how much does processor speed matter?

[traksta15 10+ year member]

im buying a laptop for my brother, but im stuck on what to look for when it comes to processors. Some are intel, some are amd, etc etc.

He's not a gamer, he just uploads pics to facebook and myspace, downloads music and browses the web. Does he need dual core processors? Is intel better than amd? Any help is greatly appreciated!!

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[modskwod 10+ year member]

How many cores there are is also an important factor. Yes, processor speed is important, but if you have a dual core intel at 3 ghz, and an amd triple core at 3 ghz, the amd will win out. More cores+higher speed = more processing power. Both are important factors. For what he'd be doing, dual core is just fine.

 

[traksta15 10+ year member]

what about something like this:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9168143&type=product&id=1218041995463

decent amount of memory for him, brand doesnt matter. Just worried about the processor brand/speed/dual, triple, single? etc

 

[Twistid 5,000+ posts]

Thats ok for browsing web, doing school work, communicating with people, anything more, than no.

 

[thehardknoxlife 10+ year member]

If all he is doing is browsing, any ole CPU will be fine. I'd personally look for the cheapest 2ghz+ dual-core. What kind of budget does he have?

 

[traksta15 10+ year member]

whats anything more? Downloading music? Would I be better off spending $50 and getting this:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9454253&type=product&id=1218106990994

 

[Twistid 5,000+ posts]

Yes that second laptop is much better.

Also he could download music on either, just not have a torrent, limewire, skype, aim, internet explorer, windows media player, ect... all on at the same time without going slowwwwwwwwww.

I have a little laptop thats 1.9 ghz x2 with 4 gigs of ram and I get by running multiple programs + dual monitor.

 

[modskwod 10+ year member]

The second one is better and well worth the extra cash. But I'm an AMD guy all the way.

 

[iamamp3pimp 5,000+ posts]

any laptop you can buy with at least 1GB of ram will be fine.

mine is a basic laptop and i do all kinds of shit on it, and it works just fine.

500GB Hdd that i bought, 1.5GB ram and a dual core 2.4 GHZ processor.

has a dvd burner and cost me like 600 bucks 3 years ago

 

[thehardknoxlife 10+ year member]

whats anything more? Downloading music? Would I be better off spending $50 and getting this:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9454253&type=product&id=1218106990994

Downloading is based more on your connection speed than CPU speed. That seems fine for basic needs. Anything more would be things like video rendering, graphic design, music editing, and gaming. You should be worried about disk space, wireless connection, and possibly RAM (Vista, 7 doesn't run very well with anything less than 2gb).

 

[denim 5,000+ posts]

Check Newegg.com for some great deals.

 

[tigerf117 10+ year member]

Get Intel cpu for sure. Much better battery life, and run cooler. Generally they're about $50-75 more for equivalent, decent spec'd laptops. AMD blows on the laptop end.

 

[DubbDesigns 10+ year member]

The clock speed doesn't mean much unless the CPU has a pretty good cache size. Thats the difference in Celeron and Pentiums. A pentium at a lower clock speed could out perform a celeron with a cracked out clock speed if the cache size is bigger on the pentium, which they usually are.

That is my theory anyhow.

About any of the modern pentium cpu's would do for his needs. Very basic. 1mb cache would be ok, 2mb better.

AMD are pretty good cpu's my laptop has the Turion64 x2 cpu and it suits me just fine

 

[kyleorsini 10+ year member]

not to thread jack but its the same topic im looking for a new laptop and plan on getting one this weekend i have some in mind but on the processor topic how important is a 2.1ghz dual core 1MB cache compared to lets say same processor with a 2MB cache? whats the difference

 

[its_ray_ray 10+ year member]

i has a

AMD Turion Dual 2.1 with 4gb ram. and a hd 17" screen. and i love it. i can play multiple mmorpg's at a time.