStep management help improve battery life at all?

Also, I'm interested in getting a tablet PC, how long do you think it will take it to get to the tablet market?
 
I have no idea about the table market, but i do know about the speedstep. It should lower power usage a fair amount when idle/doing minimal work. I should expect an extra 30 minutes battery life (quite possibly more than that).
 
So looking deeper into it, the improvement isn't as much of a jump for portables as it is for desktops?

There is a good Core Duo tablet I was looking at, and if Core 2 isn't as big of a jump as it will be for desktops I will probably be better off getting the one out now. Is there anything else I should consider in my decision?
 
Sony has a model using the T2300 and another using the T2400, all other specs the same, and the battery info for each hasn't changed. It should perform a bit better, but doesn't look as if the battery will last much longer. Still 6 hrs isn't bad...
 
Sony has a model using the T2300 and another using the T2400, all other specs the same, and the battery info for each hasn't changed. It should perform a bit better, but doesn't look as if the battery will last much longer. Still 6 hrs isn't bad...
WHAT!! 6 hours.. damn this school lap top (pentium 3) barely hits the 40 minutes battery life and 6 hours is'nt badd
 
The max TDP for the mobile parts has been creeping upwards since the first Pentium M and is something like this:

Banias, Dothan, Yonah, Merom = 24.5, 27, 31 & 35W

The 4W difference as a percentage increase is ~13%, which is not insignificant; the extra performance of Merom should more than negate that though. The 64 bit support is really the biggest gain with Merom.

I read one review which looked at Merom and Conroe and Merom overclocked to 800 FSB matched Conroe at stock 1066 FSB. This seems odd and I'm not sure that this will stand up in practice. If it was true, it would make sense to use Merom for the desktop as it runs cooler and will be easier to over-clock with Air. You also get higher multipliers with Merom as the FSB is only 667. So a Merom 2.0 has a multi of 12, whereas a Conroe 2.4 has a multi of 9. They have a similar price and both are the cheapest 4MB versions of their respective ranges. It makes you think!
 
Are there any comprehensive reviews, like THGs Conroe review of Meron yet? I can't find any anywhere. If someone could point me to one I'd be really happy.
 
Banias = 21W ; Merom = 31W
Intel’s TDP for Banias doesn’t match yours. The Merom figures aren’t listed yet, but I’m fairly sure that they’ve been announced as being 35W. Yonah is listed as 31W using the link above, so since Merom is more powerful and hence also more complicated than Yonah and built on the same process, it will surely consume more power!
 
Merom is 35w. ULV version will be out around 6 months or so after Merom's release. They should operate in the 10 - 15w range.

Now that is going to be impressive.Intel already has a 9W Core Duo U2500 and a 5.5W Core Solo U1400. They are both 1.2 GHz and 533 FSB.

The irony is that if you under-volt and under-clock a standard Yonah you can get fairly close to 9W. I briefly had a Dell 6400 laptop with a T2300. At idle the whole thing consumed 19W, with the CPU at 1GHz & 1.004V.
I dropped the max multiplier to 7 using CrystalCPUID and also set the max voltage to 1.004V even under load. On running two copies of CPU Burn-In, the system was at 100% and only consumed 27W. So the CPU was consuming 9 or 10W.

I’d like a laptop with a U2500 but they are too expensive for me and there’s too little choice, so I’m looking for a nice mid range Core Duo and I will use the same technique as above. The beauty is, if you ever need more power it’s only a mouse clock away and you get a much wider choice of laptops to choose from.
I’ve got my eye on a second hand Dell Precision M65 with a 15.4” 1680x1050 zcreen and core duo 1.86. My concern is that because it’s got a Quadro GPU that it will run too hot and noisily for my tastes. The GPU consumes 10-15W although that’s in 3D mode I assume.
 
Merom is 35w. ULV version will be out around 6 months or so after Merom's release. They should operate in the 10 - 15w range.

Now that is going to be impressive.Intel already has a 9W Core Duo U2500 and a 5.5W Core Solo U1400. They are both 1.2 GHz and 533 FSB.

The irony is that if you under-volt and under-clock a standard Yonah you can get fairly close to 9W. I briefly had a Dell 6400 laptop with a T2300. At idle the whole thing consumed 19W, with the CPU at 1GHz & 1.004V.
I dropped the max multiplier to 7 using CrystalCPUID and also set the max voltage to 1.004V even under load. On running two copies of CPU Burn-In, the system was at 100% and only consumed 27W. So the CPU was consuming 9 or 10W.

I’d like a laptop with a U2500 but they are too expensive for me and there’s too little choice, so I’m looking for a nice mid range Core Duo and I will use the same technique as above. The beauty is, if you ever need more power it’s only a mouse clock away and you get a much wider choice of laptops to choose from.
I’ve got my eye on a second hand Dell Precision M65 with a 15.4” 1680x1050 zcreen and core duo 1.86. My concern is that because it’s got a Quadro GPU that it will run too hot and noisily for my tastes. The GPU consumes 10-15W although that’s in 3D mode I assume.

Only 10-15 watt for a 3D card...that seems too little to be true!
 
So what you could do, is get a Meron processor, then underclock it using sidestep to get lower voltage? That would actually be a better alternative since you could have your power when you want it, and when you need battery life you can just change the processor speed.
 
Just remember, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when comparing Yonah to Merom.

First of all, Yonah maxed out at 2.167 Ghz - it was a very short lived chip. Intel put the 31W TDP on it, knowing it would go only to 2.167Ghz. I would expect that Merom is going to get at least one or two speed bumps before 45nm (especially with the introduction of the new mobile platform), which means its speeds will eventually top out at around 2.667Ghz. Certainly, they will refine the chip to reduce TDP over time, but a 400Mhz headroom is quite a bit.

Because of this, I would expect the 2.33Ghz Merom to be a bit below the 35W "family" TDP, just like the first Yonahs consumed below 31W. If I had to take a stab in the dark, I would say 30W, but I could be wrong and I hate speculating on things that I have no knowledge about.

Then again, maybe Merom will just take more power than Yonah, since it wasn't designed only as a mobile chip.