How fast are new processors?

[rokahn]

Anyone have a sense of the expected performance difference between a T400s (Core 2 Duo P9600 @2.53GHz) and the new T410s (i5 520M @2.4GHz)? Passmark doesn't yet list benchmarks for the i5 520M and I don't know what's a good measure of performance in these multicore machines. I've heard the differences are negligible for real-world use. FYI, I'm a developer/project manager so run lots of browsers, office apps, and VMWare for a server image.

[archer6]

Anyone have a sense of the expected performance difference between a T400s (Core 2 Duo P9600 @2.53GHz) and the new T410s (i5 520M @2.4GHz)? Passmark doesn't yet list benchmarks for the i5 520M and I don't know what's a good measure of performance in these multicore machines. I've heard the differences are negligible for real-world use. FYI, I'm a developer/project manager so run lots of browsers, office apps, and VMWare for a server image.

You can look up the info on Intel's site as far as a pure comparison of the processors. However as I'm sure you know there are many variables, one being the speed of the hard drive. Thus your "real world" experience may be disappointing as you will find they are not much faster at regular tasks. If you are a designer and use very resource intensive apps than you will notice some difference. Over the years I've upgraded to a new T series at each new release, and even when doing design work I find the increases are hardly ever striking with a few exceptions. At the end of the day, it's all about how _you_ use the computer and what your trying to accomplish.

Cheers...

[thitiv]

I used this as a guideline when I was shopping for the T9900 CPU to replace the T9400 in my T500:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Pro ... 436.0.html

You can restrict the page to show only notebook CPUs.

According to the page, here's the ranking:

#07, Intel Core 2 Duo T9900
#13, Intel Core i5 520M
#16, Intel Core 2 Duo P9600

[Volker]

As usual, expect about 20% speed increase per generation and core. Some benchmark entries on http://www.notebookcheck.net seem dubious and its completely unclear how they sort the entries. But mostly they confirm the above rule of thumb.

The real take-away of the benchmark list is the big gap between desktop i7 and mobile processors. Not so long ago the fastest laptop was essentially as fast as the fastest desktop, but that has changed. As the core count on desktop chips increases I expect this gap to widen further...

[okashira]

Slap an Intel X-25M G2 80gb in the main hard disk bay, and with the new T410's platform, it will fully exploit the full speed of SATA2 and the new processor. The system it will SCREAM relative to those piddly 2.5" hdd's. My desktop boots in 13 seconds to being fully usable in windows from the OS selection screen. I expect the T410 to be no worse.

A fresh install and a few tweaks, including leaving the page file on the X-25M, and you can have ~62 gb's of usable space with Win7 and basic applications installed.

[Volker]

Slap an Intel X-25M G2 80gb in the main hard disk bay

The perfect configuration would be an X-18M G2 as the internal ssd drive, and a large conventional hdd in the bay. That gives you the best of both worlds in one machine.

The only problem (well, apart from the price) is the limited availability of the X-18M G2.

[rokahn]

> My desktop boots in 13 seconds to being fully usable in windows from the OS selection screen.

I have a toshiba 256GB FDE SSD (which I assume is comparable to the Intel) and Win7 (with the default Thinkpad load) on a T400s takes about 90sec to boot to usable interface. 13 seconds is so different that it's hard to believe. What are others' boot times with SSDs'?

[Volker]

>I have a toshiba 256GB FDE SSD (which I assume is comparable to the Intel) and Win7 (with the default Thinkpad load) on a T400s takes about 90sec to boot to usable interface.

Thats way too long, even for Windows standards Some people in the forum have noted performance problems due to the Utimaco SafeGuard, google is your friend.