Sempron/Centrino

[esselte]

Does anyone know the relative merits of the AMD Sempron and the Intel Centrino processors?Is there an advantage of selecting a laptop with one over the other?Anyone know any sites with this info?

[neil_cardiff]

Essentially the brutality is:

Intel = Great for Office tasks, Workstation and CAD tasks

AMD = Great for Video encoding and Gaming

Thats pretty much the way it goes.

Make sure you consider the Pentium M chips, more expensive, but killer chips, which are good at everything, and low power and low on heat.

neil

[jamieboy]

Don't know about the AMD ones, but Centrino is a chipset (Pentium M CPU + 855 video + 802.11b/g wireless), not a processor per se.

[esselte]

jamieboy said:

Don't know about the AMD ones, but Centrino is a chipset (Pentium M CPU + 855 video + 802.11b/g wireless), not a processor per se.

Yes, sorry that's what I meant

[jamieboy]

Sorry, it was directed more at Neil - I was pointing out that the Pentium M isn't a more expensive killer chip than the Centrino, because it's part of the Centrino chipset.

Not having a go at anyone, sorry if it read badly.

FWIW, I've got a VAIO which uses the 1.7 GHz Centrino chipset, and it's plenty fast enough for general office stuff / development work, etc., but I don't think it would cut it for much more than those.

[r988]

my older 1.5ghz centrino does ok, doesn't lose much in performance to the 3.2ghz with HT I use in the office and most of that is probably down to the office machine having twice as much ram. Great battery life as well.

[mr_yogi]

I'm no expert but my impression is that where as the AMD chips might have the edge in desktops and server applications I would rather go with Intel for a notebook.

My girlfriend has a Intel Centrino with 2GHz Pentium M which is very fast. The Centrino is a very nice platform with built in wireless connectivity

The latest versions of which now come with dual cores - "Core Duo".

[lotusfan]

last week the MD tasked us to buy his son a laptop for his birthday
we got a compaq with the new AMD mobile 64 bit processor in it, and its great.
also 15" widescreen, card reader, wireless, usb2, firewire, 80gb disk and 512 memory, £650
looks good and really flies
thinking of getting one for myself now

[Einion Yrth]

lotusfan said:

last week the MD tasked us to buy his son a laptop for his birthday we got a compaq with the new AMD mobile 64 bit processor in it, and its great. also 15" widescreen, card reader, wireless, usb2, firewire, 80gb disk and 512 memory, £650 looks good and really flies thinking of getting one for myself now

I've got one of those, lovely bit of kit.

[Jinx]

mr_yogi said:

I'm no expert but my impression is that where as the AMD chips might have the edge in desktops and server applications I would rather go with Intel for a notebook. My girlfriend has a Intel Centrino with 2GHz Pentium M which is very fast. The Centrino is a very nice platform with built in wireless connectivity The latest versions of which now come with dual cores - "Core Duo".

Where did you get that opinion from - I'm curious as I have an AMD chipped laptop that is perfectly fast and though I had to get a usb wireless thingy (came with my modem/wireless router anyway) I don't feel like I missed out on anything?

My laptop btw:
www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/17/evesham_voyager_64_athlon/

[Marki]