Project 1999 - I need a notebook, what do you think of this one?

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I need a notebook, what do you think of this one?

It doesn't look like the ram is dual channel - which kind of sucks. Also it just says "Intel HD" for graphics and... dunno how great that is.

I thought the notebook was boring, tbh

Classic EQ will run fine on most Intel cards, even the crappy integrated ones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dredge (Post 275051)

does anyone know or able to explain to me the difference in duo/quad core cpu's when it comes to running multiple virtual machines?

I was under the impression that I want a i5 with at least 4gb of ram to accomplish this, but then I came across this info..

"Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
Any quad core, Intel or AMD, CPU will typically handle multiple VMs with no problems. The biggest bottlenecks of performance running multiple VMs on a laptop will be RAM and hard drive rpms. Get as much RAM as you possibly can which will minimize your VMs from constantly "swapping" to the very slow hard drive your will receive with your machine.

* 3 months ago "

so if I need a quad-core am I looking at a lot more money? or is there older quad-core options that might actually be less then an i5?

all i5's are dual core right?

Different VM brands act slightyly different when it comes to resources. Some have a larger footprint than others. Some will share a CPU core while others require the entire core to snap to the VM. I've found Sun's (oracle now) Virtualbox performance-wise beats out VMware and Virtual PC. With that said, you still need enough RAM for your host to not swap out to the hard drive, plus enough extra RAM so that the entire VM can be put into RAM and not swap any part of it either.

2GB for a windows XP host, then another 2GB for the windows xp guest should be enough if you are going to run EQ or light apps. So 4GB should be okay. As long as you have a dual core or above, it should be okay. More cores are always better, especially when a processor thread locks that core for a bit, but I run VM's all the time on my dual core without issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dredge (Post 278338)

ok here's the tough question assuming 4 gb ram but might upgrade down the line.

How much better off will I be? What one is better for me?

choice A: 1st generation Intel® Core™ i5-520M (2.40GHz base; 2.93GHz Max Turbo, 3MB Cache) (benchmark 2356)

or choice B: 2nd generation Sandy Intel Core i3-2310m, 2.10 GHz processor - (benchmark 2708)

The laptops I'm looking at are similar in price

Either will work well. Depends on the price really. If you can get the i5 with a faster hard drive, dedicated graphics card, or more memory for the same price as the i3 then I would go with that.