Yay, comparisons! Who likes doing research?

[Zephik]

GPU: NVIDIA ION LE, AMD RADEON X1250 or Intel GMA 4500MHD?

CPU: AMD Athlon Neo 1.6GHz, Intel Atom 1.6GHz, Intel Celeron 1.2GHz or Intel Celeron M 1.3GHz?

Which is the best? Is there much or any difference between any of them or are they all basically the same?

I think I've narrowed my selections down to one of these two (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=Property&N=2034940772&PropertyCodeValue=7250%3A49791%2C7250%3A49529%2C72 50%3A49418&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=False&CompareItemList=N82E16834152141%2CN82E16834115658) , but I'm still curious to know which is best out of the listed above. Also, would there be any kind of noticeable difference between the two netbooks I just linked to? or are they basically the same? Performance wise, that is.

[x88x]

From memory, the 1.6 Neo will definitely out-perform a 1.3 Celeron M. I'm not sure about the X1250 vs 4500MHD; on the one hand, the X1250 is a fairly old chip (4 generations back, now), but on the other hand Intel has never been known for anything even remotely resembling power from their graphics chips. I do have a 4500MHD in my laptop though, so if you can't find anything I could see about doing a benchmark for it.

If I were you, I would find out what kind of battery life the Neo based netbook gets. I don't know about you, but when I look at netbooks, I'm not looking for performance, so in context, there's probably not that much difference.

[Zephik]

From memory, the 1.6 Neo will definitely out-perform a 1.3 Celeron M. I'm not sure about the X1250 vs 4500MHD; on the one hand, the X1250 is a fairly old chip (4 generations back, now), but on the other hand Intel has never been known for anything even remotely resembling power from their graphics chips. I do have a 4500MHD in my laptop though, so if you can't find anything I could see about doing a benchmark for it.

If I were you, I would find out what kind of battery life the Neo based netbook gets. I don't know about you, but when I look at netbooks, I'm not looking for performance, so in context, there's probably not that much difference.

I think I read that it gets somewhere around 4 hours. For that reason I might just end up getting the 1005HA with 8.5 hours instead unless the extra performance is worth it or honestly noticeable.

I just want it all! Great price, decent power, long lasting battery life... not ugly. lol too much to ask for I guess. Maybe I'll just wait until next year or something. Hmm.

[Kayin]

My (as in the store's) new HP TX2s have dual-core Athlon Neos. They're supposed to debut tomorrow. Might be worth a look.

[knowledgegranted]

My (as in the store's) new HP TX2s have dual-core Athlon Neos. They're supposed to debut tomorrow. Might be worth a look.


These things are supposed to have four times the processing and video power of the Ion and Atom. Although what actually happens is different from what factually should happen

[x88x]

I just want it all! Great price, decent power, long lasting battery life... not ugly. lol too much to ask for I guess. Maybe I'll just wait until next year or something. Hmm.

Depending on what range "great price" is, it sounds like you want a sub-notebook, not a netbook.

[Zephik]

Depending on what range "great price" is, it sounds like you want a sub-notebook, not a netbook.

$430 or under.

My ideal laptop would have to be 10"-13", minimum of 4500MHD or equivalent, minimum of 2.8GHz Pentium 4 equivalent and a minimum of at least 4 hours battery life, all while being $430 or under. Oh, also it has to be nice looking. Is that so much to ask for?? lol

It's either $350 or under and with great battery life, or $430 or under with decent battery life but a noticeably higher performance.

[x88x]

Hmm, ok, nope; with another few hundred you could hit a sub-notebook, but probably not below $500-600.

[Zephik]

looks promising

I suggest deleting that link or your entire post. I don't mind being "rickrolled" but not when its something like that where I have to manually shut down the entire browser and all my open tabs along with it to make it stop.

[x88x]

I suggest deleting that link or your entire post. I don't mind being "rickrolled" but not when its something like that where I have to manually shut down the entire browser and all my open tabs along with it to make it stop.

This is why I use flashblock. I opened the link, and it was just a huge block of grey-ed out boxes :D

[billygoat333]

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
good comparison of mobile graphics cards and chips... not sure if they have the ION on it but I heard that the ion is basically a 9300... right?

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

this is a benchmark list of mobile processors.

those two sites helped me decide what laptop to get. :)

EDIT: forgot it also compares them to desktop processors and gpus but you can edit what is shown in the list right above the list in a grey box to take out the desktop crap. (holy run-on sentence!)

[Zephik]

GMA 950 - Scored 122 in 3DMark06.
GMA 500 - Scored 68 in 3DMark06.
X1250 - Scored 388 in 3DMark06.
4500MHD - Scored 713 in 3DMark06.
ION - Scored 1188 in 3DMark06.

Well, I can safely say forget the X1250! Now for CPU's...

Scores are in 3DMark06:
Neo 1.6GHz - 611
Atom 1.6GHz - 479
Celeron 1.2GHz - 550
Celeron M 1.3GHz - 555

Anything is better than the Atom in other words, however, battery life won't be as good, so.. is it worth sacrificing the battery life for a bit more juice? hmm.

This has the best graphics.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157032

However, these have slightly better processors and second best graphics which are far and beyond better than what is currently and usually offered. (GMA 950/500)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=Property&N=2034940772&StoreType=-1&CompareItemList=N82E16834101194%2cN82E16834115658&PropertyCodeValue=7250%3a49418&bop=And

So here's the question... which would you go with? The ION is nice, but that is the only thing nice about that HP Mini, everything else about it falls short compared to the other options, although there is always the ability to eventually upgrade. Then there is the 4500MHD, which is pretty fantastic except and only except when compared to the ION, so it has great graphics that just aren't AS good as the ION, but it also has slightly better processors....

I think I'll probably go with whichever has the best battery life. lol

Edit: can anyone confirm whether the RAM in the HP is DDR2 or DDR3? If its DDR3, that might make up for the only 1GB instead of 2GB.

Edit2: according to that one and only reviewer, it sounds like the HP is equivalent to what I'm using right now. (Inspiron 9300) If that's true, then that would be awesome. I paid like a grand for this thing years ago. lol

Edit3: Nice, it's also upgradeable to 3GB of RAM and the 1GB of RAM is DDR3. This is getting better and better... what's the catch aside from the standard Atom?

[billygoat333]

I have the 4500mhd in my dell and its decent enough. can play older games just fine. (return to castle wolfenstein at least, all ive played on it :P )

[Zephik]

Is 1GB DDR3 better than 2GB DDR2? Not that it really matters, since there is always the option to upgrade, just curious.

I think I might go with that HP. Far superior graphics but with a standard Atom. But, the difference between the NEO and Celeron M and the Atom is pretty small by the looks of it? So there isn't much difference between the processing power but there is a huge difference between the graphics processing power... so... I think it would be smart to go with the one with the best graphics? Which is the HP with ION. which is also upgradeable to 3GB of RAM instead of 2GB and has 1GB DDR3 instead of DDR2 already installed. I suppose I could also get Wireless N for it too if I really wanted to. So it looks like if I spend a bit of time and money on it.. it'll be pretty far superior to the other options. I just wish I knew what the battery life was on those other options, on the HP its 4 hours, which isn't bad, but if the others are like 6-8 hours... IDK what I'll do then. That's pretty tempting. Hmm.

Awesome graphics with good battery life or great graphics with awesome battery life. Then again... they don't use the Atom, which means they probably won't get as good battery life... so... the only comparison is the graphics and that favors greatly in the ION. So HP it is?

This is why I like Apple. They have one option with slight variations. They make life so much easier. lol

[mDust]

This is why I like Apple. They have one option with slight variations. They make life so much easier. lol:rolleyes:Thanks Apple for dumbing the world down so much that people get used to not having to make decisions...

I'm sure you realize this but I thought I'd say it just in case: netbooks are not designed for power whatsoever. If you're looking to play games or run two or three programs at once on your mobile PC then I would just wait however long it took me to save up the extra few hundred bucks and get a cheap laptop.
From what I've read, especially with the Atom series, multitasking is not even a viable option. And I wouldn't trust those other low power chips to be a whole lot better regardless of their benchmark scores.
If you're looking for great battery life, then Atom and it's competitor chips will probably knock your socks off. I've seen estimated battery life for a couple netbooks over 10 hours! That's great! Unless you want to actually 'use' your computer (honestly, who can do just one thing at a time anymore? I have 7 tabs open, music and 4 other apps running and I just turned on my computer)...But if you want to have a spreadsheet, text editor, and web browser open simultaneously and still be responsive, I'd suggest something beefier at the expense of battery life.
Unfortunately, I don't have any specific suggestions, and I'm not going to try to railroad you into anything because I don't know what your needs are. I just wanted to make sure you realize netbooks are cheap for a reason...and I ended up rambling and ranting like a mad man.:D

With that all said and out of the way, I just wanted to say that I will be purchasing the cheapest netbook I can find in a month or two. I will use it for browsing the web anonymously at work...and that's about it. I don't expect it to run anything else...ever. mmmMMM! I can smell the integrated graphics now!

[x88x]

Is 1GB DDR3 better than 2GB DDR2? Not that it really matters, since there is always the option to upgrade, just curious.

No. And I can pretty much guarantee you that the HP does not use DDR3. That being said, the HP mini line does have something that no other netbooks offer; a 1366x768 screen (all the other netbooks have 1024x600).

mDust makes a very good point though; what are you really trying to get out of this? You're just not gonna get performance out of a netbook, no matter if it has an ION or not.

[Zephik]

Hmmm. The HP product page (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c01884733&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN) and Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Mini-311-1000NR-11-6-Inch-Black-Netbook/dp/B002ONCBVC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1256191842&sr=8-1)both say it uses DDR3. The person in the Newegg review (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157032&cm_re=HP_Mini-_-34-157-032-_-Product) also said that he contacted HP and they said it was DDR3 too.

If it does use DDR3, what would be the performance increase over DDR2? Like for example, 1GB DDR3 is 15% faster or better or whatever than 1GB DDR2. (numbers used just for example, I have no idea what I'm talking about. lol)

I'm pretty aware of what netbooks are and all of their abilities and limitations. I've read enough about them that I could probably write a small book. lol

The only thing I ever use a PC for is web browsing, messaging, email, watching videos, reading and playing a light amount of games. Mostly flash/browser-based with a few dedicated games such as World of Goo, WoW and TESIV: Oblivion which lately I've only been playing once in a blue moon. Just about all of that is easily within the realm of netbook capabilities aside from Oblivion. So in short, netbooks are basically perfect for me. Very affordable, highly portable and they get pretty good to pretty great battery life all the while doing everything that I need them to do. But I would still like a beefier rig of course, which I think is where the HP Mini comes along. None of them have a processor that is worth getting even remotely excited about, the performance increase is pretty unnoticeable from what I can tell. However, the graphics chips... now that's a bit of a different story. An average netbook with GMA 950 or GMA 500 wouldn't be able to play COD4, at least not realistically. However, the ION can as stated in reviews.

I can't believe I didn't compare my current rig to this one before... so here it goes! Let's see how well a 5 year old laptop does against a netbook. lol

.........
Radeon 9700 Mobility: 280 in 3DMark06. 1200 in 3DMark05. 3000 in 3DMark03. 10000 in 3DMark01.

Pentium M 1.7GHz: 130 in SuperPI 2M. 1400 in Cinebench R10 Rendering Single. 5193 in Dhrystone. 3877 in Whetstone.
.........
nVidia ION: 1425 in 3DMark06. 3326 in 3DMark05. 4734 in 3DMark03. 10723 in 3DMark01.

Intel Atom 1.6GHz: 210 in SuperPI 2M. 539 in Cinebench R10 Rendering Single. 3969 in Dhrystone. 3324 in Whetstone.
.........

I can't really make heads or tails of the CPU portion, but it looks like a pretty large leap in the GPU portion? or at the very least on par with each other? Is that really right? Is the ION on par or better than a Radeon 9700 Mobility? lol

Would it be safe to say that the HP Mini with ION is on par or better than my Dell Inspiron 9200? I'm asking because I don't know... especially with that CPU portion. It looks like the Pentium M performs better? But noticeably or just barely or?

[x88x]

Hmm, yeah, as long as you're not expecting it to run Oblivion, you should be fine with the HP Mini. I would say that the 1.6 Atom probably will offer similar performance to the 1.7 M until you start multi-tasking...at which point it's gonna fall on its face.

That's really odd about the DDR3, but if that's what HP's product page says, I guess that's right. Maybe HP is just trying to standardize all their product lines.

Honestly, any performance increase that you would get from using DDR3 over DDR2 (not much) will be outweighed by your real bottleneck; the Atom.

[Zephik]

Hmmm, but I can run Oblivion right now on medium-ish settings just fine though. So, wouldn't the ION at least be able to do the same? Comparing the benchmark scores, the ION actually does a bit better than my 9700 Mobility.

The HP Mini seems like it should perform basically just as well as this Inspiron 9200, aside from multi-tasking of course. Why is that btw? Why can't it multi-task if its basically the same as what I have now?

[x88x]

IDK exactly the details, I've just heard from people who have Atom stuff, that they don't multitask well at all. Though come to think of it, that might be in part due to the fact that most netbooks only come with 1GB of RAM.

As for Oblivion, idk, I've never seen anyone try and run it on an ION, I just can't imagine it would do that well...though it is essentially a Geforce 9300 (or 9400, depending on the model), so it might do just fine, albight without shadows :P

[mDust]

The Atom and competing netbook processors are just weak chips that were stripped down as far as possible with energy efficiency being the ultimate goal. I keep seeing all these people reviewing it on sites saying how 'it multitasks just fine' but the professional reviewers all say stuff like:
It didn't do too badly in the individual tests, far outperforming the Eee in graphical applications, for example (0.34 to the Eee's 0.28 ). But it's clear that multitasking stretches the single-core Atom too far - our multiapps test took a whopping 38 minutes to complete, compared to an already painful 26 on the Eee.
Similarly, our Office test - which opens Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint simultaneously - took the Atom more than 20 minutes, despite its HyperThreading......which really makes me wonder what the hell the multitasking people were using before they bought the netbook.
It looks like the Pentium M performs better? But noticeably or just barely or? Intel agrees with that:
Intel's CTO Justin Rattner is on record as saying the performance [of the Atom] is about the same as the 'Banias' generation Pentium M that formed the heart of the first-generation Centrino platform back in 2003.
Your laptop has a slightly better processor, more ram, but a weaker graphics card judging from those benchmarks...I'll bet your laptop also has a larger and higher res screen. Depending on if it's possible to upgrade the graphics card in your laptop, (I honestly am not familiar with the motherboard connections and internals of laptops.) you may be able to spend half a ton less money on a new card while increasing the performance of your laptop leaps and bounds beyond the fastest netbook. That's assuming there's nothing wrong with the laptop. If you just want the sleek, shininess of a newer computer, then take your laptop apart and custom paint it to suit your taste and then clear coat it!:)
IMO, that netbook is not worth the 400 something bucks since it's not an upgrade. I'd save up a few hundred more and get something that's clearly better than your laptop.


[Unattributed quotes are from http://www.channelpro.co.uk/Reviews/206571/intel_atom.html]

[Zephik]

Heh, okay, here we go...

No screen, no keyboard, no wifi, no speakers, battery lasts about 30 minutes, 80GB hard drive, fans run loud as it runs hot.

Then you have my other laptop. I have two. One is a 9200, the other is a 9300.

No screen, no keyboard, no speakers, battery lasts about 30 minutes, 40GB hard drive, fans don't work so it gets super hot. This one has .1GHz more than the other one and has a Nvidia Go 6800 256MB instead of the Radeon 9700 Mobility. Why am I not using this one? Because the display port broke about a week ago and with no screen, it's nigh usable.

Even if I repaired either one of them to literally perfect condition, I'd only get 2 hours of batter life maximum and they still run hot with fans going full throttle. That and they're 17" laptops, so they're huge.

At this point, a netbook is a huge upgrade for me. lol

It pains me to think that I paid a grand for that 9300 back in the day and now I can buy one of the weakest rigs on the market and it performs somewhat similar to it and in some area's, better. lmao

But yea, anyways, now you probably understand why I like netbooks so much. For me, they're a huge upgrade and yet they cost next to nothing AND they're small and thus portable, which I like. Literally everything about them is enticing for me. Thank god I don't do things like Photoshop or something. lol

[billygoat333]

laptops have come a long way just in the past 4 years. its awesome. :)

[Zephik]

It's very awesome. lol

Technology advances so fast. I remember when my father bought a 42" Plasma for almost three grand. You can buy a higher quality plasma for like $700 now.

[x88x]

Depending on what kind of power and mobility you need, it might be worth it to look for a used Latitude D630. They're 14.1" laptops, but have C2Ds, so they're a lot more powerful, some came with Quadro chips which would almost definitely be more powerful than the ION, and since they're bigger, they have bigger batteries, and so usually get around the same battery life (4-5 hours). Looking around on eBay a little, I was able to find a few for around or under $500 buy it now, who would ship internationally. Just a thought.

[mDust]

It pains me to think that I paid a grand for that 9300 back in the day and now I can buy one of the weakest rigs on the market and it performs somewhat similar to it and in some area's, better. lmaoIt's even worse with specific components such as graphics cards...if you pay the premium for top of the line hardware, 2-3 months later something will come out that puts your 'new' part to shame.


But yea, anyways, now you probably understand why I like netbooks so much. For me, they're a huge upgrade and yet they cost next to nothing AND they're small and thus portable, which I like. Literally everything about them is enticing for me. Thank god I don't do things like Photoshop or something. lol I didn't know your laptops were broken:facepalm:; I figured you were just looking for an upgrade. Even a low-powered netbook is better than having nothing...
I guess there's a netbook in your future! As long as you don't expect too much out of it you will probably like it...especially in contrast to staring at a broken laptop screen.
It looks like the only thing the HP Mini 311 is missing is wireless N, an SSD and Win7; but I guess adding any more features to it would rip a hole in timespace and HP doesn't want a Half Life situation on their hands.


1 GB DDR2 RAM (1 Dimm), Max supported 2 GBAnd Amazon says DDR2 and only 2gigs max...Yep, now I'm just trying to be an ass.:D HP does say DDR3 and up to 3GB max. I'd believe the guys that built the thing before a retailer. What I would like to know is does it really have 1333Mhz memory? and, if so, why? The only reason I could think of is because the Atom and the ION share that 1gig so they made sure there were enough clock cycles to more than handle them.:?

[Zephik]

I've actually noticed that Amazon is wrong about a lot of things. In my experience, they only get it exactly right about 85% of the time. That's why I'll always just hop on over to Newegg to double check and then check out the manufacturers page to triple check. :p

Also, if you scroll down a bit, it says DDR3. It only says DDR2 in the Amazon description. They really need to get a handle on their descriptions.

What's the point of DDR3 over DDR2 if there really isn't a noticeable difference? Shouldn't they just keep manufacturing the cheaper DDR2 until they have a DDR# that does make a noticeable difference?

Edit: Thought this chart was pretty interesting/helpful.

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/7350/pcspecsmemory9120102.jpg

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/1972/pcspecsprocessor9238796.jpg

Ion had 319MB.
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/3630/pcspecsgraphicscard9369.jpg

[mDust]

What's the point of DDR3 over DDR2 if there really isn't a noticeable difference? Shouldn't they just keep manufacturing the cheaper DDR2 until they have a DDR# that does make a noticeable difference?DDR3, in regards to DDR2, operates at higher frequencies but tends to have higher latency. The latencies have and probably will continue to fall as the technology is further refined, just as it did for DDR2. This will happen until DDR4 or another technology outperforms it. And nope, they shouldn't keep making the same technology forever...it's evolution.
A benefit of DDR3 is that it operates at lower voltage, thus reducing the heat it pumps into your case, which improves energy efficiency. I'm not sure if the battery life would be noticeably different, but it looks good on paper!:)

[Zephik]

Well forget that HP Netbook with ION! Now this is more like it...

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/09/21/asus-12-inch-eee-netbook-with-nvidia-ion-windows-7-11-hour-battery-leaked/

Now to start saving my pennies... sigh, this is going to take awhile. lol

Edit: Wait, crap, it's $500... $100 more than the HP. Damn. I really need to get a second job. lol

Edit2: Oooh, apparently it's getting a dual core atom! So that's why it's $100 more than the HP...

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/13/asuss-ion-based-eee-pc-1201n-non-ion-1201ha-turn-up-in-yet-ano/

[x88x]

IDK if you're still looking, or how long the deal is gonna last, but I stumbled onto this earlier today on Giz:
Lenovo Ideapad U350, base model for $440 (usually $700)

http://dealzon.com/deals/lenovo-ideapad-u350-13-3-inch-1-3ghz-pentium-su2700-led-laptop-w-hdmi-out

[Zephik]

Still looking, although not going to be able to afford one anytime soon unfortunately. Goal 1 is to get a phone, which will take a month or two. Goal 2 is to get the netbook/notebook. And somewhere in-between I might find a job to speed things along a bit, but it took me 3 months and 60 applications just to get the job I have now and that was with transportation. Now I have no transportation so I'm limited to my immediate surroundings. But.. Pawn 1 is hiring, so maybe I'll get in. ^_^

Gah, if I could just make what I used to make ($600 a month working what I thought at the time to be the minimum line for part time) I'd have like almost $300 extra a month! That'd be so perfect...