Gateway AMD and Intel Laptops, a Platform Analysis
by Jarred Walton on August 12, 2009 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
The Final Word
Hopefully we've now answered and explained any lingering questions about how the AMD and Intel platforms compare when it comes to laptops. Intel has much better battery life, but that's only one aspect of the overall equation and there are definitely areas where AMD has the advantage over Intel. Intel also wins in application performance, with noticeably snappier system responsiveness (i.e. loading applications, installing programs, booting Windows, hibernating/resuming). When it comes to 3D graphics, however, the AMD solution is clearly superior to Intel's anemic IGP.
Looking at the big picture, either one of these laptops - or similar laptops from other vendors - would work very well for any student or home office user. With an entry price point of $500, the Gateway NV52 series provides an attractive package that can handle just about any task you might want to throw at it, up to and including entry-level gaming. The Intel system on the other hand is clearly faster outside of gaming tasks, but the $80 price difference represents a 16% price increase. If you're willing to sacrifice graphics performance, you do get more than a 16% increase in battery life and general application performance, so ultimately you need to decide whether you want to have better battery life or if you would prefer improved graphics.
The graphics situation is a bit muddy when we consider the full GPU market. ATI's HD 3200 may be over twice as fast on average compared to Intel's GMA 4500MHD, but that's a lot like beating a Kia Spectra with a Hyundai Accent on the racetrack. There are many faster graphics options if that's your primary concern, and truthfully you would probably be better off sticking to older games on laptops and saving your real gaming for desktops where a $500 PC doesn't fall completely flat the instant you boot up the latest 3D tour de force.
Considering the contestants, it was almost a foregone conclusion, but it's always good to have concrete numbers to back up our recommendations. As far as we're concerned, laptops - especially entry-level laptops - need to function as a mobile computer first and foremost. By that criterion, Intel has the clearly better mobile platform. Faster CPUs that draw less power and provide better battery life rate a lot higher in our book than barely adequate gaming performance. A 16% price increase for 25% more battery life and 25% faster general application performance is hard to beat. Using a higher capacity battery on an AMD platform could give you equivalent battery life, but then you're lugging around a heavier laptop and many high capacity batteries cost far more than $80. If you really want improved battery life, you'd be looking at an Intel platform with a high-capacity battery - or a MacBook.
Finally, we can't neglect the netbook platforms. The vast majority of these use Intel Atom processors, which are completely different from Intel's Core 2 chips. They use far less power, but if the AMD Athlon X2 QL-64 in the NV52 seems slow, it's only 130% faster than an Intel Atom N280… in a threaded workload where the Atom does reasonably well. In single-threaded tests and other benchmarks, the Athlon QL-64 can be 200% or even 300% faster than an Atom N280. On the other hand, with a similar size battery we've seen Atom N280 netbooks manage over twice the battery life of the NV58, so as usual it's a case of priorities. Those who want a "real" PC experience will likely appreciate notebooks like the NV52 and NV58 series a lot more than netbooks, while users that only want something small with reasonable performance and great battery life will gravitate towards netbooks.
In the end, it's all about choice. Battery life, graphics, CPU, size, features... we have plenty of options on where to spend our money and how much to spend. AMD may not be the better platform overall, but they do provide a viable alternative to Intel platforms and the lower cost is certainly an attractive aspect. Personally, I'd stick to gaming on my desktop and if I "need" to game on a laptop I'll stick to less taxing titles or buy a laptop with a discrete GPU, but however you slice it, having choice is a good thing.
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strikeback03 - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
"Again, what percentage of laptop users actually play 3D games on a regular basis - or at all?"Doesn't mean that no users play 3D games, it means that the majority never do, some small percentage play infrequently, and some smaller percentage would regularly.
Also, an AMD blog is probably not the best place to look for a balanced view of an AMD/Intel comparison.
flipmode - Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - link
AMD's mobile products have always been rebranded desktop products - which have always been rebranded server products. In the best cases, the CPUs run at lower voltages and lower speeds.Intel has, interesting, done the opposite, as far as I can tell. They designed the Pentium M from the ground up for mobile, and turned that into Core 2 for the desktop, and turned that into Nahalem for the server.
This is all in spite of the fact that several years ago, AMD stated that it was placing mobile above desktop in terms of importance. But technology has a natural flow between the two poles of server and mobile, with desktop stuck in the middle. AMD chose to flow from high to low, Intel chose to flow from low to high. It seems that Intel's choice was the better one.
blackshard - Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - link
Approximately it is true, but consider that these 65nm mobile AMD parts have absolutely no correspondence in desktop market. These are Family 11h processors and are a mixture of old K8 (execution units) and newer K10 processors (memory controller, power management).Actually Athlon QLs is the least attractive from a performance and power management point of view. I hope Walton will get some ZM/RM processors from AMD to make a clear comparison.
mircix - Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - link
Ok. Great article and I have a simple question. I am interested mostly in Avid, witch is a professional video editing software, and 3ds max. 3ds for movie CGI. I'm not looking for a desktop's working station performace, but something decent. I've runned 3ds 2009 on a 1.6 gh and intel gms 950, hp pavilion dv100 and works. but slow. So, for closure: 3ds max and Avid : AMD or Intel? Thank youjamawass - Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - link
Although the conclusions of the article are correct, the graphical charts for gaming comparisons are sneakily designed to minimize the tremendous advantage AMD has in gaming performance over Intel. If this performance is as unimportant as the author states ( Kia vs Hyundai) why not represent it in bar chart form like all the other results? As another poster said, testing games like the Sims or WoW would be much more meaningful on these platforms than FPS.I don't think anyone buys a laptop of this price for gaming but I've owned an AMD one like it and on overseas trips I would take FarCry along and fire it up for some casual gaming something I wouldn't be able to do on a similarly spec'd Intel laptop.
We know Intel has the superior mobile design but objectivity would be nice so independent decisions can be made as to how important gaming is to a potential buyer.
IHateMyJob2004 - Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - link
I really want a laptop for wordprocessing. All I want is a cheaper (processing power not needed) laptop with a high resolution. 1920x1200 is what I want but this also seem to be a segment that Every manufacturer is ignoring. This is how a utilitarian wants to use alaptop and I'm sure I am not the only one out there.And I agree with what you said. Unelss the primary use for a laptop is games and movie watching, the 16:9 and 16:10 ratio screen is stupid. Widescrees are in, but I view them as short screens. And short screen suck for word processing and software develeopment. Give me a 5:3 ratio screen! Bring them back!
The only thing I am really curious about in terms of performance is how much better a low cost laptop is if it has a dedicated viddeo card with its own memory versus a laptop where the video card uses system memory. I'm mostly concerned with any lag that is associated with the video card due to how it uses memory.
strikeback03 - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
See, plenty of people like the widescreens for writing tasks, as you can have 2 800px columns of text on a 1920px screen side by side. I don't like the current move to 16:9 from 16:10 though, that is obviously a step back.mczak - Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - link
This article clearly shows that AMD desperately needs updated mobile platform (Tigris). In terms of chipset won't be much of an update (rs880m/sb710) but finally 45nm cpu (Caspian - probably same as regor for mobile market). Won't be enough to close the gap (those 65nm Athlons didn't do too well against 65nm C2D neither) but at least something more competitive (so together with the price advantage and better graphics maybe a competitive package).mczak - Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - link
forgot to mention, that platform better show up soon. Against Intel's Calpella platform (with Arrendale cpu) it will look quite bad I assume, and even the graphics advantage could disappear. Fortunately for AMD, Arrendale shouldn't show up before 2010, though that's not that much time left...weeaboo - Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - link
I don't play it personally, but I imagine that one of the most common game people play on their non-gaming laptop is World of Warcraft. On this kind of platform I think performance figures on the MMOs of yesteryear would be more interesting than a plethora of FPS games.