Centrino or not?

Hello everybody,

I'm need a laptop at school next year, so I'm going to buy on this month,
but there are some things bugging me, maybe you can help!

Right now I'm looking at

€1,109 - Acer Aspire 2012 - Centrino 1,5 / 15.4" / 60GB / 512MB / Dual-DVDRW / M-Radeon 9700 Pro 64Mb
€1,069 - Acer Aspire 1661 - Pentium 2,8 / 15.4" / 60GB / 512MB / Dual-DVDRW / M-Radeon 9700 Pro 64Mb
€1,035 - Acer Aspire 1511 - Athlon 64bit 3000+ / 15,0" / 60GB / 512 / Dual-DVDRW / nVidia 64MB Geforce FX Go5700

Since I'm both an Intel Pentium fan, and a ATI fan, I probably want either the 2012, or the 1661, but I am having
trouble deciding! First of all, does anyone know if a Centrino 1,5 outperforms a Pentium 2,8? How does the Centrino
chip work?

I've read that the battery of the 2012 lasts 5 hours, and the 1661 two hours, can anyone confirm that?
Please help me with this, I need the laptop for heavy applications, Visual Studio .NET (2003), Delphi 8, and Doom3 :P

Thanks in advance!

That's a tricky one. I have a Dell Inspiron Somewhat with a Centrino 1.4 ghz and I'm very happy with it.
I was told that you can double the ghz rate to compare it with a pentium 4. Kinda like the AMD ones, cause of the better architecture. But the again I'm not sure about this.
Keep in mind that the Centrino has built in W-LAN and Bluetooth. And I can confirm the longer battery stay. Mine runs somewhat about 4 and a half hours, which is very much.

So in my opinion, Centrino is the best for a Laptop-build.

Edit: I'll try Doom3 on mine shortly, gonna post the results.
(Centrino 1.4ghz, 768mbram, 9600pro 128mb)

Yeh i see wot you mean mate, its tricky to decide. I have also heard the centrino pentium m is much faster than the p4. Im not really sure but i have read that in a magazine and also my mate has an acer laptop with a 2ghz pentium m in it and it runs extremely fast. heres the one he bought on http://www.acernotebooks.co.uk/acersite/as...archFor=&PT_ID= , you might want to look at that as the laptops on there are cheap.

Okay thanks,

I'll probably choose the centrino build then, the laptop itself has great features,
and if you say I can double the speed, that would be great!

Do you have some doom3 results? (just curiosity)

==

Phil,

Thanks for the advice, but I live in the Netherlands..

I have the Acer Aspire 1503LMI and it's really good. Taken it to Germany for Cebit, LA for E3 and so on. Plays Doom 3 at medium quality and 800x600 (maybe 1024, haven't tried) smoothly. It's an A64 3200+, 512mb RAM, Radeon 9600.

My only complaint is the weight.

Oh well, the Doom3 Results:
Ok, I haven't made any time Demo, but had the fps counter on while playing.
on 1024*768 on high I got very playlable 30 fps, which is quite impressive for a 1.4ghz Centrino and shows it has some power.

Wow, those are good results for a laptop, thanks for the info!
I guess you really can double the speed with a centrino! Can anyone confirm this?


Anyway, I've discussed it with the youknowwhos, and hopefully I'll be able to order this week
Thanks all...

Oh well, the Doom3 Results:
Ok, I haven't made any time Demo, but had the fps counter on while playing.
on 1024*768 on high I got very playlable 30 fps, which is quite impressive for a 1.4ghz Centrino and shows it has some power.

WTF?? i got a centrino 1.5, 512 mb ram and - ok only a - geforce 5200, but i can't play it with an higher resolution than 640x480 without losing a lot of fps. now i'll play it with 640x480 and medium detail. moren than one enemy and my fps will decrease from 30 to 7 or sth. like that.






do not take a centrino!

intel sux³. i got one and i am really unhappy with that shitty cpu made by losers. take an amd and be happy. support that good company!!

are you talking about celeron or centrino there dude?

Go for teh AMD Laptop, ATi controls the mobile market(see if u can get a 9800 mobile) and the AMD is really nice.

Centrino is good for the power usage though

well, i said centrino, so i am talking about centrino and nothing else then centrino ;)

centrino sux, and so does intel ;)