Anyone else disappointed with Santa Rosa?

The new Santa Rosa technology has been alive and kicking for almost a month now, and I have to say that (examining it as I will below) I think it's the most lackluster refresh to Centrino since its inception. I'm sure those of you who have shelled out $2,000 for a new SR rig will gladly disagree, but here is what Santa Rosa has to offer, in order of MOST importance to LEAST importance (in MY opinion):

1) 800 Mhz FSB. This is up from 667 Mhz with Napa/Merom. A whopping increase of 133 Mhz. I realize that FSB Mhz are not equivalent to general CPU Mhz, i.e. a change in FSB is greater than a change in general CPU Mhz, but still... the difference has only really been seen in SuperPi results. Woo!

2) DX10 cards. What a letdown. Nvidia is sure taking their sweet time with their 8 series mobile lineup. They're already planning to release the 9 series in November for desktops due to the 8 series poor performance in DX10 games. Does that mean we can be seeing a 9400M/9600M release sometime next Spring? Who knows. Which brings up another thing. All of you G1s-A1/G2s-A2 users out there that think your 8600 GT GDDR3 is gold... it's not. Here's perspective for you: the best DESKTOP gpu, the 8800 ultra, is having trouble getting respectable framerates in DX10 mode with any high settings or higher resolutions. What makes you think your mobile chip is going to perform better? You'll be playing DX10 games in DX9 mode with your new 8 series card. So I have to ask, what is the point of the 8 series card then? Why not just get a previous-gen 7 series card for cheaper? Oh, and using DX10 means that (at least as of now) you are stuck with using Vista, an OS which makes me barf (again, as of right now).

3) Intel Turbo Memory, i.e. Robson technology. UGH! How many times must it be said? Google it and see the results for yourself: it's USELESS! I mean, I have to give it to Intel that the idea is great, and if implemented properly, could be a huge success for performance and battery life. But cmon, it does nothing currently and sometimes even worsens things. Adding more RAM, anywhere (be it general, video, or now this), should HELP your system right? Apparently not. Oh, and just like DX10, using this useless technology throws you into the whirlpool that is Vista. Sweet!

4) Wireless N cards. And finally, here we go. There is no defined standard yet for N technology, nor will there be for a year or so. Not only that, but there will be no general public usage for it for a very long time. I can't see my university overhauling its G-network for N anytime soon.

Okay, so this is a rant, yes. But let's look at it this way... Penryn will be out first quarter next year, 2008. 45nm fab process seems, at least to me, to offer more promising results than this joke that is Santa Rosa. I say that if you are in the market for a notebook that you need right now, don't automatically discard the previous-gen ones, because their performance is nearly equal to the new Santa Rosa notebooks, and they're also a heck of a lot cheaper.

/end my $0.02

 

you raise some good points. you also missed a few points. in general, i think your expectations are too high. its just and updated chipset.

dx10 video cards are completely unrelated to santa rosa. they are not attached or together in any sense except that intel's santa rosa came out at about the same time as nvidia's 8 series. wait for crysis and ut3 before making dx10 judgement. the 8600m gt is considerably faster than its predecessor (go 7600/7700) even in dx9 games, should you choose to stick with windows xp. the 7 series didn't even introduce any gaming tech beyond what the 6 series offered, but i doubt you would recommend a 6 series card for a new purchase despite it being cheaper.

intel turbo memory is like a side feature of santa rosa. you can still mark your PC "santa rosa" and sell it as such without turbo memory. i agree that it is sort of a flop at the moment. its possible that an update could make it more useful or something... who knows. thats not the only feature of santa rosa though.

santa rosa also introduces some other dynamic clocking functions that preserve and extend battery life and can increase performance. thats probably the biggest deal.

802.11n is useful assuming you have a use for it. we have had enough wifi bandwidth to handle internet since 802.11a, so....

 

Well yes,Only a few applications can take advantage of higher FSB...

Yes,but dont forget you get really good video acceleration which frees cpu,so more power saved.
and one could say there aint any 'native' dx10 games..well,we'll have to wait to see..and new OS + new drivers + new architecture messed up the drivers too as you may see..

Turbo memory hasn't given us what we expected,MS is a part to blame..
We can hope vista SP1 sorts it..

N is backward compatible with g,And it gives some good speed increase for HD streaming et all..

I dont know whatever you meant by

Santa rosa is a platform and not a new processor.It still uses the merom,but with higher FSB et all..

Maybe it was hyped too much,Still it offers same/slightly lower power consumption with slight increase of performance..

 

The poor DX10 performances right are due to bad coding of DX9->DX10 games, there is no native DX10 games right now and due to immature Dx10 drivers.

Nvidia is releasing ther 9800GTX in november not because the 8 sucks in DX10, but because they release a new serie each november.

Nvidia hasn't (as ATI) any high end mobile gpu yet. The only one annouced was the 8800GS and it is in fact the 8700M GT.

Vista is a personal opinion, I use it, I love it. People were bashing winXP at first too and stayed with Win98...

The ATI cards see less performances drop in DX10 but the image is all artefacted so no games are playable using an ATI HD yet... (WiC was patched for it though).

This is all due the immature coding and drivers.

And for the Penryn, no one will need one at launch. Most applications/games are just starting to use dual-core and native quad-core will be the standard in 6 months. It's going faster than what devellopers can do. DX10.1 is already coming at the beggining of next year and there is DX10.0 games yet!

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=150103

Sorry you are way off about DX10 and like someone else said that has nothing to do with santa rosa. Vista makes you barf? Then don't use it. I'm tired of people whining about it, simple as that stick with xp or whatever os you use.

Like JCMS said the poor dx10 results were becausing of bad encoding (encoding in lost planet was a joke) and the other games were not real dx10 game but just patches. Bioshock later this month will be the first full retail DX10 game.

Also why get penryn? Nehalem will shred penryn in terms of performance. Penryn wont be a huge leap in performance but some decent battery life gain which obviously goes with getting a die shirnk.

 

uhmm....why is this thread in the ASUS forums?
mods please move it to hardware

also, I must agree that Santa Rosa was overhyped. It's just a slight change here and there that increase performance and battery life, but it's not some whole new processor. Don't expect THAT much out of it or you'll always be disappointed.

 

My G1S plays my Second Life, and EverQuest 2 better than my old desktop did before I sold it, no complaining about that here.
Core 2 Duo e4300 @ 3.0ghz
evga 8800gts
asus p5n-e sli
1 gb ddr2 667 ram
windows vista home premium
*shrugs* was probably just the 1gb holding me back, but I had to sell it because of a moving situation... and this laptop blows that away in EQ2
I also wasn't really expecting a machine that could take over the world, just seemed pretty good to me at the time so I got it

 

I'll second that.
As always, Intel and its marketing bandwagon have done an excellent job of creating a huge buzz for their products

 

won't directx 10 cards see a performance boost on directx 10 games, while directx 9 cards do not because they do not take advantage of the new features.

 

What I can't understand is why the world and their grandma has ordered a new notebook purely because of these two technologies, namely santa rosa and nvidia's 8000 cards. I'd say the nvidia cards are justified, they do seem more powerful in DX9 than previous cards from ATi or Nvidia, but this huge rush to be at the forefront of technology mystifies me.

Then again, my TV is not flatscreen, plasmascreen, LCD, widescreen, HD ready or digital. My most powerful laptop is three years old. I'm not a new tech person! I'm too poor!

 

just wondring: for wireless N-cards: they can be used in accordance w/ any type of wireless right? like b or g?

 

Santa rosa = socket P
Penryn = socket P

Penryn is just a new processor, it will work on the santa rosa platform.

 

Yes, the Intel pre-N card is also backward compatible and go into a/b/g/ mode.

 

awesome, thanks for the reply

 

No plasma or LCD here either, but my 52" RCA is HD ready. But all I have is basic cable. That's so I can afford DSL. I can't live without high speed internet. I'd rather go without eating first (which sometimes I do). And I'll probably have my Toshiba with Pentium M for years to come unless I win the lottery.

 

Go Blondie! Let's hear it for laptops that do a job and have minimal pose value!

 

Santa Rosa is SO not worth upgrading for.
If you can, wait for Nehalem. Its only a year or so away.

 

hahahahahahahahha

 

Santa Rosa has some good features, at least on paper. However, I'm not seeing all the features working on every notebook so I suspect there are issues of BIOS support.

Anandtech's second look at Turbo Memory shows that it does give potential to increase the running time on battery.

There will always be something better on the horizon.

John

 

Yeah, but the question is how much better.
I belive Nehalem-Santa Rosa is bigger than SantaRosa-Conroe.

Nehalem is gonna have a on chip memory controllers for DDR3, higher FSB

 

i agree, for a saint she doesn't exactly work miracles

 

I say the "slow refresh" is a good thing. I mean, who wants their notebook to look like trash half a year along the road? Certainly not me.

 

It's been implied several times...but too many people miss the point.

It's YOUR choice to buy a product or not. So stop complaining and just don't buy it. Or you can try to create a new product yourself. You're not being forced to buy the products. If the upgrade isn't worth it, invest in something else that is instead of getting the upgrade and then complaining about how it wasn't worth it.

 

no one is upgrading to santa rosa. that would just be ridiculous. its just there for people who are buying new laptops.

 

When I meant upgrading, I also meant buying a brand new notebook with Santa Rosa as one of the factors in getting you to choose that one.

 

well,i dont think there would ever be a 'nehalem-santa rosa' due to the various reasons (some as you stated).

Montevina platform will bring higher FSB,ddr3 to mobiles and will be paired with penryn's..
With nehalem,It brings an sea of changes and we might see FSB wont be quite as important as it is now

 

As with me, I also went with Santa Rosa because I was in the market for a new notebook. I went from a Clevo m570u 2.16, 2gig ram, 7950gtx, 160gb 72k, to a m1330 2.2 ghz, 4 gig ram, wireless n, 8400 nvid only because I was in the market for a new lappy. If I had been satisfied with the size of the m570u then I woulda stuck with it and not went to SR, not enough significant improvement to justify upgrading...

 

Santa Rosa chipset uses much less power than the 945 and it has a SUPERIOR IGP (if Intel ever releases proper drivers for it).

and Dx10? What does that have to do with ANYTHING related to the Santa Rosa? Dx10 in any IGP would be USELESS and simply waste silicon and increase power consumption.

 

Do not forget that in the end, just as masterchef stated, SR is only a chipset; and it does quite well in that respect.
It is a stepping stone, preparing the path for the Intel Peryn CPUs, which are predicted to deliver very high performance. The upgraded integrated graphics might still be integrated and therefore seem trivial when compared with dedicated GPUs, but when compared with any previous Intel mobile integrated graphics chips, such as the GMA950, delivers a significant improvement.

Certainly, a number of features have been overhyped, but in my opinion the Santa Rosa platform brings with it improvements almost as significant as Carmel did back in 2003 (assuming Peryn fares as well as we think it will).

 

As for Wireless N. HOW MANY DAMN TIMES WILL I HAVE TO HEAR PEOPLE SAY "OUUUU even 802.11b is fast enough for the internet?"

I don't use N for the internet. I use it to stream HD Video from my NAS, or to do file transfers. My Laptop is mobile why do I want to tether it with a network cable for 50 mins to do a file transfer. Plus it has better range.

The only big up side to SR is the X3100 integrated graphics, great power consumption and finally a decent 3D gfx chip from intel. Now it just needs some damn drivers.

Like Intel TM with better drivers it's starting to deliver on it's promises. Those reviews are out of date by 6 months when drivers were young. Someone should retest. I'm not saying it makes a huge difference but it's starting to do something unlike back when it first came out, where it did nothing or actually slowed things down.

 

Mine too! Even more, it's underclocked and still performs great.