Laptop Vs. Desktop

Rick Meyer

Rick Meyer

Veteran
All things being equal, are laptops just innately slower?

I purchased the components for my desktop 4 years ago. So, its dated (but frankly, not too bad) and my laptop less than a year ago.

Desktop: 2.66ghz hyperthreading 800 front side bus
2 36gig 10,000 rpm Hard Drives in Raid configuration
1 120 gig 7,200 rpm Hard Drive
128 Radeon Pro Video Card
Plextor 4x burner
1 gig of Ram


Laptop: 1.66ghz Dual Core processors 800 bus
80 gig Hard Drive 7,200rpm
256 Radeon Pro Video Card
Sony 8x burner
1 gig Ram

They are pretty close in specs. Nothing TOO far off but my desktop is WAY faster in EVERY way. Even burning a DVD takes the typical 5-10 minutes give or take on my desktop. But my laptop takes much longer for the job.

Opening up apps are slower, working on projects are much slower, and especially render times. So, whats gives? Anybody know?

Rick
 
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not enough specific info, like RAM and what processors. 1.66mhz btw is like a casio digital watch, you mean GHZ
 
Cynic821 said:
not enough specific info, like RAM and what processors. 1.66mhz btw is like a casio digital watch, you mean GHZ
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Thats funny. like a casio digital watch. yeah, i knew it looked funny when i was typing it.

I edited by the way.
 
i thin kyour 10,000 RPM drives area whatsmaking your Desktop faster. slow HDD is whats killing my laptop. itsa fast machine, but with a huge bottle neck att he HDD.
 
Operating system, Memory and Processor type, Manufacturer, Chipset all have a bearing on performance. The laptop shouldn't be slow by any means, so if it feels slow, there is likely something wrong. Some laptops ship with the Hard Drives formatted as Fat32 (as opposed to NTFS), and that can have a significant effect on performance.

Assuming you have windowsXP, you can run msinfo32.exe from the run box (start>Run or windows key + r) and find more detailed system information.

edit:

I agree with TimurCivan, those 5400rpm laptop hard drives are painfully slow.
 
I'd go with two laptops, a powerful desktop replacement one kept at home like a desktop but useful for travelling for long distance jobs, and a smaller more portable laptop for writing and preproduction work. I have a powerful Sager laptop and a Macbook. It's a very useful setup.

If I had to choose just one, I'd get a laptop. Sure it's a little slower, but the portability is very useful for work. Also, I've moved around a lot these past few years and the laptop is much easier to lug.
 
I agree with Issac. I edited my last film in HD on my laptop and I use it when I travel for work. Keep everything on external drives. It's nice though to have a desktop at home just for rendering/encoding/number crunching/etc.
 
tommyinla said:
lol. My Commodore 64 was about 1.66 mhz.
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well I had a C64 too, you must have had a hell of a fast C64 since they only ever made them at 1.02 MHz :)

Erh, its not just CPU speed a lot of people miss out the L2 cache side bus sizes, the bigger the better, a slower clock speed can beat a faster CPU if its L2 Cache is bigger AEBE (all else being Equal)
 
-zach- said:
I'd go with a desktop.

And make it a Mac, while you're at it.

Just personal preference.
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Zach - I actually already have these computers (specs at the beginning of the thread). So its not a question of which to choose but "are laptops innately slower?" Though I do appreciate any and all input. And judging from this thread, all things being equal, they should perform near identically.

Jake Carpenter- Yes, the laptop feels slow. Well, it feels slower than my desktop by a longshot. But, like I said, even the disc drive is slow to burn discs and spec-wise its much faster than my plextor.

Having said all that, I still love the laptop, the portability of it and its a great little machine. And, I can do everything on it that I can do with my desktop. It just takes longer. So, I guess I am just trying to discern where the bottleneck is.

I am not a computer guru by any stretch. But 4 years ago, I made sure I bought all very well rated components for my desktop. If the geek mags liked a particular video card, I went with it (within financial reason). So, all of my parts are name-brand and the performance has been very solid. Its 4 years later and it still is.

I am wondering if the laptop manufacturers (in this case Dell) shortchange you in areas you cant see on a spec sheet? I guess that is what this expedition is all about. To really get into the nuts and bolts as to why my laptop is significantly slower. Because, judging by this thread, all things being equal, laptop components should be as efficient as desktop components. And if the specs are the same and the laptop is slower, something is wrong...hmmm...

And to think, next go around I was going to say F it and just get an entire computer with banging specs from a Dell or like-company. I think I just might go the same route I did 4 years ago because having each and every component hand picked is quite an advantage...


Anhar-how do I locate the BUS size on my computer? I believe its 800 for both but its been a while since I had this desktop put together (I bought everything...a friend built it).
 
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