Aren't the processors in the laptops the same as the desktops?
No. The processors in the laptops have been designed to be more power efficient and give off less heat making it more portable. This means you don't have the as much power as you have in the desktop. In this blog post I hope to explain the differences between the Mobile i3, i5, i7 and their desktop counterparts. In most current laptops the current processors are the mobile chips from AMD, The dual Pentium, The Core2 Duo, i3, i5 and i7. As stated before the laptop chips are meant to be mobile so if you were to take a desktop i7 using the Socket 1156 or the 1366 socket you would have a 8" high laptop. So we give up clock speed, and for the most part the number of cores on the processor. *To be fair I am putting a disclaimer. This is my best educated guess as to the processors that Apple has selected and may actually differ from the actual processor being used in the laptop. Apple doesn't release the chip spec it has selected for it's laptops. Based on the information available this is my best guess for the actual processors inside the Macbook / Macbook Pro. If apple or anyone would like to provide the actual Macbook for disassembling, I would be happy to confirm my guess.
Below you will find a lot of technical information about the mobile CPU's and GPU's but for those of you who aren't as technically interested I'll just sum up everything here. Your best Value for a high end laptop processors would be something with the i5 540, the i7 720QM or a desktop Phenom X4. The i7 720QM is a 4 core processor and has hyper-threading. It is pretty much as good as your going to get for an i7 without completely draining the bank. If you can manage to get a Phenom X4 it's a desktop processor so your getting desktop power just remember to watch the temperature of the CPU and battery life. The i5 540 is a dual core with hyper threading and the i7 620M doesn't offer much more performance over the i5. So if I were to buy a Mac Laptop I would go with the i5 540. It's $200 cheaper, granted the GT 330M that comes with the 15" i5 only has 256MB dedicated video but for most of the Mac and windows laptop games available it should be good enough. It will play starcraft 2 really good.
As for overall value I would say if you can find a laptop with any of the following mobile processors and one of the dedicated mobile video cards, you will probably get a good deal.
Mobile Processors:
i7 720QM, i5 540, i5 450, Core2 P8600, P8700, P8800, T9000 Series. AMD Phenom Quad Core.
Mobile Graphics Cards:
ATI Cards: 5430, 5450, 5470, 5650, 5730, 5750
NVIDIA Cards: GeForce 310M, 320M, 330M, 220M, 230M, 240M, 260M
Apple Intel Processors
High End MacBook Pros
Apple has selected the i7 620M and the i5 540. Both are dual core processors and both have the Intel HD Integrated Graphics Chips in the processor. The i7 has the faster clock speed and more smart cache.
Intel® Core™ i7-620M Processor (4M Cache, 2.66 GHz)
Intel® Core™ i5-540M Processor (3M Cache, 2.53 GHz)
Mid-Range
For the midrange Apple more the likely slected the i5 520M because it doesn't support ECC memory. With that exception the two processors are virtually identical.
Intel® Core™ i5-520M Processor (3M Cache, 2.40 GHz) or Intel® Core™ i5-520E Processor (3M Cache, 2.40 GHz)
Entry Level / Low End
The entry level MacBook and MacBook Pro are 2.4 GHz Core2 processors and more then likely is the P8600 due to the front side bus being 1066 MHz and the Intel Trusted Execution Technology.
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T8300
or
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor P8600
Other more common laptop processors.
Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Processor
Intel® Core™ i7-620M Processor
Intel® Core™ i5-540M Processor
Intel® Core™ i5-520M Processor
Intel® Core™ i5-430M Processor
Intel® Core™ i3-350M Processor
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor P9600
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T9550
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor P8800
Intel® Core™2 Processor P8700
Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q9000
Below you will find a comparison of the listed CPUs.
This table is sorted by the approximate speed of the (laptop) CPU.
Note, that there are also some desktop processors in the list (because some laptops are equiped with desktop CPUs and for comparison).
The table below is a list of all currently common video graphic cards in laptops / notebooks including benchmarks and specs. The list is ranked by the aproximate speed of the GPU (may differ with some 3DMark values).
| 1 | ATI | Mobility Radeon HD 5870 | Broadway-XT | 800 | 700 | 700 | 1000 | 128 | 11 | 40 | 17932 | 12711 | 7860 | 7584 | 5836 | | 48 |
| 2* | NVIDIA | GeForce GTX 460M | GF106 | 192 | 675 | 1350 | 1250 | | 11 | 40 | | | | | | | |
| 3 | ATI | Mobility Radeon HD 4870 | M98-XT | 800 | 550 | 550 | 888 | 256 | 10.1 | 55 | 16349 | 10655 | 6631 | 6139 | 5190 | | 43 |
| 4 | NVIDIA | GeForce GTX 280M | N10E-GTX | 128 | 585 | 1463 | 950 | 256 | 10 | 55 | 18414 | 12569 | 6328 | 5243 | 5846 | 105 | 45 |
| 5 | NVIDIA | GeForce GTX 260M | N10E-GT | 112 | 550 | 1375 | 950 | 256 | 10 | 55 | 14773 | 10167 | 4953 | 4316 | 3966 | 120 | 35 |
| 6* | NVIDIA | GeForce GTS 260M | N10E-GS | 96 | 550 | 1375 | 1800 | 128 | 10.1 | 40 | | | | | | | |
| 7* | ATI | Mobility Radeon HD 5750 | Madison-XT | 400 | 550 | 550 | 1600 | 128 | 11 | 40 | | | | | | | |
| 8* | ATI | Mobility Radeon HD 5730 | Madison | 400 | 650 | 650 | 800 | 128 | 11 | 40 | 14020 | 7258 | 3812 | 3 Posted via email from The OptionKey Blog
 There has been lot's of pressure is being put on RIM the manufacture of the popular BlackBerry platform about making their system less secure and giving governments access to the data on RIM's Servers. This will be a huge loss to consumers rights and privacy if RIM allows this. Is doing business in oppressive counties worth the hit to RIM's reputation as a secure way to transmit important communications in the name of "National Security"? Governments use this excuse to justify anything that will violate and/or take way a persons rights that are granted to citizen by their respective nations constitutions, in Canada the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Governments say they have to do this to stop terrorists; well I would argue wouldn't it be easier to track or restrict the purchasing of products that can be used to create harmful weapons or discourage these kind of plans be easier (i.e. banning and prohibiting the sale of large knives, guns and materials that can be made into explosives). Granted materials such as fertilizer can be used to make explosives, but you can uses security checks when people who what large and/or highly pure quantities of the material. In a age of hyper paranoia by our governments; a "Big Brother" approach from George Orwell's 1984 seems to be the approach our so called "elected officials" like to take all in the name of protecting our national security. What I find interesting that even according to RIM's own website RIM it's self can't access the messages on their own servers due to their security policy "The operators of the BlackBerry Infrastructure don’t have access to the customer keys and therefore can’t see the content of any of the messages." There was a time like during the "cold war era" where technology like this was banned from being in so called unfriendly countries. So if security is such a concern why do we give these unfriendly countries this kind of technology? Wouldn't be easier to ban it? Where is the corporate responsibility to our own private security? Where is our "elected" governments responsibility to our "privacy". Why do they allow this kind of allow the trade of this kind of technology with people who want to supposedly destroy us? Are we as a people willing to allow the loss of our Freedoms for short term financial gain? Are we so blinded and uninterested in our own political process that those who are elected get a free pass to do what they want with little or no question? At what point are will people say enough is enough. In Canada there are plans to scrap the long form census, the government feels it's a violation of your privacy, but they'll go to facebook and demand your personal information if they think they need it. Is it hypocritical or is it just the way things are? Over the last 20 years the world has changed dramatically, where we go from here is up to us. These issues with RIM and The United Arab Emirates, Google and China are just the beginning. I don't know about you but I'm going to be watching our Federal and Provincial governments very closely for changes like this. Here in Canada your innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent. Unless we favor kangaroo courts like the ones being played out in Guantanamo Bay and in William Shakepeare's The Winters Tale. Then they will want to "kill all the lawyers". - (Shakespeare's King Henry VI; Act IV, Scene II) where the laws will be made by the few elite in a mocked up "democracy" that will not have any benefit for anyone but the rich. There are two ways we can go, one where laws are made fair for everyone or not at all. If we lose what we have then we become no better then those who would want to destroy us.
Posted via email from The OptionKey Blog
Intel's iSeries Processors i3, i5, i7 What's the difference and where are we going?
Where have we been?To understand where we are and why we need to know where we came from so a quick summary of Intel processor history. Back in about 2006, Intel produced the Intel Pentium M processor, which's designed was based on the Pentium III. The Pentium M was a low power consuming, fast and efficient processor designed for laptops. The new chip designed also shortened the stages (instruction length)to 12-14 from 31 in the Pentium D there by out performing the Pentium D in most applications dispite the MHz Myth. Where we are.The i3, i5 and i7 LGA1156 is NOT Nehalem, it's Westmere a different architecture. i7 LGA1366 is Nehalem and has the memory controller on the processor is a nice neat package. The LGA 1156 boots the memory controller off the die. The memory controller works very similar to the P45/X48 Chipsets only the i series hasn't been optimized for channeling the memory that way. This affects how much though put the memory bandwidth uses (or how fast it is). The memory bandwidth is has increased it just hasn't increased as much as we would like considering what we seen on performance with the i7 LGA1366.
i3 Processors
i3 5xx
Dual Core Processors. They have hypertreading and an integrated GPU, but no integrated memory controller, and no automatic overclocking feature.
Popular i35xx
i3 550 (Believed to be in iMac)
i3 540 (Believed to be in iMac)
i3 530
|
i5 Processors
i5 56xx
Dual Core Processors. They have hypertreading and an integrated GPU, but no integrated memory controller, and no automatic overclocking feature.
Popular i56xx
i5 650
i5 57x
Quad Core Processors. They have an automatic overclocking feature and a direct 16x PCI Express lane into the CPU. No hyperthreading and no integrated memory controller and no integrated graphics.
Popular i5 57x
i5 750 (Believed to be in iMac)
i5 760 (Believed to be in iMac)
|
i7 Processors
i7 8xx
Quad Core processors. They have hyperthreading, and a direct 16x PCI Express lane into the CPU, and a automatic overclocking feature. No integrated memory controller.
Popular i7 8xx
i7 870 (Believed to be used in high end iMac)
i7 9xx
Quad Core processors. Has all features.
Popular i7 9xx
i7 920
i7 930
i7 960
|
Sysmark 2007 Overall
Sysmark 2007 Video Creation
Sysmark 2007 productivity
Sysmark 2007 3D
CS4 Benchmark
DivX with Xmpeg
x264 Encode 720p
Cinebench R10 Single Thread
Cinebench R10 Multi Threaded
7zip
Sonar8 Multitrack audio export
Sources:
http://www.anandtech.com
http://www.intel.com
Well there here; the new iMac line up and how disappointing. I have several issues with the new iMac and I think it has to do with Intel more then it has to do with Apple even though the Apple/Intel relationship has something to do with the issue as well. For a minute let's pretend that the i3 and i5 Processors aren't a huge rip off for the consumer and that all the great technology that is in the Nehalem chip (i7) is in these processors, then everything would be rosy. The reality is if you think your getting everything in Nehalem think again. The i3 and i5* processors are dual processor chips with a integrated graphics chip in the processor instead of the integrated memory controller which is what made Nehalem the processor everyone wanted. Much like the days of the Pentium D, Intel is on a huge marketing spree to (in my opinion) sell us consumers sub prime processors. Having a Core2 Quad and a Core2 Duo, I have nothing against Intel when they come out with a great product. The Core2 Processor is a great product; the i7 (Socket 1366) is a great product. The i7 on 1156 is a mediocre product, and the i3 and i5 are in my opinion not worth the money. Usually when you buy a Mac, if you were to buy EQUIVALENT HARDWARE, you would get an equivlant price on the PC you get either the same price or the PC is more expensive. This is not the case anymore. According to CPU Benchmark and the following benchmarks Apple could be putting in much better processors for the same price if they would switch vendors for their iMac's and Mac Mini line. With the exception of the 1156 Socket Pentium you can't get much lower then an i3 processor. It is the "Celeron" of these new series processors. Intel has a huge selection of processors to choose from but Apple went with pretty much bottom of the barrel and I for one am not impressed. So if Apple went with a Phenom II X4 925 they would be giving consumers Quad Core Processors with decent performance and runs for about 143.00 CDN dollars CPU Price/Performance Chart | Intel Core2 Duo E8600 @ 3.33GHz |  | 2,627 | 158 | $289.99 | | Intel Core i3 550 @ 3.20GHz |  | 2,794 | 144 | $112.00 | | Intel Core i3 540 @ 3.07GHz |  | 2,806 | 142 | $136.00 | | AMD Phenom II X4 925 |  | 3,415 | 103 | $148.00 | | AMD Athlon II X4 635 | | 3,417 | 145 | $143.00 | | Intel Core i5 760 @ 2.80GHz | | 4,941 | 43 | $214.99 | | AMD Phenom II X6 1055T |  | 5,169 | 35 | $218.00 | | Intel Core i7 870 @ 2.93GHz |  | 5,850 | 21 | $341.00 | | AMD Phenom II X6 1090T |  | 6,080 | 19 | $319.00 | BenchMarks Not all processors listed are in the benchmarks. The benchmarks are purley for referance, so you can see where the performance / price chart came from. 
As you can see from the benchmarks the i3 runs better for applications that don't take advantage of multi-threading, this will change in the future, multi threaded apps like Google Chrome, for example are the way of the future. On the iMacs I don't have an issue with the i5 760 or the i7 870, Ya, I would prefer a socket 1366 i7 but that isn't going to happen. I just don't know what Apple is thinking having low end dual core processors in the iMacs. Most computers even budget ones are coming quadcore, unless you really cheap out. With the advancement of multi threaded software, dual core processors will soon be as outdated as the single processor predecessor. I guess what I'm saying is Apple really cheeped out on the entry and mid-level iMac, and I wouldn't recommend it. I can't believe I'm going to say this but if your looking for an entry to mid level computer I'd go with an AMD Windows 7 64bit computer before an iMac. * Most of the i5 processors are dual core only a few select models are quad core processors. Imac Replacement | | iMac | OptionKey iMac PC System | | Processor: | 3.06GHz Intel Core i3 (Dual Core) | AMD PHENOM II X6 1055T 2.8GHZ | | Monitor | 21.5" 1920-by-1080 resolution (LED) | View Sonic VX2250WM (LED) 21.5” 1920x1080 resolution | | Memory | 4GB (two 2GB) | KINGSTON DDR3 4096MB (2 X 2GB) | | Hard Drive | 500GB hard drive | 1.5 TB Hard Drive | | DVD-RW | 8x double-layer SuperDrive | 24X DVD/CD RW With LIGHTSCRIBE | | Video Card | ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB | SAPPHIRE HD 5770 1GB with Eyefinity | | Price: | $1299.00 | $1243.00 | | OptionKey iMac Replacement System Build | Total: $1243.00 | | Processor | AMD Phenom 1055T 6 Core Processor | $218.00 | | Motherboard | ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3 880G+SB850 | $110.00 | | Ram | KVR1333D3N9K2/4G 4096MB | $108.00 | | Hard Drive | SEAGATE 1.5TB ST31500341AS | $88.88 | | Optical Drive | DVD-RW LG GH24LS50 24X DVDRW With LIGHTSCRIBE | $30.00 | | Video Card | SAPPHIRE HD 5770 1GB | $176.00 | | Case & PSU | ANTEC SONATA III With 500W PSU | $125.00 | | Operating System | 7 HOME PREMIUM 64-BIT | $115.00 | | Monitor | View Sonic VX2250WM LED 21.5” Display 1920 X 1080 | $225.00 | | Keyboard & Mouse | LOGITECH WIRELESS DESKTOP MK300 | $48.00 | iMac as a PC | OptionKey Entry Level iMac as a PC System Build | Total: $1146.88 | | Processor | i3 540 @ 3.06 GHz | $136.00 | | Motherboard | ASUS P7P55D | $154.00 | | Ram | KVR1333D3N9K2/4G 4096MB | $108.00 | | Hard Drive | SEAGATE 1.5TB ST31500341AS | $88.88 | | Optical Drive | DVD-RW LG GH24LS50 24X DVDRW With LIGHTSCRIBE | $30.00 | | Video Card | SAPPHIRE HD 5670 1GB | $117.00 | | Case & PSU | ANTEC SONATA III With 500W PSU | $125.00 | | Operating System | 7 HOME PREMIUM 64-BIT | $115.00 | | Monitor | View Sonic VX2250WM LED 21.5” Display 1920 X 1080 | $225.00 | | Keyboard & Mouse | LOGITECH WIRELESS DESKTOP MK300 | $48.00 | The my iMac build is slightly better then the Apple build. Note the 1.5TB hard drive, the 5670 with 1gb of Video Ram, and has a LED display as well. It is also $152.12 cheaper then the iMac. The motherboard also has E-SATA on the motherboard, firewire 400, digital optical audio out, and 7.1 sound on board the motherboard. I could have made it even cheaper but I wanted to demonstrate that you can get a better pc with close to the same parts as the iMac. Sources: http://www.apple.ca
http://www.b-com.ca http://www.hardwarecanucks.com http://techreport.com/ http://www.cpubenchmark.net Posted via email from The OptionKey Blog
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USB 3 introduced earlier this year has been hailed as the latest greatest thing to come to peripherals since USB 2. Unlike USB 2 it is not suppose to stuffer from the bandwidth and burst issues USB 2 has had where you can't get a consistent through put. That being said USB 3 is great to bad I don't think it will be around for long. Let me introduce you to Light Peak. Light Peak is intended as a single universal replacement for current buses such as SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire, PCI Express and HDMI. Intended to remove some of the problems in the computer industry that are now apparent such as the limited transfer speeds and the maximum length of electrical cables (5 meters for a standard USB 2.0 cable).
