Laptop CPU speed query

[spleenboy]

I've a Dell 2.80GHz P4 laptop and was on the lookout for another for the gf. My mate's selling his Compaq Athlon XP-M 1.8GHz, and insists that it's a better processor than mine.

Is this rubbish? I'd always assumed that if "the number is bigger, it's better", but he tells me that it's not always necessarily so. Can anyone shed light on this?

Thanks in advance.

[sj33]

Your friend is right in that it's not necessarily so. People make too much out of the GHz number. An Athlon64 CPU at 2GHz for example is far faster than a P4 CPU at 3GHz, simply because it can 'do' more per Mhz (floating point I believe). P4's are all raw speed and number, makes for good marketing and sales point. AMD go the opposite way with the Athlon, which is why their processors are still faster dispite not being near the 3GHz mark yet.
It's not all about GHz.

That said, in this case, I suspect the P4 2.8GHz laptop would be the better one. But what are the rest of the specs? Ram, graphics chip etc.

[John Beaulieu]

i was told that the model number of the athlone chip was the GHz equivalent of the pentium processor

for example - A64 3400 only runs at 2.0GHz but is equivalent to a 3.4GHz P4

probably all bollocks though

[spleenboy]

The Compaq's much better in every other department; it has an nVIDIA GeForce4 420 GPU, as opposed to an onboard on mine, bigger HDD, DVD writer, etc. 1GB RAM on each, though.

It was just the issue of the CPU I was curious about, wasn't sure how it could be better at 1.0 GHz slower.

[sj33]

Well as I say, GHz isn't everything. John Beaulieu is correct, a Athlon64 roughly compares to a P4 3.4GHz, dispite only being 2GHz.

If you use your laptop for gaming, it's likely the Compaq will be more powerful based on the graphics card alone... but do some tests yourself, try some apps and games on one and the other and see how they compare. I reckon the processors are pretty much comparable, so in theory, the graphics card and Ram should push the Compaq ahead.

[RLench]

Are either of them designed especially for laptops? Mine has a 2.8Ghz Intel Pentium 4 Mobile chip, which (apparently) is optimised and more efficient for laptops. Whether it is or not is debatable...but I don't believe it. As a comparison, my laptop is a bit slower than my Dad's PC which has the same amount of RAM and an AMD 1.8Ghz processor