I need to buy a new windows laptop for work. I haven’t used a PC since the days when there were just pentium, celeron, athlon and duron chips.
I recall from those days that the celeron and duron chips were crappy for gaming, video editing, etc. What are the chips to avoid today? I saw an ad for a Turion chip. Is that a crappy chip, or will it suffice?
I only want to spend about $500 on a laptop, so I’m waiting for another black friday-esque deal. But it has to have a decent chip. Not top of the line, but decent.
I will be using the laptop mostly for video editing, which isn’t as cpu-intense as gaming, but still requires a good processor.
I need to buy a new windows laptop for work. I haven't used a PC since the days when there were just pentium, celeron, athlon and duron chips.
I recall from those days that the celeron and duron chips were crappy for gaming, video editing, etc. What are the chips to avoid today? I saw an ad for a Turion chip. Is that a crappy chip, or will it suffice?
I only want to spend about $500 on a laptop, so I’m waiting for another black friday-esque deal. But it has to have a decent chip. Not top of the line, but decent.
I will be using the laptop mostly for video editing, which isn’t as cpu-intense as gaming, but still requires a good processor.
Thanks
Turion’s a good chip. It has a little higher power consumption than it’s Intel counterpart, but if you are using it at work, I am guessing it will be plugged in.
Unfortunately, it sounds like you need a good graphics card. As NA has stated before, the bottleneck is not in the processor anymore, it’s in other places. Most laptops at the $500 price range use a shared memory Intel graphics processor that is on the motherboard. It will be able to handle basic video (watching DVD’s), but might lag for anything else. BUT, the graphics chip is a serious step up from its predecessor (3100 compared to the 3000 Intel Xcellerator series).
Everex has started to put an on-board ATI Express chip which is a little better, but still slow. Gateway is using on-board NVidia chips which are a little faster.
My advice is to try to find a laptop with the NVidia 8400 series or above graphics card. It should last for awhile and not bog down on rendering images on your screen.
TigerDirect had an ok Everex for $400. Note any notebook in that price range will need more RAM.
if you’re going to be doing video editing, like cake said, try to get a laptop with a dedicated video card. more of a “desktop replacement” type laptop. probably gonna push your range into 700-800ish imo - most of the 500$ and under deals are the low end laptops with built in video.
I have a Turion X2 laptop… a couple months old, with 2 gigs of RAM. Its a good processor. I had a Turion X2 before, and it was good as well. I don’t do video editing, but I do some photoshop on this computer (more so on my desktop at home though) and it does fine with the nvidia onboard video, but if you are doing video editing, rendering, etc., I would DEFINITELY suggest as the others have that you get a laptop with a dedicated video card. Otherwise you are going to go suicidal waiting for stuff to render.
Lots of Tigerdirect.com mentions. I’ve never really liked them. Whatever happened to good ole newegg.com? I still use them for most of my purchases.
For laptops, Discountlaptops.com and I think it’s powernotebooks.com are the two best, but they dont focus on anything that cheap Sideshow. They’re more in the $1k-$2k range (very nice machines).
I got a Turion X2 laptop with 120 GB HD, onboard nvidia GeForce XXXX Go, 2 GB RAM, integrated webcam / mic, DL DVD/RW w/ lightscribe, in an HP package with the new high quality finish for $599 at Office Depot for a back to school sale. I personally think that was cheap as hell for what I got, because this thing is pretty damn quick. It also came with Vista home premium as opposed to basic.
I mean the only thing my laptop doesn’t have that you would probably want is a separate graphics card. My thing was, I wanted something powerful enough to do graphic design on, and portable enough to carry to school with me every day, and I absolutely love it.
Unless you are doing 3-D rendering, be it a game, CAD, etc. The video card is not going to make a lot of difference. Video editing itself is going to be more CPU/Memory/Hard Drive dependent.
Check to see if your video editing software is multi-threaded, meaning it can take true advantage of a multi or dual core processor.
Personally, I would never try to do anything that required 3-D on a laptop such as gaming, CAD etc. Even the high end graphics cards in laptops pale in comparison to their desktop counterparts. On top of that, they run the cost of the laptop up significantly.
Anyway, I may be wrong, but you may not need anything more than the standard graphics most laptops supply for what you want to do.
PS, if you want to play the latest games decently, buy a desktop or an Xbox 360…
Unless you are doing 3-D rendering, be it a game, CAD, etc. The video card is not going to make a lot of difference. Video editing itself is going to be more CPU/Memory/Hard Drive dependent.
Check to see if your video editing software is multi-threaded, meaning it can take true advantage of a multi or dual core processor.
Personally, I would never try to do anything that required 3-D on a laptop such as gaming, CAD etc. Even the high end graphics cards in laptops pale in comparison to their desktop counterparts. On top of that, they run the cost of the laptop up significantly.
Anyway, I may be wrong, but you may not need anything more than the standard graphics most laptops supply for what you want to do.
PS, if you want to play the latest games decently, buy a desktop or an Xbox 360…
This is a good point…for 2D rendering, on-board graphics should be enough. For example, if you are just running Paint Shop Pro or image manipulation.
But if you are running 3D graphics (EDrawings, Cad, etc.), desktops will always be better value because of no size restraints.
A lot of my customers are looking for basic laptops that allow for them to be able to do basic video editing and office applications (after I tell them how there old one has crapped out). I found that the Dell Vospro if ordered through small business and not personal is a great deal. You can get a basic laptop for $400 and it goes up from there. The best part about ordering the Vospro is that you can get windows XP or XP Pro instead of the amazingly crappy and buggy Vista. If just for this ability I recommend the Vospro.
yeah, I don’t think the graphics card with shared memory is that big a deal, because I’m just doing basic editing. Not much to render. Cross dissolves, color correction, etc. Compressing and exporting to Mpeg for DVD creation will probably be the most hardware intense application that I do.
Central, I’m going to be using Adobe Premiere Pro. In the past I’ve always used Final Cut on my Mac, but the computers in the theater dept. at UNCC are all PC based with adobe products (it’s for a class next semester), so I have to get a PC. I don’t want to spend more than 500 or 600 dollars because I have countless thousands invested in my Apple products at home, and I don’t think I’ll use this laptop outside of UNCC.
I am actually familiar with Premier, and yeah, rendering transitions is not going to bog you down. I’d suggest a dual core HP DV6XXX series with Turion X2 and 2GB of RAM. HP has it on their website right now with Dual Turions and free 2GB RAM upgrade for $649 free ship.
I bet you can find it for cheaper… when I bought my HP, the equivalent model on their website was about $300 more than what I paid in store at Office Depot.
I just would not spend more than a couple hundred dollars on anything on ebay. I’ve had such bad luck with stuff on ebay, there is no way I would do it.
There are other, smaller events, but those three times of year are the best time to buy computers at a retail outlet. And in that order too, so yea, good chance of getting a good deal after Christmas.
That’s a pretty good deal. The only thing I have to say about that is, if you are going to run Vista, I wouldn’t do it without at least 2 GB of RAM, especially if you are using memory intensive apps like Premier. You could upgrade, or wait it out and continue to look for another good deal.
It’s hard to say what will be available after Christmas, but that’s a decent deal.
sweet. What do you think of this deal: [URL]http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=477165[/URL]
Think something better will come along after Christmas?
Yes. They will get cheaper. In fact, I would find the cheapest laptop you can get. No point in buying anything nice if you are not going to use it much. In fact, Dell Small Business is selling a Vostro 1400 with the 5270 CPU for $550 shipped.