Hi gang,
I'm out shopping for a new, used, or refurbished notebook, and I'm really having trouble deciding on what kind of processor to go for; there are just too many options. Some expert advice on the matter would be very much appreciated! Please look below and help me fill in the blanks, and correct my inaccuracies and false assumptions...
Intel:
Celerons:
These are cheaper processors, with less power than other processor lines from Intel. I've heard that they typically have a small processor cache, and therefore aren't great performers when it comes to processor-intensive work (e.g. rendering, gaming graphics, Photoshoping, compiling, etc.). The clockspeed on these babies are typically high, and they produce a lot of heat because of it. Despite the high clockspeed, however, they are typically under-performers.
Am I right on the money for Celerons?
Centrinos:
I don't know very much at all about Centrinos. I assumed that they were the next generation of cheap, under-performing processors from Intel -- sort of Celerons version 2. Can someone fill me in on these guys?
Pentium 4s:
High voltage consumption sucks away your battery juice quickly with these guys. They usually have a good amount of processor cache, which helps, right? They are powerful at any pretty much any processing task, but are more expensive and produce a fair amount of heat as well.
Pentium 4-Ms:
I haven't heard much about the M- series for Pentium 4's. All I've heard is that they require less voltage, and so don't drain your batteries so quickly. I would assume this meant that they were considerably less powerful than Pentium-4's of the same clock speed. Anyone know anything different? How about clockspeeds? Someone here mentioned something about Pentium4-Ms with a lower clock speed were faster than regular Pentium 4's at the same or higher clockspeeds! What's with that?!
AMD:
Is AMD still a viable choice for a processor, these days?
Athlon XP 64s: I'm seeing these guys around for notebooks these days. Are they any good?! I know nothing about them, except that they are 64-but processors. I imagine that would give them greater processing power for prossesor-intensive operations. Please, tell me more!
Also, did Microsoft release Windows XP 64 yet? I read somewhere that the 64-bit support was only simulated, and that real, native support for 64-bit wasn't going to be available for a while. Does anyone know about this?
Althon XP 32s: Are these any good? How well do they rate against Penium 4s and Pentium 4-Ms at the same clockspeed?
...
Ultimately, I don't care much about power consumption or heat. I'd go for a big hog of a processor in my laptop, if it was fast at processing just about anything.
My typical computing needs are: surfing, MS Office work, 3-D Modelling and rendering, some gaming, web authoring (programming, Photoshopping, page layout, etc.), and programming / compiling (including some 3-D graphics programming). I want something that's fast for all of this.
What kind of processor should I look for? How much L1 / L2 cache? (What the heck are L1 and L2 cache, anyway?) What clockspeed?
Gurus: please help!
Thank you!
