2GB RAM or T7200

[kastraelie]

Hey guys, about ready to buy a lappy, but I can't make up my mind about something.

My budget ~$1550 allows me to configure a certain PC with either 2GB of DDR2 and the T5600 or 1GB and a T7200.

Seems like double the cache would be a significant performance boost, putting the clock difference aside.

Main application would be World of Warcraft--I know I know...
Though I do lot of photoshop and work with high res textures for MAX and Maya models.

Any insight?

Thanks a ton!

Oh, also a select few companies advertise a Nvidia 7600 Go with 512 megs of memory--I'm wondering if all that is dedicated memory or if a good portion of that is turbocache or whatever the Nvidia equiv is. Thanks again.

 

[killernotebooks]

:?: That is a tough question because if you go for the 1 Gig of RAM are they going to stick you with (2) 512 MB chips, or still give you a single 1 Gig chip?

You are going to eventually want 2 Gigs of RAM, but with RAM prices expensive like they are, and ULTRA RAM PIG Vista coming out, I think they are likely to stay high.

If you have to replace both RAM chips (in the case of 2-512MB) to get 2 gigs you are talking about upwards of $240 for 2 Gigs of good RAM once you include the shipping.

:?: You are absolutely right that the T7xxx series has the larger cache (4 MB) and that is going to help the memory speed right there. Intel uses the larger cache to make up for using an offboard memory controller compared to AMD's onboard controller.

The other thing that you put aside, but is going to make a difference between the T5600 and the T7200 is the clocks, you said it wasn't you main concern, but it is 340 MHz. of speed between the two once you factor in the dual cores.

:idea: Since an entire T7200 CPU costs about $310 at the time of this writing, you can see how they have you caught between a rock and a hard place from an accounting standpoint, if you have to replace both RAM chips in the future to get 2 Gigs (@$240).

For the aplications you are using, namely Photoshop, not so much WoW, I would say go with the T7200 especially if, like mentioned above the RAM will be on a single gig chip and you can upgrade it later for the cost of a single Gig.

The T7200 makes the most "right now" performance sense, even if you never upgrade anything.
It makes the most economic sense for the future, if you do plan upgrades, once you factor in that although we like to think we are going to do these upgrades sooner rather than later, in reality, they tend to get put off longer than we would like.

:idea: The 512 Mb on the 7600 go is, in most cases TurboCache or hypermemory. There are new models that have 512 dedicated VRAM though so it isn't a hard and fast rule.

 

[kastraelie]

Excellent information man. Yeah, I should have included that the chips are two 512--so upgrading would involve throwing it all out and buying new ones.

I think I'm just going to go over budget and purchase both to save on the opportunity cost of replacing them down the line.

I appreciate your help.

 

[g3neration]

ULTRA RAM PIG Vista coming out

Or then again, one doesnt have to install Vista I for one dont need any fancy schmancy thingamajig aero looks. That would solve the problem on the RAM from a Vista viewpoint.

 

[killernotebooks]

VISTA is a piece of garbage!
I hope no one upgrades to it to send MS a message that you don't break an O.S. into 6 different flavors to fleece every conceivable segment of the market.

You don't even get the fancy interface g3neration unless you shell out big dollars! At $399 for a Vista AERO Ultimate (interface you're talking about), that's stupid-talk! I wouldn't do it.

I can skin XP Pro to look exactly like Vista AERO, and you can throw in $100 and get yourself a PS3! You can check out my VISTA and DX-10 rant at the GoG Forum

 

[kastraelie]

Vista is a piece of garbage and I'm not looking forward to switching. I'll take up your read because I want a way around DX10 and putting the next generation of Windows ME on my machines...

 

[Strabo4]

Vista is a pittance compared to what Office2007 is supposed to cost. I read something about it costing ~$700 a few months ago, please don't flame me if I'm incorrect.

Hopefully, this will just about guarantee an acceptance of OpenOffice, especially if it starts to be used in schools.

I remember, a year or two ago, I had to shell out $200 for MS Office. I wish I had known about OpenOffice then.

As for Vista-What does it do to the smaller computer sellers, such as yourself, KN?

One last question for everyone here: Will you be able to install XP on an alternate partition without jinxing the whole system?

 

[killernotebooks]

I don't think you're going to have to worry about Office costing $700 now that Google came out with their online office. MS has always been affraid of people catching on to the ridiculously high price of their office auite and finding an alternative.

With Sunn's FREE Open Office.org, and now Google's online Office (also Free) MS is going to have to rethink the pricing structure afforded them by the stranglehold they have (had) on segments of the market.

VISTA, what it does to boutique vendors:
It confuses a lot of people for one. I can't tell you how many questions I get about the "upgrade vouchers" and the upgrade vouchers are for upgrades to the equivalent of Vista home. Also, I don't want to put a brand spanky new, no fixes (remember when XP needed like 28 Mb of patches like the first week) and hav eto be MS's first line of defencse for supporting the thing when there's problems.

You will be able to install one other partitions no problem, even the same partition. I have a couple friends that BETA tested seriously and had no problems with this.

 

[Strabo4]

I don't think you're going to have to worry about Office costing $700 now that Google came out with their online office. MS has always been affraid of people catching on to the ridiculously high price of their office auite and finding an alternative.

I'd imagine so. The only thing that I would miss from the Office Suite is Publisher. You can do a lot with publisher, and I can't find a way to do that with open office.

With Sunn's FREE Open Office.org, and now Google's online Office (also Free) MS is going to have to rethink the pricing structure afforded them by the stranglehold they have (had) on segments of the market.

I'm going to have to try that online office.

VISTA, what it does to boutique vendors:
It confuses a lot of people for one. I can't tell you how many questions I get about the "upgrade vouchers" and the upgrade vouchers are for upgrades to the equivalent of Vista home. Also, I don't want to put a brand spanky new, no fixes (remember when XP needed like 28 Mb of patches like the first week) and hav eto be MS's first line of defencse for supporting the thing when there's problems.

I also imagine that there is the issue of finding all the usual support for Vista. I mean, almost every possible issue with XP has been fixed, and tech support for the tier 1 and 2 dealers (not to mention the boutiques, who will face increased costs) will have to spend a considerable amount of time learning Vista inside and out.

You will be able to install one other partitions no problem, even the same partition. I have a couple friends that BETA tested seriously and had no problems with this.

This is excellent news. I'd been wondering if I could do this for a while now. this increases my chances of buying Vista within a year of release by a good 10%. Heck, I should just spend my Vista money on a 360 or PS3. It'd be put to better use there.


We should start a "bash vista" thread

 

[Surferosa]

Excellent information man. Yeah, I should have included that the chips are two 512--so upgrading would involve throwing it all out and buying new ones.

I think I'm just going to go over budget and purchase both to save on the opportunity cost of replacing them down the line.

I appreciate your help.

Its maybe not helpful, but you are definitely stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The most important component running wow is ram; you fill see a big performance increase moving from 1 to 2gb. However, whenever Im buying any computer, I'll try and get the best processor I can to extend its life (and given the big difference in spec here, Id go with the T7200- even though it will not have such a significant impact).

So, unfortuntaly going over budget seems like it may be the best thing do do in your case

 

[killernotebooks]

Strabo, I would DEFINATELY put my money into a PS3 over an new OS!

Vista doesn't come with a mad gaming cell processor & GPU and BluRay... but it's priced like it does!

I don't know if Tom's will be cool about bashing Vista here, but you can go to the GuruOfGaming Forums and bash Microstiff, AMD, Intel, nVidia... heck, I'm about to bash ASUS today for this POS software they bundled with their "cutting edge" wireless card. This utility looks like I made it in Visual Basic!

nVidia is probably going to be the next one on the list. If you release a GPU like the 7950, get your stinking driver files updated to support the new card! I shouldn't have to mod my own .inf file so the system knows what card it is!

I understand what the last guy is saying about the performance increase going from a T5600 to T7200, but I do think it will help the memory with the enhanced cache and there will be a speed increase. I second that upping the budget is the way to go.

 

[Surferosa]

Just read this and thought of you

Toms Hardware: How much ram do I really need

Take note of the closing line regarding wow. If you trawl the official technical support forums, its full of people commenting on the ram issue with wow. The latest topic is whether 2gb will be enough under vista (with aero on and stuff). I think the general rule is if your unlikely to be switching back and forth out of wow while playing, 1gb should be ok. But windowed mode or regularly using other windows apps mean 2gb is a must. Either way, Ironforge / Orgrimmar lag is sgnificantly reduced with 2gb.

Im building a new desktop in march, and I currently plan to stick 4gb in there because my main pc uses are wow, video converting and database editing (all running on vista). Then again, I'll also be getting the E6600 / 6700 8)

Killernotebooks; had a look at your site and your notebooks look very nice. Its a shame your not UK based- those shipping costs / times look nasty- maybe you should open a UK franchise

If you get the chance, could you take a look at my post on a desktop replacement. I know there all competitors and all (well hardly, your's are clearly in a different league )- but I'd be really interested on any views you have regarding the builds, etc.

 

[killernotebooks]

I have 4 gigs in my desktop with a 4400+ CPU, and guess I take it for granted. These guys that are doing huge Photoshop files, I can feel for them. Just the little 15"x12" skins I do take annoyingly long. I can't imagine what a poster size commercial print would do to my last nerves.

I was also thinking about another part of this post RAM vs. CPU: I wonder what the Internet Content Creation scores are for those respective CPU's and how that effects the WoW gaming experience. How much of the RAM~intensiveness (I use the ~ when I just make up a world the English language needs) of Wow is an amalgamation of
*Cache,
*CPU speed,
*Any GPU instructions offloaded to the CPU
*If a faster hard drives Swap file in Windows could be tweaked for better WoW play. Seems like the swap file would be key to that game with machines running 1 Gig of RAM, the the 7,200 RPM drives come into play. Along those same lines, if you are heavily using the swap file, I wonder if partitioning it onto its own smaller partition would help incrementally. I know the algorythm (that is not spelled right) changed and got more comlex with XP, but it would be worth a test.

I have a U.K. distibutor coming online if he ever gets his site up! I actually just sent 2 notebooks over to Parachute Regiment Company,
Catterick Garrisson in England last night. Green Beret's with Killer Notebooks how sweet is that?

I'll take a look at your desktop replacement post, no problem.

 

[Surferosa]

How much of the RAM~intensiveness (I use the ~ when I just make up a world the English language needs) of Wow is an amalgamation of
*Cache,
*CPU speed,
*Any GPU instructions offloaded to the CPU
*If a faster hard drives Swap file in Windows could be tweaked for better WoW play. Seems like the swap file would be key to that game with machines running 1 Gig of RAM, the the 7,200 RPM drives come into play. Along those same lines, if you are heavily using the swap file, I wonder if partitioning it onto its own smaller partition would help incrementally. I know the algorythm (that is not spelled right) changed and got more comlex with XP, but it would be worth a test.

Well, as my tiny brain understands it, the issue with wow is two-fold. Firstly, the popular city areas can contain hundereds of players running round in their different gear. The CPU and GPU is having to cope with redndering all this, as well as drawing the large city areas themselves. By loading up all the textures & files that are needed into RAM, the fps shows a massive improvement.

The second factor is the addons in use. Most users play WOW with some really heavy addons that populate tooltips and write data to files as you play (auctioneer is one). This is yet another demand on the RAM resource.

So, the more of this can be buffered within the RAM, the better. But I had thought of building my next desktop with one of these - which should help.

I like your idea on partitioning though. WOW doesnt actually need to be installed on a PC- you can run it from a usb flash drive if you want- so a partioned wow area could be just the ticket. I'll partion magic it this weekend.

I have a U.K. distibutor coming online if he ever gets his site up! I actually just sent 2 notebooks over to Parachute Regiment Company,
Catterick Garrisson in England last night. Green Beret's with Killer Notebooks how sweet is that?

Very nice. If its UK armed forces, its probably the best bit of kit they've got Oh, if your UK distributor could stencil this on the cover, he may have another customer..

 

[killernotebooks]

Man, anything customization can go on the cover... how about this:

The Raptor is a nice drive. I have (2) 10,000 rpm Raptor's for my OS & Programs on my desktop.

If you want EXTREME performance try this: RAM Disk
You can specify certain programs to utilize the RAM Drive.