NEW X40 1.4 GHz (DOTHAN)

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leesiulung · #1 Post by **leesiulung** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 3:05 am

I just went to the IBM website in search for my new Thinkpad... guess what I found... X40's with Dothan

2382ECU
2382HCU

...

It is getting difficult to choose from X31 at 1.6 GHz or X40 with 1.4Ghz. Anyone can suggest some reasons for one or the other?

richarddd · #2 Post by **richarddd** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:19 am

Size, weight, battery life, firewire and other connectors?

WildEye · #3 Post by **WildEye** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:37 am

As far as i could tell from the tabook it has only the cpu upgrades....

ldbobby · #4 Post by **ldbobby** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 3:18 pm

Welp, it also has two internal speakers now rather then 1.

leesiulung · #5 Post by **leesiulung** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 4:09 pm

WildEye wrote:As far as i could tell from the tabook it has only the cpu upgrades....

Yeah... from the website, that is all I could tell that was the difference...

verktyg · #6 Post by **verktyg** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:19 pm

leesiulung wrote:I just went to the IBM website in search for my new Thinkpad... guess what I found... X40's with Dothan

2382ECU
2382HCU

...

It is getting difficult to choose from X31 at 1.6 GHz or X40 with 1.4Ghz. Anyone can suggest some reasons for one or the other?

http://www5.pc.ibm.com/us/products.nsf/ ... p/_2382ECU

Intel Pentium M Processor 738 Low Voltage, 1.4G, 2MB L2, 256 MB, IBM List Price $2,249.00

http://www5.pc.ibm.com/us/products.nsf/ ... p/_2382HCU

Intel Pentium M Processor 738 Low Voltage, 1.4G, 2MB L2, 512 MB, IBM List Price $2,399.00

http://www.intel.com/products/processor ... m#pentiumm

david · #7 Post by **david** » Fri Oct 08, 2004 9:21 am

What is the performance difference between the X40 1.2 and 1.4?

leesiulung · #8 Post by **leesiulung** » Fri Oct 08, 2004 8:06 pm

I would say... depending on your usage. If you do a lot of computation then probably significant due to the 200 MHz increase and the larger 2mb on die cache (principal of locality in action). On the other hand, if you are just using word processing, email etc... you probably won't notice it too much. Primarily these application typically really on hard drive usage more and therefore is limited by the slow 4200rpm drive.

anyone else have any inputs on this?

ipXpert · #9 Post by **ipXpert** » Fri Oct 08, 2004 10:22 pm

23729EU with next day service and damage protection might be going up for sale. I am very temped by this 1.4 but I am a freak like that.

daba · #10 Post by **daba** » Wed Oct 13, 2004 4:34 am

I'm personally going to wait for the 1.4 to be available at my university store. I've been waiting for a Dothan for a long, long time

.

cal4ever · #11 Post by **cal4ever** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:52 pm

daba wrote:I'm personally going to wait for the 1.4 to be available at my university store. I've been waiting for a Dothan for a long, long time .

I see that you're from Berkeley, so I'm assuming you go to UC Berkeley. Anyway, I've just ordered my first IBM (I'm currently a Mac user [12'' pb]). I just ordered the, I guess, Dothan from The Scholar's Workstation. It's not on their website, but they have stopped taking orders for the X-40 Pentium M LV 1.2 and are only taking orders for the 1.4. They should arrive in about 2 weeks. I can't wait. And from the looks of things, Berkeley has a great deal with IBM! The price will remain the same, btw, I think $1540 for the 1.4 at the Scholar's Work Station.

daba · #12 Post by **daba** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 11:52 pm

Yep, it's an awesome price. They have them in stock now I believe. Tax is brutal though.

n3il · #13 Post by **n3il** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 2:38 am

ldbobby wrote:Welp, it also has two internal speakers now rather then 1.

"2 Speakers" is stated because it comes with the X4 slice I believe...

leesiulung · #14 Post by **leesiulung** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 2:55 am

Is there a significant speed difference between a Pentium M 1.6 GHz (Banias) and the Pentium M 738 1.4 GHz (Dothan)?

What about the difference in videocard between the ATI Radeon Mobility and the Intel Extreme?... Will I be able to play Warcraft 3 on the Intel Extreme? (I know I can on the ATI mobility on X31)...

Deciding wether I wanna get the X40 or X31.... surely many others have the same problem...

kingcrimson · #15 Post by **kingcrimson** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 12:09 pm

I second this question. I currently have a X31 with 1.6 Banias and I'm thinking about buying a X40 with 1.4 Dothan. Would it be (roughly) slower / faster / same? I do mostly general productivity and number-crunching (such as simulations, data mining, etc.), no multimedia or anything graphics-heavy.

whizkid · #16 Post by **whizkid** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:14 pm

leesiulung, I'd wager that for serious number crunching, the X40 will outshine the X31.

First, the Dothan has a larger (100% larger!) cache. That memory runs at full CPU speed, or (IIRC) 3200MB/s bandwidth. Having a larger data set can make a big difference in speed, depending on the exact computations.

Second, the X40 main RAM runs at 2664MB/s (PC2700), or 25% faster than the 2128MB/s (PC2100) than the X31. If you have a lot of data to move, that will make a difference.

The X31 at 1.7GHz is only 21.4% faster than the X40 at 1.4GHz and should only do better with small data sets that fit in its smaller cache.

If you are going to be doing a LOT of this serious number crunching, I wouldn't look at any X series, but size matters to you, so I'd benchmark them (using your exact software) if I could.

In the extremes though, the X31 could be at MOST 21.4% faster than the X40. Uhm, my brain can't figure out the calculation for how much faster the X40 could be right now.

Riddil · #17 Post by **Riddil** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:01 pm

Welp, I have one on my desk right now.

I got it almost a week ago to replace my X31.

Honestly... go with the X40. The battery life is nearly 3x with the extended battery, and while the dimensions look pretty close... the X40 feels much much smaller. Also, the screen seems much brighter, with better clarity.

One piece of advice though: As soon as you get one, wipe out the preload. That thing is a BEAST. They've loaded all the same apps that they're putting on the 2.0GHz machines, and it just can't handle it. I was really upset with the "poor performance", until I did a fresh install, and now it screams along.

PaulO · #18 Post by **PaulO** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:12 pm

One piece of advice though: As soon as you get one, wipe out the preload. That thing is a BEAST. They've loaded all the same apps that they're putting on the 2.0GHz machines, and it just can't handle it. I was really upset with the "poor performance", until I did a fresh install, and now it screams along.

Riddil: what are the preloads that bog the machine down? How do you do a clean install (do you reformat the hard drive and install XP from the disks)?[/quote]

HarryWild · #19 Post by **HarryWild** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 8:50 pm

I read in a hardware forum; that the addition of another 1 meg of internal cache boast the performance an additional 15%!

In your situation; your X31 might be a 5400rpm or 7200rpm hard drive while the X40's harddrive is only 4200rpm. This make a big impact on performance and feel of performance. So I could consider buying a X40 with the Dothan CPU if you have alot of calc type work such as spreadsheets or autocad. I guess that anything involving hard drive access like searches, database, internet surfing, etc... better off looking at the hard drive more then the CPU speed first and then CPU!

verktyg · #20 Post by **verktyg** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 7:01 pm

kingcrimson wrote:I second this question. I currently have a X31 with 1.6 Banias and I'm thinking about buying a X40 with 1.4 Dothan. Would it be (roughly) slower / faster / same? I do mostly general productivity and number-crunching (such as simulations, data mining, etc.), no multimedia or anything graphics-heavy.

I would think it would be a push if they both had the same amount of memory and the X31 had a 5400 RPM HDD. My X31 came with a 40g 5400 RPM drive.

All of the X40s I've seen have 4200 RPM HDDs plus the X31's ATI video uses it's own memory so you should get faster screen re-paints.

I use my laptops mainly as large palm pilots with the occasional Power Point presentation. Speed for me is a function of how fast it boots, goes in and out of suspend and how fast programs load.

leesiulung · #21 Post by **leesiulung** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:33 am

Well I ended up getting a X31 with 5400 rpm drive. I love it, and think that I am much happier with it than the x40. The reason is the faster processor, hard drive and video card. The standard 6 cell battery is also a pluss... I don't like the larger protruding battery and the smaller is 4 cell, which have been reported to last only 2.5 hours, vs the 4 hours from the 6 cell.

I also did not like the placement of the X40 hard drive, right beneath the palm rest. In my case I would be resting my palm on that piece, which eventually probably would get loose. Bad design.

2mb cache does speed up things a little bit, but once you can't find the data you want to access then you have to go to hard disk. The difference between getting data straight from RAM and disk is a significant factor. So unless you are doing a lot of calculations in memory, you will probably benefit more from the 5400 rpm drive. I.e. loading a lot of applications would be significatnly faster. Also it would not surprise me that a 4200 rpm drive at 2.5" outperforms the 1.8"... the same way a 5400rpm 3.5" probably would outperform a 2.5"...

of course this is my personal opinion and I am obviously biased at this point.

NEW X40 1.4 GHz (DOTHAN)

NEW X40 1.4 GHz (DOTHAN)

Re: NEW X40 1.4 GHz (DOTHAN)

x40 Dothan

How do you do a clean install?

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