Can someone tell me what the differance is

cubix

Looking at buy a laptop a one retailer has these different specs

Laptop1
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU (512K 478P)
60GB Ultra DMA Hard Drive

Laptop2
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU
60GB 4,200 Hard Drive

I am going to mail off to them but would like an indo point of view. As regards the cpu's I thought all intel cpu's had 512 second cache unless they were celeron's? so whats so special about (512 478P).I take it Ultra Dma is faster than 4,200rpm but was wondering how much faster

Thanks

fatmander

akaik there are only 3 P4 Chips,
A 423pin Willamette 256kb
B 478pin Northwoood 512kb
C 478pin Prescott 512 kb for now
corresponding to thier front side bus of 400, 533 and the latest 800, I dont think their is anything in your spec to indicate a mobo shipset, like 845,875P, or 875 PE
Centrino Chips have 1MB Cache.
Intel are sipposed to up the L2cache of P4 to 1MB,and double up its L1 in Q4 this year

Digi_Tilmitt

The P4C's are Northwood's not Prescott's, they just have an 800Mhz Fsb and hyperthreading. Prescott will use a completely differant socket and only come with 1Mb L2 cache versions methinks.

BigEejit

As far as I know, most if not all laptop hard drives are 4200 rpm and any modern drive will be Ultra DMA mode ... those processors will be the same as well, I think centrinos have quite a low clock speed compared to the latest laptop cpu's, they make up for it by having a large L2 cache....

po0k

laptops are cut-down desktop amchines
I wouldn't be surprised to see a 400Mhz or 533Mhz FSB on your machine.
it'll be a P4m, not a P4.
There's a difference.
You'll probably have single-channel DDR ram, look for the speed, it'll probably bePC2100 or PC2700.

joto

I recently upgraded my computer and got an 80gb Ultra DMA hard drive.
It spins at 7200rpm, & also I got an 80 wire IDE cable as against the old 40. It's much quicker as Ultra DMA has faster transfer rate, 100mb/sec as against 66mb or 33mb/sec.
Anyway the 4200rpm would be inferior I believe.

cubix

Thanks for all your help lads,here is a couple of links of machines I was thinking of:As you can see one says ultra dma HD and the other says 4200rpm

http://www.multivision.co.uk/showdet.php?id=165

http://www.multivision.co.uk/showdet.php?id=147

po0k

both hard drives will be 4200rpm (standard laptop spindle speed for 2.5" hdds, saves on power) and will both be UDMA100/66.
That seriouly is not a factor to be basing your comparison on.
I'd look more at raw capactiy. Access times etc. are going to be piss-poor compared to a desktop regardless so you won't be able to tellt he difference between a slow drive and a slightly slower drive.

Virus_Inc

You can get high speed laptop drives now - i got one for my laptop about 6 months ago - 5400rpm and I believe you can get 7200 models as well. Dunno where from though...

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20030813/index.html

Gerry

I got a 5400rpm 40gb IBM drive with 8mb for my laptop. The difference between it and the old IBM 4200rpm 12gb drive is amazing. The new drive has 8mb cache, which helps as well. Bootup and loading apps goes way faster, in fact the drive is held back by the ata/33 interface on the machine.

netman

you should find out what the full specs are on both drives, and what CPU's are in those laptops. a lot of manufacturers go for desktop CPU's in order to cut costs, which draw more power, meaning lower battery time. so find out if it's pentium 4, or pentium 4 mobile or centrino.

another important factor in the CPU's is the front side bus speed, or FSB. like someone else said, intel's got CPU's out there with three different speeds - 400, 533 and 800mhz.

the drives are both probably ultra dma. unless they're 5 years old and you're really unlucky. you should find out what ultra dma mode they are (udma 33, 66, 100, 133), what are their speeds in rpm (most likely 4200), how much cache they've got (2mb or less probably), what are they access speeds (in milliseconds) and then base your decision on that.

for one of these they don't specify what kind of memory it uses, other than the fact that it's DDR. find out what's the speed of the ram.

and lastly, the questions i'd be asking is what's the expected battery time on these laptops, and looking at the weight of them. carrying around bulky laptops with a 30 minute battery life isn't my idea of mobility. and if you're just looking for a computer and don't need to have it on the move, look at a desktop pc, you'll get a lot better value for your money.

Originally posted by cubix
Looking at buy a laptop a one retailer has these different specs

Laptop1
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU (512K 478P)
60GB Ultra DMA Hard Drive

Laptop2
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU
60GB 4,200 Hard Drive

I am going to mail off to them but would like an indo point of view. As regards the cpu's I thought all intel cpu's had 512 second cache unless they were celeron's? so whats so special about (512 478P).I take it Ultra Dma is faster than 4,200rpm but was wondering how much faster

Thanks

astrofool

of the two this one looks better: http://www.multivision.co.uk/showdet.php?id=147

but appears to have shorter battery life, it has usb 2.0 and a bigger screen tho

cubix

Thanks for all the post's lads,very much appreciated:D