Why is that everytime an Intel product review is done I see your name with a comment supporting it? The reasons that was given are vaild points to the reviewer. You remind me of people in the ATi and Nvidia fanboyism. Anyways...give a rest man.

Sorry, I didn't realize I had a gun to your head making you read it.

You are clueless, I'm not married to a CPU company, and a lot of times I take shots at Intel. I'm not someone that thinks one company is all good or all bad, but instead think the truth is in the middle.

The thing that bothers me about poor reviews like this is that they give a false impression of 64-bit mode of x86. It's not a big deal, and people reading this will start thinking it is a huge improvement based on the remarks made here.

8 bits to 16 bits was a big improvement, even 16 bit to 32 bit was to some extent, even outside of memory addressing. 64 bits is almost entirely useless, since only rarely do people need numbers larger than 4 Billion. I can't remember the last time I've needed a result that large. The mode does offer extra registers, but lower code density so you pay a penalty in performance for that. Most applications show no improvement from it. So, outside of a very limited number of applications that use integer math for numbers larger than 4 Billion, this mode offers mainly larger memory addressing. In laptops like this, where the limitation is the motherboard support, not the addressable memory of the processor, EM64T isn't a compelling feature and by stating it so forcefully it gives the impression of this technology being a huge improvement. It's a false impression.

Consider also that adding 64-bit support adds extra transistors, and they use power. Power on a laptop is a big concern, and since no one would benefit from extra memory on this machine from a 64-bit mode, again since it is motherboard limited, and there are essentially no 64-bit applications worth running on this machine, you'd be lowering your battery life for something that is useless. That's a great feature?

The Merom is a great processor probably worth waiting for, if that is possible, so I am not objecting to that. I am just objecting to the overstatement of the importance of EM64T. For a laptop, right now, it's probably more bad than good. Everyone cares about battery life, after all.

True statement...you don't have a gun to my head. For awhile I took time to read your comments because I like to read other views on things to see if I missed an angle. But time and time again your thoughts are/seemed so biased that I stopped reading them.

It hasn't been one time where someone be it folks like yourself or reviews say, "The next gen-tech is highly overrated and your existing hardware will be just fine." They say this for several reasons, ie. no programs/hardware out right now takes full advantage of this new tech. This whole thing reminds me of going from 2.0 to 3.0 with video cards. Folks were saying the difference is minimal and why go to it. Its very clear why to go to have gone to it today but people couldn't see that prior. I'm not trying to get into name calling but most folks are "narrow-minded".

Just an example, somewhere recently I saw a benchmark comparison from Sciencemark and Science Mark-64 bit version comepared. And the 64-bit version had a test that was twice as fast as the 32bit. This comes down to the folks learning program for this tech.

You also state that the mobo and battery are the limiting factors for the 64bit. Well other parts are advancing as well. Especially in the DTR sector where the performance gap between desktop and DTR is seriously decressing. To make a long story short...the mobos will be able to handle this 64bit tech in the future. 2gig sticks of ram will be released shortly. Hell Vista is going to need 2gig of ram just to run smoothly with alot of programs and gaming (probably 512mb if your going to e-mail). As for battery life, read something recently about someone making fuel cell betters for laptops.

Basically, what I'm saying is...let the change come. What the review says is true from the angle hes looking at. 64bit gives us more possiblities for the future... Me, myself will wait for the new Merom to come w/SLI. I'm sure the mobos will change to handle more than 4-gigs. Mobos out that handle that much now...

I think you don't understand the technology well enough to comment on it.

You may broad generalizations to make a point on a specific technology. You entirely missed my point, since I do think the Merom is a great processor worth waiting for, but not for 64-bit integer, right now, for a laptop with a motherboard that limits memory.

It's not narrow-minded, it's about understanding technology and not making generalizations.

There are a very few applications that use numbers bigger than 4 Billion, and if it does, this will be an advantage. How many people running laptops will be running them? Not many. How many people using laptops will care about battery life? Just about all of them.

So, yes, you can find applications that run better on 64-bit, especially synthetics, but they are a very small percentage. It is very easy to find applications that run better in 32-bit mode, actually quite a few do. A lot of that is because code density is worse in 64-bit mode and because of that your caches are less effective.

The big advantage is extra memory, but the processor isn't the limitation on memory here, since the motherboard will only use 2 GB, and very few people even need close to that for a laptop.

You are very confused about people learning this "tech" because you do not understand it. It is not a matter of learning, it is a matter of an application benefitting from integer numbers greater than 4 Billion. If they do not benefit from it, they are not going to show a lot of improvement. If you need numbers bigger than 4 Billion, you'll show a lot of improvement. It's not something people need to learn to program, it's whether you need it or not. There are extra registers, but the compilers already use them, and extra registers add extra latency, which is why they stopped at 16 instead of adding more.

You are also confused about my position. I am not saying that x86-64 should not come, I am saying that for right now, on a laptop that is limited by the motherboard for memory, it is not a compelling technological feature. It should not discourage people from buying it. In the future, when the motherboards would hold more memory, and people can use it, it could change, but that is always the way computers are. There is always something better waiting around the corner. If you put a 64-bit processor in this current motherboard, you'd have the same situation with memory, the extra addressing wouldn't help at all, and it would burn up more power.

So, I am not saying the extra memory will never be important, or even the extra registers. It is not a broad indictment against x86-64, just that it isn't a great technology for laptops that are memory limited by the motherboard, today.

Oh, and just to play the Devil's advocate, did you not listen to all the people that said the next great technology called the "Itanium" would be a dud, or do you have a room full of these bad boys? How about Rambus memory? Did you believe people when they said it wasn't going to be the next great technology, or do you have lots of Rambus stock? Did you wait for a year for the wonderful Pentium 4 to come out so you could have the latest a greatest? Sometimes the next great thing isn't so great. In this case, the Merom certainly is, but I'm just giving examples of where new isn't always that great. I still have hopes for the Itanium too, but I'm more than willing to confess that arguments to the contrary are probably more rational right now.

As far as being biased, I call things as I see them. I am very critical of the P7, and very complimentary towards the P8. Most people who have a clue are exactly the same way. One sucks, one is shockingly good. If you can't see that, well, I can't help you with that, but that's the way it is. If you want me to sound less biased and say how the Athlon 64 is as good as the Conroe, it isn't, and I won't say it is to please people that are more interested in perception than reality.

Its a wait and see thing. True I don't fully understand the tech as I'm waiting for the applications to come out that benifit from this. All I see is early reviews on what could happen in the future with this. Would I like to have a the abiliity to play around with goodies 64bits bring to us? Ofcourse. And thats my point. I believe thats the point of the author. This 64bit era is long over due...I've been waiting since AMD64 debuted and only a few more months to go...*sobs*

The reason 64-bits didn't come is because almost no one needs it. The main reason for it is extra memory, and as you can see people are just beginning to bang into the 4 GB barrier.

It is also important not to confuse 64 bits with x86-64, because they are not exactly the same. There are other, slight, enhancements like extra registers for x86-64 that are generally more important than going to 64-bits, which is almost completely unimportant outside of memory.

You might ask why not just increase the address register and address bus and stick with 32-bit ALUs if that were the case. The problem comes from calculating addresses, which would have 64-bit results. Doing greater than 32-bit math on a 32-bit machine has quite a bit of overhead, and while it is rarely used on normal day stuff, you would have to use it all the time with 64-bit address calculations.

You could get around this like Intel did with their 16-bit processors, and use offsets added to an address (segmentation), but this was not so popular (mainly because the segments were limited to 64K in size) and there is no way AMD or Microsoft was going to do it again, mainly because programmers would panic if they saw that word. In fact, 32-bit still supports segmentation (although the segment can be 4 Gig, making it moot if you don't want to use it), whereas 64-bit mode has completely eliminated it. But anyway, the main reason you need a 64-bit ALU is to calculate addresses. Unfortunately, the price of these big addresses is code density being lowered, causing the processor to run slower because of more cache misses. Segmentation would have eliminated this, by the way, which is why companies used it a while ago (and also for protection applications from each other, but in practice this was rarely used on x86).

So, you're not going to see any great benefit from 64-bits except on limited applications. I said, somewhat incorrectly, that you'd need numbers greater than 4 Billion to make any difference, but this isn't quite right. If this number is unsigned, meaning it can only be positive, this is true. For signed integers, the number would be 2 Billion. Still, this isn't a number one runs into very often, and that's why no one was in a rush to go to 64-bits. Going to straight 64-bits (meaning, no other enhancements like extra registers) would generally lower performance unless you needed the extra memory. With the other enhancements like the extra registers, it will not necessarily lower performance clock normalized because the extra registers could save memory accesses (although, as I mentioned, adding more registers adds latency since they take longer to find, which is why AMD stopped at 16 instead of going higher).

It's not a great technology by any means. It's really about addressing memory, which is why Intel calls it what it does - Enhanced Memory Technology (EMT). If you are expecting more out of it, as you seem to be, you're heading for a big disappointment outside of those very, very few applications that need 64-bit math. They will show big improvements since doing 64-bit math with 32-bit registers is kind of messy and time consuming, but they are so limited in number, it is not a broadly relevant advantage.

All of these laptops suck anyway. I mean wtf is the 1400 by 1050 resolution? You can't even watch HDTV! I have a 4 year old dell laptop with the same display and peripheral device specifications. Would I be buying this lap-top? NOOOOOOOOO....... The ports are all dicked up! By the way, I have a dell latitude c640... The processor in that one is p4-m. That's a wierd one all right, but it still works. I see that in 4 years there really is no improvement in the laptop community, exept for the price...


plug:
http://www.CrankyGeeks.com

Thank you. Corrected.