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by Dustin Sklavos

INTRODUCTION

Well, I can say with relative certainty that I was largely off with my predictions for 2006 in what would happen with the notebook market. That's okay; this is a screwy market and certainly we shouldn't be relying on manufacturers to release products on time and as publicized. The sign of a good marketing department is being able to take a lame duck and make it look like it's swimming.

There are other factors I didn't account for in my predictions for the past year, and then there were just random surprises and shifts in the marketplace.

Ultimately, 2006 was an odd but nonetheless exciting year for technology, albeit less so for the notebook market which will have to wait until 2007 for all this crazy desktop technology to make the transition.

2006 IN PROCESSORS

DUAL CORE AND X64

I described these two as &quot;no way back&quot; technological milestones for processors, and that's for the most part the case. Superficially.

64-bit technology is, I'm convinced, fairly stillborn. For certain, the transition in the mobile market was made this year from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo, and the Turion 64 X2 hit the pavement face first.

The problem is that 64-bit processors have been around for a while now, existing entirely as glorified 32-bit chips, and this year didn't do anything to change that. Windows Vista has been frequently delayed, and early reports of the 64-bit version haven't exactly been stellar, citing it as incrementally better than XP Professional x64. The consensus from beta testers has been that even if you can run it, run the 32-bit Vista instead. Ouch.

Multi-core chips, however, have had a much smoother ride and have successfully trickled down to the budget market. Multi-threaded applications haven't been surfacing as much as we'd hoped, but the technology has a foothold and at least the benefits to it have been immediate.

The bonus to notebook users, however, has been that now you can have 64-bit dual core processors, sealing that future-proofing deal in case either technology ever becomes truly relevant.

Bitter? Naw. But my experience with dual core processing coming off of a high-powered single core chip has left me somewhat wanting. It's not revolutionary, only evolutionary.

INTEL STEALS PAGES FROM AMD'S MARKETING PLAYBOOK

Intel's marketing department - the same one that kept the Pentium 4 alive well after its usefulness - seems to have shot itself in the face this year. Let me explain.

First of all, you're relying almost entirely on the model number to differentiate between a Yonah (Core Duo) and Merom (Core 2 Duo) based notebook. Apparently it would've killed Intel to term the Merom-based notebooks Centrino 2 Duo or Centrino Duo 64, or some kind of signifier that said these chips were better.

Second of all, it doesn't even actually matter that much. Merom was such an incremental upgrade to Yonah that it by and large went unnoticed. If you visit the forums here and see the initial wave of &quot;should I upgrade my notebook Core Duo to a Core 2 Duo?&quot; threads, you'll see that the answer was frequently &quot;no, it's not really worth it.&quot; Because it's not: at the same clock speed you see a 10% performance increase at most. More than that, the 64-bit functionality isn't relevant and it's unlikely it will become relevant in the lifetime of that notebook.

Third of all, early announcements and all around media pimping of the Merom made the Yonah appear half-baked before it was even out of the gate; even my article from the beginning of the year hyped it as much. The question became &quot;should I wait for Core 2 Duo?&quot; I wish I could've known to say &quot;no.&quot; Merom is essentially an undervolted, underclocked Conroe desktop chip. Die hard computer geeks, who does Turion 64 that remind Turion 64 you of Turion 64?

Probably one of the most disappointing points in all this is that Intel should be improving battery life with new iterations of its mobile chips, or at least stabilizing it. But the Core 2 Duo's 10% performance improvement has, for the first time in the history of the Centrino platform, put the performance ahead of battery life. If you want Core 2 Duo power, you'd better be willing to trade a bit of battery life for it. For most of us, that's just not worth it.

Intel had a really good thing going with the Centrino platform and it's disappointing to see it suddenly stagnate.

Amusingly, it was Intel's release in the desktop market that really blew away all of us tech geeks. The desktop Core 2 Duo is by all accounts an absolute monster. When I can achieve better than AMD top of the line performance from my $320 Intel processor, that's a huge deal. The desktop Core 2 Duo, codenamed Conroe, is so good and so efficient that notebook manufacturers were talking about putting them in desktop replacement notebooks around August of this year.

To wit: this is a desktop chip that is faster, cooler, and more heat efficient than the Mobile Athlon 64s AMD was putting into notebooks as recently as last year. So I guess my $20,000 question is: why can't I get this in a notebook yet? If Gateway and HP were shoehorning a freaking Prescott Pentium 4 into a 15.4&quot; chassis, Conroe seems like an obvious choice.

Hopefully we'll see it in 2007.

AMD ARRIVES TO THE PARTY WITH TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

Guys, you hurt me. I've been batting for the green team for years. The notebook I had before my current one was AMD. The desktop I had before my current one ran through two different AMD processors. If all things are equal, I buy AMD.

I said that the Turion 64 X2 had a real chance to get a foothold in the mobile market as the first 64-bit dual core notebook processor.

Now, I've read that AMD's shrewd purchase of ATI is going to mean ATI has to stop paper launching hardware and start putting it on the shelves when they say they're going to. That's wonderful. Who's going to hold AMD to that?

The Turion 64 X2 arrived so late to the party that the word &quot;Merom&quot; was already on everyone's lips by the time it made it to shelves. Worse still, the Turion 64 X2 frankly...sucks. Maybe that's too harsh, but performance wise it isn't measuring up to Intel's mobile offerings.

The 64 X2 is available in 1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz, and 2 GHz flavors. The problem is that Intel's low end on Core Duo's release was 1.66 GHz, their high end was 2.16 GHz, and the Core Duo is generally a more efficient architecture than the 64 X2. Ouch.

Worse, reports surfaced that the pricing on the Turion 64 X2s wasn't even very competitive as a budget solution against the Core Duos, a market segment that AMD had traditionally excelled in tapping. It hearkens back to how frustrated I was when the Athlon 64s were released with price tags in the same brackets as Intel's Pentium 4s.

Note to AMD: there's no shame in grossly undercutting the competition on price. After all, Intel just did that to you with the desktop Core 2 Duo, forcing you to make massive cuts to the pricing of your desktop line as well as making you rely on Dell, the perennial supporter of the underpowered and overpriced. (Note how Dell was the only company to aggressively try to keep Pentium 4s afloat in their heyday.)

It isn't all bad news on AMD's front.

The purchase of ATI was an extremely odd one initially. Why not nVidia, the company that's been producing the finest AMD chipsets on the market for years now, while ATI and Intel had been cozying up? So glad you asked.

Purchasing ATI does two things for AMD: it gives them an experienced in-house chipset developer, something they haven't enjoyed for a while, and it hamstrings Intel, who had been relying on ATI to produce budget IGPs and boards (ironically better than their mainstream IGPs) for their platform. Intel and ATI had also been collectively pimping ATI's desktop Crossfire dual graphics platform.

If nothing else, AMD is learning, and they're working on a genuinely competitive PLATFORM. Not just a name for a chip, but a complete chip and chipset package to compete with Intel's market dominating Centrino initiative.

Would I buy AMD hardware? Ask me again in six months.

As a sidenote, this purchase may finally force nVidia's hand on SLI certification. If nVidia finally opens up the spec (says the guy with a P965 board with two graphics card slots), it wouldn't be very good for AMD/ATI, but it would be GREAT for the consumer and GREAT for nVidia. But for now, SLI remains limited to nVidia boards. At least, officially.

2006 IN GRAPHICS: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Notebook graphics made very incremental improvements this year, if that, but there were SOME improvements and by and large I was correct in one prediction: this year's low end does indeed rival last year's existing mid range.

ATI

The effects of the AMD buyout on ATI and their relation to the graphics industry are too hard to tell for the future, but they were pretty clear for this year: while their desktop products continued with refresh after refresh, their mobile products stagnated and more than that, the big four-pipeline IGP release they had planned wound up getting seriously delayed and not surfacing at all, leaving us to deal with a refresh in name only of the Radeon Xpress 200M, called the Radeon Xpress 1100 and 1150. Woo.

The rumored driver that allows the notebook to switch to an IGP part on battery also never surfaced, but rumors are that it will surface next year as part of AMD's mobile platform initiative.

The X1600 largely remained ATI's mobile part of choice this year, with a minor refresh into the X1700 toward the end of the year that saw a very minor performance improvement if any, but lower power consumption and heat dissipation. I'm pleased to report that at least in the mobile world, their X1600 architecture certainly lived a better life than it did in the desktop world where it had the misfortune of tangling with nVidia's infinitely superior (and still choice) GeForce 7600GT.

ATI's relationship with Intel is, unfortunately, now largely up in the air. While they were doing everyone a favor and producing IGPs for Intel's low end this year, they're drying up, and it's unlikely we'll see another part for Intel out of the ATI camp.

NVIDIA

I apologize, I've been entirely too negative. This was the year that made me an nVidia convert and believer, and I wasn't the only one. nVidia's mobile market share grew by leaps and bounds.

It seems like in the course of a few months, nVidia's GeForce Go 6100 and 6150 IGPs swept the Radeon Xpress under the rug, and with good reason. While their performance is only incrementally better than the Radeon Xpress, it's still better. With the advent of this part, major manufacturers like HP made the switch to nVidia entirely.

The Go 7300, 7400, and especially 7600 parts all made big splashes this year and rightfully so. The Go 7600, in particular, has excellent thermal characteristics that in many instances made it a more desirable part to use than the X1600 and it's my understanding it's also the less expensive of the two. The Go 7400 saw excellent market penetration as well.

I'm very impressed with the turnaround nVidia's made in the mobile market; 2006 saw them really become a major player instead of just an alternative to ATI, and it's my understanding they actually succeeded ATI as a producer of mobile parts.

2006 IN OPTICAL DRIVES

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were released this year and received with a collective &quot;meh.&quot; Their notebook penetration was if at all possible even less inspiring than their living room performance. Continuing our juvenile use of double entendre, we can say that their introduction was flaccid.

HD-DVD saw its notebook introduction in a single entry in Toshiba's Qosmio line, placing its cost of entry in the notebook envrionment at:

a. $2,999

and b. 17&quot; overwrought &quot;desktop replacement&quot;

In other words, screw it. But you can't ask too much, this was HD-DVD's first year on the market and it's not like they had all year to at least make some kind of effort to push it.

And Blu-ray? Well, its introduction was in a single Sony Vaio notebook, and it has the same problems the HD-DVD notebook did. The specs between the systems are virtually identical, actually, with the Sony trading 40GB of hard disk space (you'd think at $2,999 they'd at least pack in 240GB like Toshiba did) for a faster video card (the difference between a Go 7600 and Go 7600GT is a sizable one.

But ultimately, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, two technologies that are really prime to help out the notebook user (due to the naturally higher resolution of notebook displays) appeared in our market all but stillborn.

Hey, there's always 2007.

HARD DISKS a.k.a LET'S GET PERPENDICULAR!

Well, here's a new technology that didn't take that long to shuffle into our market from desktops, and that's probably because we're the ones that need it most. 2006 saw our drive capacity jump from physically oversized 120GB drives to lean 160GB ones, and their market penetration has actually been fairly quick. Toshiba even beat everyone else out of the gate with a monstrous 200GB notebook drive!

Of course, thanks to perpendicular recording you can also score a downright obese 750GB on the desktop.

At any rate, perpendicular recording is here, reliable, and affordable. And this is how you smoothly introduce technology into the market.

This year has actually been GREAT in this market, though, as prices of these drives all but tanked over the course of the year. The 100GB 7200rpm drive in my laptop, for example, would've cost more than $300 before the beginning of the year; now it can be had for just $130 on NewEgg. If you bump speed down, you can have a 100GB drive in your notebook for less than a buck a gig, unheard of before this year.

HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?

As a sidenote, this is the year that finally saw me as an iPod convert. I don't know what to tell you. Apple's iPod is THE product of choice for a reason.

There's no question the Intel Mac has been a runaway success for Apple, but it hasn't all been bread and roses, with reports of serious heat issues plaguing virtually every MacBook line. The old adage sticks: never buy version 1.0 hardware from Apple.

Of course, I had a friend in college that liked her shiny new MacBook because &quot;it keeps me warm in the winter.&quot; So there you go. If you live someplace cold (my mother just moved to North Dakota and said they were having a heatwave; when I asked her what the temperature was, she said &quot;23 degrees&quot, consider their thermal issues a &quot;feature.&quot;

That said, the new MacBooks are downright FIERCE, powerful machines, and Apple scored a strong coup with users by allowing dual booting of Windows on their MacBooks. And also - and this seems small potatoes - but am I the only one that really likes the new keyboards on the MacBooks? Not the Pros, the regular ones. As far as I'm concerned, they're the most comfortable notebook keyboards I've ever used.

What really impressed me, though, was that Apple made the transition from 64-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit remarkably gracefully (G4 to Core Duo to Core 2 Duo); invisibly, actually. I wish Microsoft could figure that out.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as quick to make the transition as I thought I'd be, and the reasons are fairly simple and stupid: keyboard layout is missing needed PC keys, and the mouse is still only one frigging button. Come on Apple. You got with the program on the desktop when you started shipping Mighty Mouse, let's get a second mouse button all up in this beezy.

WINDOWS VISTA IS COMING OUT EVENTUALLY

I've been playing with virtually every build that came down the (illegitimate) pipe since Beta 2 and I can tell you that Vista made some massive leaps forward and has progressed nicely, turning into a very sexy, very enjoyable to use operating system.

In my opening article this year I did rumor control on the minimum hardware requirements for Vista and since every other post on our boards is still worried about running Vista, I'm going to save you some grief here.

800MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 20GB hard disk, DVD-ROM drive. Congratulations! You can run Vista. Got a DX9 part with 128MB of video memory to kill? Congratulations! You can run Aero Glass, the new interface and the chief reason to get Vista in my opinion. Yes, it's stuffed with security features and other enhancements (the Games Explorer is H.O.T. HOT!), but Aero Glass is what you'll be dealing with on a daily basis.

It's a good reason Aero Glass is as sexy as it is, too, because you're going to be seeing a lot of it with how intrusive Vista's security features are. User Account Control is every bit as irritating as you've heard. For those uninformed, whenever you make any change that Windows regards as potentially threatening to your system, such as looking at it funny or tying your shoe, a prompt will appear on the screen asking you if you're sure you want to look at the computer funny or tie your shoe. This prompt locks your system until you respond to it. It's the very definition of a nuisance.

At least you can disable it.

Oh, and those of you worried about your 32-bit processors? Sleep easy! Microsoft has your back. Proving they haven't learned anything from their shoddy 64-bit implementation in Windows XP Professional x64, Vista x64 is just as rife with compatibility problems and it's my understanding that most testers/users have been sticking with the 32-bit version.

That said, Microsoft is making a big push for hardware manufacturers to release drivers for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista, so maybe someday, if you're really good, they'll actually take advantage of those 64-bit registers on your processor that have been comatose for the past three years(!).

Okay, okay, I know I'm being kind of a pill. Honestly, Vista'll be a worthwhile upgrade when Microsoft gets around to releasing it, which after numerous delays is finally supposed to drop like it's hot in our little hands at the end of January 2007. Hopefully by then the hardware incompatibilities that have been plaguing the beta will have been ironed out, particularly the gaming performance ones. Sure would like to be able to use those shortcut keys on my ASUS A8Jm notebook.

But rest assured, Vista is plenty fast and operates at a good clip as long as you give it enough RAM to munch on. Oh, and maybe it's just me, but it feels like multi-tasking on it with dual core chips has been a heck of a lot faster and smoother. Is it just me?

CONCLUSION

Hey, I bought into the hype, I don't know what to tell you. I've been writing here for a year and a half now and following technology for at least three times that, you'd think I'd have adopted an &quot;I'll believe it when I see it&quot; attitude by now.

So what has 2006 given us?

• Typical evolution of graphics parts, but at least we have Shader Model 3.0 across the board in our dedicated parts, even though on the slow ones it's about as useful as tits on a bull.
• AMD screwed the pooch releasing the Turion 64 X2, but the buyout of ATI should have profound effects on the future, and positive ones.
• HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are languishing on the shelf.
• 64-bit is still. not. important.
  • (But now you can get it with relative ease.)
• Even poor people can buy dual core notebooks now!
• Bigger mobile hard disks! Still kinda slow, though.

Thank you, and here's to a middling 2006! 2007, anyone?

 

I'd agree the highlights of 2006 were HD advancements (and we have a 400GB notebook HD promised from Fujitsu in early 2007, so that trend should continue) and Apple integrating Intel and releasing the MacBook to steal notebook market share.

I think the dual core processor is a pretty big deal that happened in early '06, but the Core 2 Duo refresh was obviously not as big as the initial Core Duo offering.

The AMD / ATI merger is definitely a big deal on paper, but as you say, it'll probably be 2008 before it's a big deal in our day to day lives in advancing notebook technology. The hot switching of dedicated to integrated graphics from an AMD/ATI chipset is what could really be sweet.

 

ha ha ha, very good overview of 2006

i'm still waiting for OLED displays and solid state disks to emerge (in real every-day laptops i mean, not in some concept models)...

 

Nice article.

 

Solid state disks are actually due pretty much any day now, and are about a hop, skip and a jump away. The technology exists and actually, you CAN buy a solid state disk for your notebook now, but they're VERY pricy.

 

that's what i'm talking about

 

Great article, as always!

Let's get perpendicular! OMG is that the awesomest thing ever or what!

Malia

 

Great job, keep it up.(Didn't know you could purchase solid state as of now)

 

You can buy a SSD from newegg (Transcend 8GB Solid State Drive (SSD) IDE Flash Card Model TS8GIFD25 - Retail) for about 300 bucks.

....but its out of stock (as i type)

 

Good review on 2006. Oh well, predictions are made to be wrong, unless you got a time machine. GPU hasn't really made a big leap this year... seems more like refreshings of exiting features with faster core/memory. CPU sure has been exciting with the multi-logical core units coming into the market. HDD, well, I say out with the disk platter technology (that's so 1980s) and in with solid state. I was old enough to remember Betamax vs VHS, and I will be taking a backseat until one winner comes out of the BluRay vs HDDVD fight.

I don't know if the AMD/ATI thing is going to turn out good for consumers. I get the feeling Intel desktop/notebooks equipped with ATI GPUs are going to be a novelty in the future, if AMD has its way.

 

Great wrap-up. My first notebook had the "large" 10 GB hard drive, so 400 GB is quite impressive.

The MacBook is quite a release. I was in an Apple store and almost became a convert...and I wasn't even shopping for a notebook that day.

My family had a BETAMAX player. It was awesome. Followed by Minidisc, Network walkman, UMD, and now Blu-Ray. Why can't Sony just play nice with the other kids on the block?

 

It's Blu-ray Disk! Hell's wrath be upon you!

j/k but as long as there's a war, the consumer wins. So thumbs up to Sony!

Malia

 

You would be correct - Nvidia was extremely impressive not only in the notebook market, but all around. They gained in all market sectors, while ATI did the opposite:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3388

Very informative article, thanks.

 

I agree that the Turion X2 is not that great of a processor, in fact, I think I may go back to Intel from here on out.

Also, I don't like how the Core and Core 2 Duo launched so close apart.

 

Oops. That's an embarrassing typo LOL...fixed! All better now .

I agree about the wars benefiting the consumers, but Sony's always off with their own platform.

"One of these kids is doing their own thing."

I think we'd get even better prices if Sony was playing on the same field as everyone else. But I agree with the thumbs up for innovation.

Oh, there's Memory stick and Magic Gate as well!

 

Great review of the year. I kinda regret Apple saturating the market with their first generation MB's and MBP's. I think a large portion of buyers were turned off because of the defects. When the newer C2D's came out with fewer problems they could have made a lot more converts. My patience rewarded me though. My C2D MPB is sweet.

 

Intel actually pushed the mobile Core 2 Duo release date back several months before it was originally supposed to be released; the notebook manufacturers weren't too happy with that decision either.

 

Yeah, I also wish Sony Ericsson wasn't GSM-only, cause they make the only phones worth using, but I want my nights to start at 7 like with Sprint, grumble grumble... Did I mention that I dropped my SE phone in the bathtub, so it was turned on while underwater, and it's survived? And it was one of the cheapest yet cutest phones they offer? As Austin Powers would say, yeah, baby!

Oh, but MemoryStick is the best name of all of them! SD xD MMD - all these acronyms what's going on! MemoryStick, on the other hand, well it's a stick, and it holds memory, duh! I keep saying MemoryStick when I mean flash memory and then thinking waitaminute what's all that stuff called again... So to sum up: MemoryStick = good, MagicGate = stoopid.

Malia

 

Well, MemoryStick is often abbreviated MS But the article is pretty much true. I was really hoping for the 64X2 to pwn the CD at least (considering how late it launched). I was a disappointed AMD fan.

 

Cool,but the Turion X2 2.0GHZ was more powerful that Core Duo 2.0GHZ.So AMD did have a little point.Anyway K8L seems a lot more powerefficient than a turion X2.
The biggest problem of Turion X2 was the equal clock speed.

 

The T64X2 TL-60 was more powerful than a CD T2500? Never saw that.

I really love AMD, I really do. But Intel leaves me with no choice.

 

I'd like to see those TL60 vs. T2500 benches myself...but Intel basically owns the performance mobile market. The desktop market just recently changed with Core 2, but the mobile market has had the same leader for years.

I'm not saying AMD isn't good...in fact, they are great for when you have a tight budget (or can't find a similar Intel version of a laptop since these chips can hold their own). But when you need the extra performance, you should probably look for Intel mobile processors.

 

Well, in defence of Merom, it was really the best Intel could do for power consumption. It's just that Yonah was already a major coup in being able to fit 2 cores in nearly the thermal envelope of the previous 533MHz FSB Dothan single core. Of course, Yonah had the 90nm-65nm process transition to smooth things over. Merom didn't have that advantage so really there's only so much you can do to control power consumption when you're adding in new features. Merom was produced on a 65nm process, but having the entire core fatter to sustain a 4-instruction issue rate and having a large 4MB cache quickly eats into that.

In terms of performance, it's true that for general use and on average, the performance increase wasn't very impressive. But then, general usage only needs to be so fast. Merom however, excels at multimedia processing, encoding, etc., because of the improvements to SSE execution (the much publicized 128-bit single cycle execution), but more importantly FP improvements, which Yonah was decidedly weak in. Merom is still weaker than K8 in FP execution, but tackling the weakest link can't help but lift the effeciency of the whole system.

Merom is also decidedly helpful in increasing gaming performance. Of course it's only really noticable in low 640x480 or 800x600 resolutions and in desktops where really high resolutions are common, it isn't as noticeable. However, there is still a slight benefit to notebooks since the common 1280x800 or 1024x768 (for non-widescreen games) catches the tail end of the increase.

I have to agree that nVidia has had a great year in notebooks, which is traditionally ATI's stronghold. ATI started the year strong by getting the MR X1x00 cohort off first. But nVidia had a great strategy with it's Go 7x00 series. It seemed to me that even though nVidia parts were slightly slower than ATI's equivalents and launched later, nVidia used a combined strategy of aggressive pricing and superior camouflage. The later specifically refers to equipping the Go 7600 with 512MB of VRAM while ATI limits the X1600 to 256MB. 512MB really doesn't have much use for the current mid-range parts, especially at the common notebook resolutions of 1280x800 or 1440x900, but big numbers are always marketing advantagese (ie. 512MB must be better than 256MB). The other thing was ATI letting the high-end mobile market stagnate while nVidia repeatedly hammered away from the Go 7800, Go 7900, and Go 7950.

Now I can't help, but comment on DX10 here. Despite all the hype, it's my opinion that DX10 is turning into a flop. There was of course much fanfare with the when the 8800 launched, but there appears to still be some niggling issues with SLI operation and some motherboard PCIe incompatibilities. What's more, nVidia is not releasing DX10 drivers until January, so it's still impossible to test DX10 operation even though Vista actually launched in November. ATI's R600 won't likely ship until February, but more importantly nVidia's mainstream desktop parts won't launch until March, meaning Q2 availability. ATI's will be further behind, meaning mobile parts are farther. This combined with statements from nVida that they really don't expect a DX10 push until H2 and previous statements that they won't be fully transitioning their product line to DX10 until Q4, and the delay of the DX10 version of Flight Simulator from Microsoft itself, really takes the wind out of DX10's sail. Which is in the end better for existing computer owners, since it means that DX10 isn't charging in with a vengeance, and people can rest assured that their existing DX9.0c hardware still has quite a bit more life in it. Maybe the momentum will pick up again once consumer Vista launches in January, but it's quite likely that with the breather everyone's taking, DX9.0c has gained another 6 months-1 year of useful life, which is reassuring for me since I'm just planning on getting a notebook now.

 

I have vista RTM installed on my Dell I9300 and it runs better than XP in my opinion. I have Pentium m 2.0 ghz, 1 gb ram, go 6800 and i scored a 4.2 on the vista performance benchmark. Aero runs very good with the 6800, but their currently are no Nvidia drivers for mobile vista computers, so i have to use the microsoft ones. surprisingly the microsoft drivers scored 1,200 in 3DMark06 while in XP i score around 2,200. Vista seems to control thread priorities better than XP, because my single core multi-tasks better in vista than it ever did in XP.

 

Well, technically there are modded drivers from LaptopVideo2Go, which is pretty much THE place to grab up-to-date drivers from for your mobile NVIDIA chipsets. I'm currently running v97.46 on my installation of Vista RC2 (on my Dell XPS M1210), although there are already newer v97.52 drivers avaliable ( 32-bit here, 64-bit here).


On the CPU front: I agree that Merom doesn't seem to be such a huge improvement over Yonah, however, Intel was also pricing them at THE SAME PRICE for the same clockspeed. In fact, looking at NewEgg right now (as of 29-12-2006), one can get:
1.66GHz: Core Duo T2300E - US$197.00 | Core 2 Duo T5500 - US$205.50
1.83GHz: Core Duo T2400 - US$241.99 | Core 2 Duo T5600 - US$249.99
2.00GHz: Core Duo T2500 - US$303.99 | Core 2 Duo T7200 - US$299.99
2.16GHz: Core Duo T2600 - US$423.99 | Core 2 Duo T7400 - US$419.99

Well, does it matter if Merom *only* offers at best a 10% performance increase and slightly less battery lifetime over Yonah (not to mention better SSE3/FP implementation and 64-bit support), when they are selling for essentially the same price? It's really a no brainer to get the newer stuff.

Personally, I was glad to have waited for the Merom (or more precisely, when Dell refreshed the XPS M1210 with the Core 2 Duos), even if it meant a one month wait (I could've used a new laptop by August but waited until mid/end of September). There is nothing worse than buying "outdated" technology, especially when you know for a fact a better product is coming out and costing the same.


And I agree fully that AMD dropped their game completely this year. The Turion 64 X2 could've been a great alternative to what Intel had to offer, but, it was really a matter of too little, too late. Again, looking at NewEgg, one can find:
AMD Turion 64 X2 TL52 (1.60GHz, 1MB (2x512kb) L2) - US$190.99
Now compare that with the price of the Core Duo T2300E and Core 2 Duo T5500 above. Out of these 3, I would make a beeline for the Core 2 Duo.

AMD should really drop their pricing of their Turion line by at least 10%-15% and make it a compelling lower cost alternative to the Intels. It's no wonder why Dell has to artifically take many features out of the Intel Inspiron E1505 to create their lower cost AMD Inspiron 1501 alternative, and even then, you're still better off with the E1505 in some cases (especially when you compare the price and spec. when you go dual core).

 

I think it's time for me to throw out my laptop and get a new one. My GPU does not even support Dx8, never minf Dx 9 .

AMD's new platform with a sinlge chip with a CPU and GPU looks very interesting...