new laptop

[BenLi]

Core 2 duo t7200 at 2 ghz
2gb ram
ati radeon x1400 256 mb x2
HD 120 gb 5600 rpm

what do you think? Any obvious bottlenecks?

[BenLi]

apologies for double posting:

ran some math benchmarks, it did better than expected

[Tony]

Harddrive is always the bottleneck, especially those slower ones. Personally I would have tried to go for a smaller capacity, but faster access.. but then again I find that laptop manufactorers always compromise on one of the components in order to have some top-of-the-line stats, and yet fit into the desired price range.

[BenLi]

well i had concerns about battery power. would a 7200 really drained it that uch more?

[Craige]

BenLi wrote:

well i had concerns about battery power. would a 7200 really drained it that uch more?

It could, but then it could not. If you go for a smaller hard drive, and keep it optimized, then you may be okay for battery power. You should do a disk optimize every couple days if you want to keep you laptop hard drive at it's optimal seek speed (thus it finds your data faster, and can stop processing sooner, saving battery power). I recommend Norton Speed Disk.

Also, 7200 rpm in a laptop is going to heat up more. Make sure your chassis has proper ventilation to support it. You don't want your hard drive to over heat.

[BenLi]

sensors said the temp hovers around 50 degrees Celsius. Is this normal?

[rdrake]

BenLi wrote:

sensors said the temp hovers around 50 degrees Celsius. Is this normal?

My temperatures read as follows; HD0, 39C, Temp1, 55C, Temp2, 60C. I'd say it's fairly normal.

[Andy]

what does
ati radeon x1400 256 mb x2

mean?

x1400 cant run crossfire, heck, actually laptops cant even run crossfire.

the videocard is clearly the bottleneck. anything below x1600 is outdated

[BenLi]

when i went to system components. The ati card was listed twice. I didn't think it was crossfire. But that reminded me, what does it mean. Everest listed the card twice in the system overview

[md]

HDs don't differ too much in how much power they use. a 7200 rpm uses slightly more then a 5400 rpm drive, and a larger drive *might* use a very small amount more then a smaller drive (it probably won't). The difference in power usage is very small however, and really only applies to spinning up the HD. Keeping it spinning requires very little energy, so though a 7200 rpm drive will require more power then a 5400 rpm drive the difference is quite small.

[TheFerret]

BenLi wrote:

when i went to system components. The ati card was listed twice. I didn't think it was crossfire. But that reminded me, what does it mean. Everest listed the card twice in the system overview

Basically what Everest is saying is that your computer has two outputs from that graphic card and not that you have two different graphic cards... In your case, one output is the LCD and the other other output is a RGB port on the side of your computer... I have the same thing on my laptop and on my desktop but on the desktop, it has a DVI out and a RGB out...

[Andy]

wtf is RGB? VGA maybe? most laptops come with 3 outputs. LCD, VGA, and S-Video

[[Gandalf]]

Andy wrote:

wtf is RGB? VGA maybe?

Wikipedia.org wrote:

A VGA connector as it is commonly known (other names include RGB connector, D-sub 15, mini sub D15 and mini D15) is a three-row 15 pin DE-15.

[bugzpodder]

laptops today has ~600 fsb which is a bottleneck. newer chipsets due next year will support 1024 fsb like current standard desktop systems

[Andy]

[Gandalf] wrote:

Andy wrote:

wtf is RGB? VGA maybe?

Wikipedia.org wrote:

A VGA connector as it is commonly known (other names include RGB connector, D-sub 15, mini sub D15 and mini D15) is a three-row 15 pin DE-15.

interestingly, that piece of information wasnt added to wikipedia until a week ago. before my question of course, but interesting none the less