Core i7 Laptop Maker Talks to Us About Merits

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Why not throw something more power efficient in there? A 95w Core2 or AM3 Phenom II quad is a much better choice for something like this, not a 130w quad that runs at 80c(probably hotter in a laptop). I'm going to laugh if they get sued out of existence because people are getting 3rd degree burns from it.
 
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well i think if you use one of those rolling bags it's a great laptop otherwise a big back pain
 

Greatwalrus

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[citation][nom]LawsuitFanboy[/nom]Why not throw something more power efficient in there? A 95w Core2 or AM3 Phenom II quad is a much better choice for something like this, not a 130w quad that runs at 80c(probably hotter in a laptop). I'm going to laugh if they get sued out of existence because people are getting 3rd degree burns from it.[/citation]

I agree, especially if the consumer is going to take the system to LAN parties and use it mainly for gaming. Go for (good) dual or tri core processor and a better video card.
 

fulle

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Its a balancing act between the Graphics card and the Processor. If you have a really fast graphics card, and a slow processor, you get bottle-necked by the processor. If you have a really fast Processor, with a slower Graphics card, you get bottle-necked by the Graphics card. This isn't rocket science.

So, when you have a little GeForce GTX 280M Graphics w/1GB GDDR3 graphics card, you can only get so much out of it. You need a processor that's fast enough not to bottleneck the graphics card, but once you hit a certain point diminishing returns really start to set in, and it becomes pointless. Considering the power of the GTX 280M... the i7 CPU is waaay overkill, and completely unnecessary, just making the system less power efficient, and hot.

With laptops especially, its imporntant to have a well balanced machine. If its matching components that don't pair well, its price performance ratio really suffers, battery life suffers, and people don't buy it. There's not going to be too many of these sold... I'd be surprised if there is any difference in gaming FPS on a Sager NP5797 vs a Sager NP9280.
 

porksmuggler

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it screams niche market, there will always be people sold on the newest components, regardless of value/performance. go for it, how else to boutique builders keep their margin.
 

RADIO_ACTIVE

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I'm running a Sager NP9262 with an E6850 in it and 2 7950gtx cards in it. The thing is a beast! I like it because its easy to move anywhere, where as my desktop is very stationary (Thermaltake Armor case HUGE!) and both play games very well.
 

jaragon13

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[citation][nom]LawsuitFanboy[/nom]Why not throw something more power efficient in there? A 95w Core2 or AM3 Phenom II quad is a much better choice for something like this, not a 130w quad that runs at 80c(probably hotter in a laptop). I'm going to laugh if they get sued out of existence because people are getting 3rd degree burns from it.[/citation]
Well, AMD really invented the Core i7 for Intel, Intel packaged it with their 10 billion dollars of development money.
Truly, I want to see a laptop that features a Server CPU rather than a desktop or laptop - something with desktop speed abilities, but doesn't take as much power ( server CPU's are certified to run on less )
 

nittanylancer

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Don't buy an AVADirect. Seriously, don't. I worked for a major defense contractor and we were forced to buy their boxed due to their minority ownership and status as a preferred vendor.

We never, ever, ever got a box that lasted more than 6 months before a major part failure. Usually they wouldn't last 6 days. We had scores die from bad power supplies. We had a good number come HORRIBLY configured (IE Linux boxes that wouldn't even boot into the OS). We had boxes come in missing software licenses (which we were required to have for auditing purposes) and were often told they don't provide licenses... even after we would pay for them and EXPLICITLY require them.

Our systems engineers would call their rep, who's name I believe was "Misha" or something, on a daily basis to get a part replaced or send a whole box back. Their QA and assembly was horrific... they sent us pics once and it looked to be teenagers in a garage.

Side by side, you'd see a dozen AVADirect boxes die with a dozen Dell's (actually Concurrent re-badges) run fine and dandy.

Seriously, we ordered HUNDREDS of systems over the years, and wasted millions of dollars in man-hours fixing their delivered products. It's not like we got a bad systems here or there... we NEVER got a good one.

Do yourself a favor and avoid.
 
heh what stops them underclocking and undervolting that sucker to say ~2ghz with only dual channel DDR3 - sure it would still be hot and power hungry but atleast a bit more efficent etc and cheaper to produce (less cooling, size etc)
 

pylon757

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For $2600. Why not just build a decent Core i7 desktop for $1600 for the high performance stuff and then use the other $1000 for a business class ThinkPad or Latitude for mobile use?
 

ta152h

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[citation][nom]jaragon13[/nom]Well, AMD really invented the Core i7 for Intel, Intel packaged it with their 10 billion dollars of development money.Truly, I want to see a laptop that features a Server CPU rather than a desktop or laptop - something with desktop speed abilities, but doesn't take as much power ( server CPU's are certified to run on less )[/citation]

Honestly, Jaragon, you are clueless. The Core i7 is a derivative of the Pentium III, and has nothing to do with the Athlon. They don't even execute the same instructions, their internal setup is completely different in terms of where their AGUs are, and how they process floating point instructions, etc...

Now, what people who really have no understanding of CPU architecture like to say is, Intel copied the memory controller being on die, and of course the Level 2 cache being part of each processor.

Integrated memory controllers are very old, in fact, they've had system on chips long before the Athlon 64 was even a twinkle in someone's eye. In fact, even in the x86 worlds, there was a chip in the 1990s made by NexGen that had an integrated memory controller. In fact, for desktops, it was a mistake to use it when AMD did, since the space was better served by a larger L2 cache in many instances.

AMD also made a mistake by creating a native quad-core processor before they were ready. Making the L2 cache so it was no longer shared made sense with the native quad-cores, and in fact this is the simpler solution. Intel sharing the cache on the Core 2 was more difficult, but also, better. With a native quad core, it no longer made sense, so they made it in a way that did.

These are hardly major architecture changes. The internals of the processors are clearly different, with Intel processors being vastly superior. AMD seems to have designed for worst case, Intel for most likely case, and there's a lot of legacy garbage in the Athlon processor that can go, like a powerful x87 processor, 3D Now!, etc... x87 isn't used anymore, SSE2 is, and x87 isn't even part of x86-64, so why does AMD still have a very powerful one? Getting rid of stuff like that will help them, at least to some extent. Better memory scheduling (aka memory disambiguation) will help a lot too.

 

neiroatopelcc

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What are the odds of such a system to overheat? I remember having a huge and hugely heavy laptop once with a P4 desktop cpu and a geforce 4 card built in. Battery life when playing a 3d game was approximetly 35 minutes, and it kept overheating despite its seriously noisy fan - even the power supply had a built in fan that made noise in fact.
I've actually not ever considered to buy a laptop again after that one. I've got my silly company one with a slow core 2 now, and that's gotta make do.
I think laptops with desktop processors face these kinds of limitation now just like in the old days. I wonder if they could indeed be solved by now?
 

apmyhr

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Intel is releasing their quad core Nehalem for laptops by the end of this year, called Clarksfield. It won't be as powerful as the Core i7, but it will use less than 1/3rd the power and you wont have to pay 2600 dollars and who knows how many thousands of dollars in kiropractor bills when your back breaks from lugging AVADirect's "laptop" (which is really a mini-desktop with an LCD screen).
 

apmyhr

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[citation][nom]pylon757[/nom]For $2600. Why not just build a decent Core i7 desktop for $1600 for the high performance stuff and then use the other $1000 for a business class ThinkPad or Latitude for mobile use?[/citation]
Not that I want to defend this overpriced abomination, but you missed the point of their niche market, the people who would buy this are people that want portable gameing rigs. So your solution only applies to sane people like us, not the people who AVADirect is selling for.
 
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