Laptop performance question

[stevo1210]

As some of you may know, I recently (well today anyway), bought a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 laptop. It has a Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz CPU T7x00 something, P965 chipset, with 3GB RAM and onboard Intel X3100 graphics.
Now my brother just asked me one thing... how does this compare to our Dell Inspiron 6400 with a 1.73Ghz Core Duo, 945 chipset, 2GB RAM and a dedicated 256MB ATi X1400.
On paper we can obviously see the CPU and RAM is less in the Dell but the graphics is another story. Say we play some form of fancy game, will the Lenovo with the better CPU and more RAM be able to make up for X3100 onboard graphics vs. the Dell with the dedicated X1400???

[shovenose]

Re: Laptop performance question

They will probably be on par with each other.
But fire up Minecraft and find out!

[mockingbird]

Re: Laptop performance question

The dedicated X1400 will wipe the floor with the X3100.

X1400 is DirectX 9.0b though and X3100 is DirectX 10.1 if that's of any importance to you.

The next step up is the Intel GM4500 which is found in the successor of the G965, the GL4x, and then Intel resorted to integrating the GPU into the CPU, which is a heck of a lot faster than anything previous.

[tom66]

Re: Laptop performance question

I don't think Intel ever aimed for performance with their GPUs. They aim for low power and low cost, which is what the majority of laptop users need. I have a desktop for playing games on.

[mockingbird]

Re: Laptop performance question

X3100 is fully accelerated with browsers under Windows Vista/7 (Though it may have to be force-enabled in the options), so the chip is still excellent for flash/HTML5 and general web use. Runs Desert Combat pretty well too.

[stevo1210]

Re: Laptop performance question

Hmm... okay. So if I decide to spend $30 or so and max the CPU in the Dell to the maximum supported T7400 2.16GHz C2D (Currently just a CD T2250 in there), then it should be faster than the T61 in terms of gaming right (40MHz CPU difference).

[mockingbird]

Re: Laptop performance question

Be careful, I'm pretty sure the 6400 used a Socket M C2D (And not Socket P), so you'd need something like this:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/251179758118

It's not the MHZ that would make it faster, the T7xxx is an entirely different class than T2xxx and T5xxx, having much more L2 cache. The only thing higher is the T9xxx with 6MB cache, but good luck finding one.

[stevo1210]

Re: Laptop performance question

Yeah i know its a socket M cpu. The 7x00 series with even numbers is socket M and the odd numbers are socket P.

Eg. T7200 = socket M and T7300 = socket P.