Hello there!
To anyone w/ a diverse & hands-on hardware eXperience:- How much of a difference would I be able to see between two machines w/ the following configurations:
Machine A (a laptop)
- Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, 1024 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD...other figures being equal
Machine B (a desktop)
- Pentium 3 833 MHz, 384 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD...other figures being equal
As far as the FSB is concerned on both the machines then I'd say it is roughly 433 MHz since they are both over a year old and I read that the 500 MHz model has only recently been launched.
Wud appreciate some thoughts...thanx in advance!
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How fast it the hard drive? 4200rpm in the laptop vs 7200rpm in the desktop?
Processing power makes a big difference when you are running applications that use a lot of mathmatical calculations. Other than that, you might find when surfing the Internet, the slower CPU computer seems faster because it is caching pages to the hard drive and desktop hard drives are usually a LOT faster than laptop hard drives.
Let's say you are opening a Word or PDF document. The faster hard drive might allow the page to be copied into ram than the slower laptop hard drive. Try a fresh reboot and open a document on a laptopt and desktop at the same time and see which opens first...you may be surprised to find the slower CPU computer is opening it first.
Check hard drive speeds. The desktop is probably faster, so opening applications or moving files will probably be faster on the desktop.
The Front Side Bus on that PIII is 133mhz. The laptop processor will kill the PIII.
Memory will be much faster on the laptop. The desktop probably uses either 100Mhz or 133Mhz SDRAM and the laptop probably uses 266Mhz or 333Mhz DDR memory. Big difference, especially when combined with the faster FSB.
The desktop probably has similar graphics, but keep in mind that it can be upgraded to great graphics. The laptop probably has little or no upgrade ability for the GPU.
The laptop is mobile. If you have a highspeed internet connection I cannot stress how nice it is to hook up a laptop on a wireless lan. I love the internet from my couch! And wireless lans are very affordable now (I mean, if you can afford the laptop I know you can get $100 for a Wireless router and wireless NIC!)
Laptop screens break all the time and cost as much or more than the laptop to replace in a lot of cases. $1200 is a lot of money to blow if you drop it, so you definately have a "fragile" factor with the laptop that you don't get with the desktop.
You can upgrade hard drive space in the desktop easily and very cheaply now. This is not the case if you buy the laptop.
YOu could have 2048MB of RAM, but if all you're doing is surfing the net and writing email, its not going to make a bit of difference. You would need to have some pretty RAM-hungry applications to really utilize that much memory (EQ comes to mind), be doing video encoding/editing or super hi-res image editing in Photoshp to really appreciate the difference. The CPU makes a huge difference too, but again it depends on what you're doing.
>>433 MHz since they are both over a year old and I read that the 500 MHz model has only recently been launched.
I don't believe any of the Pentium4 mobile chips have a FSB over 533 (probably 400MHz), and the P3/833 is certainly using a normal 133MHz FSB.
Clearly, price makes no difference to you or you wouldn't even be asking...that P3 system would maybe go for $400 or so, depending on the "other things", while that laptop would be pushing the $2000 mark at least.
What is your goal? Are you looking to buy one of these systems? What is your intended use for it???
-dog*
>>difference???
dog* has a valid point here..
it would depend on what you want to do with them....
booting operating system, listening to music, editing docs...etc things wouldn not make any difference to you...
but playing heavy games, processing a large amount of data etc would really make a difference. (assuming video card is also same for games). such difference can be noted when the machine is put to heavy load as a server...
we have a p3 - 700 mhz testing machine and p4 main server. and it makes a real difference when the reports are generated. both have equal ram and hdd...
Appreciate all that feedback!
I already have both these systems in place...The laptop has been purchased primarily for 3D rendering as well as video editing work...Why am I asking this question!? Coz I do feel that at times my desktop is doing a much better job...a much faster job, i.e...Especially w/ the more mundane tasks such as opening word docs or even something as simple as clickin' the Start button to pop up the list, then going on to Program and choosing one...After that, just for the entire list of programs to fade away takes a whole while!
Anyhow...Would like to know more about the point raised by locc - "all depends on the OS, if the OS will utilize the memory amount you have."...I am running a Windows XP Home Ed. on the laptop...What tweaks do I need to make to have it fully utilize the memory amount I have?
A crass question perhaps but how do I find out the speeds of my HDD...The invoices don't say anything about the speeds!...Wud appreciate some inputs here...thanx in advance!
P.S. Excuse my technical understanding of things but can I once and for all trash the analogy that no matter how big ur mouth is (i.e. RAM) as long as ur throat (i.e. FSB) remains the same, you wud see no improvement in performance??
I would advise against putting win2k on the machine. win2k lacks hardware support. The machine should see a hugh difference in performance. I have a 3.06ghz laptop with 1gig of memory and a 5400rpm hard drive and it easily out performs my desk top running at 2ghz. Your machines are drastically different. With the laptop, I would check how much junk the manufacturer 'graciously' installed for you. Often they load a bunch of crap at the statup. You can go to start->run->msconfig to check how many things are being loaded. If you have a copy of winxp other than the restore disc, you can reinstall the os on the laptop and see if that helps. You can often adjust the down clocking that laptops do in the bios. If your laptop has a pentium IV mobile chip in it, you will see a performance loss compared with the penitum IV desktop processors.
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by: beefdartPosted on 2003-08-07 at 11:12:53ID: 9102102
a huge difference...
triple the ram and cpu?
thats a helluv a laptop