With 2 notebook already tested by me, I could say roughly, Turion 64 x2, 2 GHz notebook run at equivalent speed with Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz notebook.
However, C2D base notebook has better battery lifespan compare to amd base CPU notebook.
Quantitative measurement at THG : CLICK HERE
What is the main difference between budget CPU (Pentium Dual Core) vs premium CPU (Core 2 Duo)?
Some of you might still wondering, either it is a smart choice to fork out another RM 200 to get C2D with equivalent gigahertz. Well, the truth is, both CPU are 95 % identical, which the other 5% reserve to C2D processor has higher L2 Cache size. Thats it.
Core 2 Duo processor has 2, 3, 4 or even 6 MB Cache, depend on the product code. The cheapest C2D has 2 MB cache, which around RM 400 right now. Compare to Pentium Dual Core, which has 1 MB cache, you might think, C2D is a better choice. However, think again when you see Pentium Dual Core will only cost you merely RM 200. (RM 200 cheaper to C2D same GHz)
From various benchmark, having extra 1 MB cache might improve the performance of the CPU up to 10%, depend on application. But, C2D processor will cost you another 100 percent increase ( base on Pentium Dual Core price)
However, C2D currently running on 800, 1066 and 1333 FSB. Compare to Pentium Dual Core, it is limited to FSB 800 only. For me, this limitation is an advantage for Pentium Dual Core. Mainly, because we can overclock it to 1333 MHz FSB without any much problem, since most of current mobo run at 1333 MHz without any complain. But for most user who dont give a damn about overclocking, having faster FSB might improve their system responsiveness.
Link : See how Tomshardware overclock Pentium Dual Core 1.6 GHz to unbelievable 3.5 GHz without any exotic cooler. : HERE
Bear in mind, Pentum Dual Core is not Pentium D or Pentium 4 D. Pentium Dual Core is totally different CPU compare to Pentium 4. So, why the heck they name it Pentium Dual Core if the architecture of Pentium Dual Core equivalent to Core 2 Duo?
Simple, marketing gimmick. Intel want to separate premium segment CPU, midle segment and cheap segment CPU. C2D will represent intel CPU for premium segment, Pentium Dual Core to fight direcly with cheap AMD Athlon 64 x2 CPU and Celeron is targeted to fight Sempron.
So, back to the question. Is it worth to add another RM200 to get C2D which has same frequency with Pentium Dual Core? NO..it is not. Unless you go for 6 MB Cache Core 2 Duo processor, clocking at 3 GHz (8000 series) which will cost you around RM 600.00
Quote from Tomshardware :
The Pentium Dual-Core models E2140 and E2160 as well as the newer additions E2180 and E2200 all possess a full-fledged Core 2 Duo core that has only been pared down in two respects, allowing Intel to sell a low-cost part. For one thing, it only comes with 1 MB instead of 4 MB, for another, it is limited to a maximum clock speed of 2 GHz on an 800 MHz FSB.
Price List : PCZone PDF price list
Tomshardware Benchmark : Does cache really improve performance : HERE
Sigh…latest speedcheck for izzi..even with 100% signal str. Bear in mind guys, this speed check was one on morning. Expect half of the speed if 7PM to 1 AM
Yeah, for majority of us, this kind of question will end up with LoL, but after running my very own gaming forum (solarose.niceboard.net), this kind of question always pop up from time to time. So, i made this guide (and post it at my forum originally).
—–
Go to http://imageshack.us/
click on browse button…
chose your desire picture, click open
click host it….and wait a while…until the page below appear
scroll down the page untill you see this one…direct link to image
copy the address (URL)
open up forum …and start to post your mesage.
Click on Image button, paste the URL and click on ok button..
your picture will appear shortly.
SoundBlaster X-Fi vs on-board sound chip (like Azalia or SoundStorm) for example.
Should you invest couple of hundreds of ringgit to a dedicated sound card? Well, the answer lies to this question : “Should you invest several hundreds ringgit for a dedicated graphic card?”. The answer may be yes or no, depend on the user.
Most gamers only care about their frame rate. Thus, state of the art 3D Card is a must. At least GeForce9600 GT at this moment (which you can afford roughly RM500 per card). Compare to intergrated vga chipset, yes, the different like a Perodua Kancil Vs Lamborgini Gallardo. Too obvious. Some games which cant be played before, now can be played at max resolution with all the bell and whistle.
But for soundcard…..errr
Ask your ears and ask your speaker or headphone. Do you really care what your ears listen too. Do you really care a deep base ‘thud’ instead of ‘thong’. Do you really care to have total control to fine tune your sound output. And do you really have a good pair of speaker or headphone.
What ever the answer is, your game, MP3, video or even anime, will run find with the cheapest intergrated soundchip. Don’t worry. But the sound will be flat and mediocre. Deep solid low frequency base and crystal clear high frequency treble and chiming sound…can be forget about.
As for me, my personal experience, I can’t run away from intergrated soundchip. Tell me what motherboard doesnt provide intregrated soundchip nowadays (even the high end one). So, I could always compare the sound output from those cheap chip vs Creative SoundBlaster Live Player, Creative SoundBlaster Audigy and the Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum. Both cost me RM220, RM 280 and RM720 (at their prime time).
I use a pair of Grardo SR80, Philips SHP2700 and Zalman 5.0 Headphone as the transducer to translate sound from electrical signal to soundwave. Grado can, absolutely the best among 3, no doubt. But, the other headphone is used to simulate real world user who use sub RM200 headphone for their own listening experience. As for the speaker, I need to trust not so transparent Altec Lansing AM4100 4.1 speaker.
And I could say the different is really obvious. You have to listen to believe. There is no point you buy a good, or even an expensive set of speaker but using the intregrated audio chip. Your speaker or headphone only able to produce the sound as good as what signal it get from the chip. With intergrated audiochip, my headphone or speaker (espcially the very transparent grado headphone), reveal the sound was too flat, mix up and a lot of instrument disappear. The bass sound like ‘tong’ instead of solid ‘thud’. The treble, almost not exist. The voice, not so clear. It like i listen to FM Radio instead of CD player.
And for gaming experience, SoundBlaster X-Fi (note, windows xp only), really show the true talent of latest game sound technology. You could sense where the bullet is coming, sometime I even feel the bullet cross my head, actual location of my enemy (their foodstep or sound of their weapon reloading), or other car engine noise which try to overtake me, surround ambient sound which reflect to my character movement, EAX 5.0 HD and ground shattering explosive sound effect. It’s not about EAX or reverb effect only, but sound placement which integrated audiochip lack of processing power to process it in real time, no matter what claim they made (5.1, 7.1…heh my arse). Yeah…and this cheap soundchipset will tax your CPU too…as it lack dedicated sound processor.
With SoundBlaster X-Fi too, I could tweak the sound on hardware level. The equalizer, Crystalizer, 24 bit DAC engine, sounds module and all the effect will appear in real time. There is no silly software DSP to play with…well I never ever like DSP software to enhance my music experience coz it sound so fake. X-Fi could handle sound tweaking as good as you adjust your expensive car stereo cross fader, equalizer etc.
Watching DVD with DTS never feel so good with X-Fi. Once you setup a proper set of speaker, let say 5.1 speaker, couple with X-Fi, you will never ever want to watch movie using those cheap intergrated soundchip. The realism and aura of sound is so different. I could feel every single angle of sound effect using x-fi, and expect flat and boring stereo x2 sound from integrated chip.
And trust me, even using the Philips SHP2700 (cost me RM85) married with X-Fi will reveal the true power of dedicated sound card. Imagine if you use RM1000 headphone or RM 200 set of speaker. You will be stunned.
Listen to believe…don’t read spec..but listen for yourself.
PS : However, if you use RM20 speaker of headphone, save yourself from being fool. There is no need a dedicated and expensive soundcard if your speaker is not able to produce all the sound tone.
Forum or Bulletin Board is a medium for your small community to talk, discuss, share tought or just hang around. You might need a workable and nice forum for your school, university, club, college, game server or even for fun.
It is pretty easy nowadays to setup a nice, good looking, well functioning with some gadget preinstalled. As for my case, when my game server grow, I need to detach my game server forum to other hoster (not hosted by me anymore). My criteria :
After scouting around, I found this one. www.forumotion.com . This hoster meet my requirement pretty well, and so far (after 2 month running with 2.3k+ posts), the speed and reliability still top notch. No ads and it provide tonnes of templates and skin (supplied by hitskin.com). Best of all, you can apply hitskin template / theme with a single click …and viola..updated. Changing theme at this forum as easy as changing wallpaper at your desktop.
This is my Solarose Forum …used to support Solarose Rose Online Private Server community.
So..how to have this kind of forum in 5 minutes?
Note : If you are looking for Step By Step guide how to backup your PC : HERE
Computer user (not newb), try to ask yourself….How many times you need to reformat your hard disk and reinstall Windows XP or Vista from scratch this year alone. Or perhaps, last year and this year. If it is more than 3 times, then you really should consider complete hard disk backup / image as better alternative to completely restore your PC if something happen (what ever causes which force you to reformat and reinstall your windows).
I was a hard die fan of Norton Ghost (since 1999, using their almighty but absolute ghostpe.exe). However, as the technology of hard disk interface change, capability of CPU to crunch data for better compression algorithm already increased by 10 folds, I think i need to move on and update myself with latest backup (partition or complete system backup) software. There is a lot of software out there, but sorry, I am not computer freak or geek. So playing with hard disk cylinder or sector to do one stupid backup or restore is not my option.
After doing my homework, I found only 3 softwares suit my criteria which is :
1st Alternative :
Windows Vista pre-installed PC Backup and Restore application. I am not sure if it pre-installed with Home Version or Basic Version, as mine is Ultimate version.
Backup and Restore Center is basic utility which are superior than system restore but pale compare to other alternative. However, it deliver it promise pretty well. Backup the whole partition (can be more than one), and store the image either on removeable media (DVD for example) or your another partition. The compression also OK but could be better. Time required to completely backup my Windows Vista Ultimate (without SP1) fresh install ..aproximately 10 minutes. Size required, approximately 8.2 GB. Not to shabby consider the actual size used on my C drive was 14 GB.
To restore this backup (let say your PC unbootable), you can use Windows Vista installation DVD to start up your computer and choose ‘Repair’. It will ask you to use Windows Backup and Restore Center and as usual, just follow the wizard will do.
One drawback of this application is, it is too basic. Let say I have Windows Vista on C drive, and Windows XP on D drive. I already backup windows Vista and now I want to backup my D (windows XP) partition, Windows Backup application will not allow me to backup D drive alone without C. What a waste of space. And, since i have to backup both drive, when i want to restore D drive, it will restore C drive too. At the end, (after couple of month the backup files stored on my hdd), i dump that file forever…for good.
Second Alternative : Norton Ghost 12
This one obviously a better choice compare to basic windows backup application. You have a lot more features here. First of all, it has incremental backup, one shot backup and system monitoring. Screenshot as below.
(I have to ‘borrow’ screenshot from Radified as I already no longer use Norton Ghost 12 as my primary system backup and restore.) Credit To Rad, Admin of Radified.
One of the reason, Norton Ghost 12 can’t win my heart is, it is too heavy for backup application. It constantly monitor my hard disk (even they claim performance throttling or what so ever), but I seriously don’t prefer a utility who treat me as dumb. I will backup when i want and no need to monitor it for me. Other part is, the backup size too big for my taste, even i choose highest compression backup. The incremental, pff, too many files (not single image). The interface also, not favorable for me. Since I download this application, it not come with bootable CD. And, to make one, you need the images…LoL…what is this. In short, I can’t make myself a bootable recovery CD. Nuff said. So, how do I recover my computer using Norton Ghost then?
The answer, combo application. I start my computer using Windows Vista DVD, run Windows Backup and Restore Center to restore my very basic Windows Vista image, then from Vista, I run Norton Ghost 12 application to restore my latest backup. Too many step…which finally, made me dump this software, and delete all the images..Save another 8 GB.
Third Alternative : The Best one for me.
Acronis TrueImage Home 11. I never a big fan of Acronis. I grow up with Norton and PowerQuest. So, I a bit skeptical with Acronis. After doing a lot of research, read their lengthy manual in pdf, approximately 120 MB of the Installer, finally I decide to give it a try.
Surprisingly, I feel very comfortable with this software. The interface remind me to PowerQuest Partition Magic at its prime. Simple and easy to be used. Totally fool proof. It can do what ever Norton can do, yet no performance impact. And it could do more. However, I fall in love with this utility is the ability to create recovery boot CD easy as ABC and its compression algorithm is really impressive.
My fresh install windows vista ultimate (as i explain above) was backup using TrueImage using Highest Compression level. Require approximately 14 minutes. And..jeng jeng…the backup image less than 4 GB. Woot, enough for a DVD.
The recovery boot CD also very easy to be used. As easy as their main application under windows environment. Complete with mouse and 16bit color which is really nice. What ever you see on windows enviroment, you see it from the recovery boot CD. Space require for boot CD approx 54 MB. I will upload it later. Current upstream speed, too slow T_T
So now, I could backup and restore my partition (doesnt matter I have Vista, XP or Ubuntu at the same time) without any probs. If my XP was knock out, I simply fire up the software (either from Vista or directly boot from CD), and restore it within minutes…well for XP, i dont have enough time to make a cup of coffee.
So, do you need to reinstall your Windows again and again after this? You could say bye bye to your windows CD Key, unless you change major hardware which will render your backup useless. Until then, this kind of tricks, save me countless of hours.
Recommended : Acronis TrueImage Home 11 (at least get the bootable recovery CD)
Download Acronis TrueImage 11 Boot CD Image (in ISO here) : DOWNLOAD
Finally, I have a chance to buy and test a notebook base on mobile CPU Core 2 Duo 1.86 GHz. If you read my blog before, you will notice, that i buy a sub RM2000 notebook for my sister in law, which is Acer Aspire using AMD Turion 2.0 GHz.
My expectation on this notebook was a bit high compare to Acer Aspire consider the price tag extra RM 300.00. Furthermore it use oh well state of the art C2D processor. But…. using Vista Performance Index, surprisingly the score is very identical. Both score 4.8 for the CPU.
The physical look of Lenovo notebook seem better and sturdier compare to plasticky Aspire, but some people prefer the cheerfull color of Aspire. Webcam on Lenovo is better, so do the LCD screen. But, Aspire clearly beat Lenovo in sound department. Sound from Lenovo sound sooo tiny and underpar, compare to current notebook, even they claim Dolby certified and got subwoofer (i cant sense any single bass lol)
Spec wise, the Lenovo come with 160 GB hard disk (latest check, the current aspire also come with 160 GB hard disk). Aspire weight a bit less compare to Lenovo but not so significant to my shoulder.
However, as expected, C2D base notebook use less power compare to Turion base notebook. Lenovo able to work almost 4 hours, with casual use. Wifi, Bluetooth were set to OFF.
Detail spec :
roduct Information
Lenovo Y410-T5550 Notebook
- Intel Centrino Core2 Duo T5550 1.83GHz Processor.
- Intel PRO / Wireless 3945ABG.
- Intel X3100 256MB Shared Display with Dual View & TV-Out.
- 14.1″ WideScreen WXGA with VibrantView.
- 2.0GB DDR2 Memory.
- 160GB SATA Hard Disk Drive.
- Slot-In RAMBO DVD±RW/DL/RAM Super Multi Drive.
- 100Mbps LAN, 56K Modem, Firewire, Bluetooth, Webcam 1.3 Megapixel, PCMCIA & Card Reader.
- 2×1.5W Stereo Multimedia Speakers & 1×2W SubWoofer Speaker.
- Support Dolby® Home Theater™ Surround Sound.
- Shuttle Control & Shuttle Centre.
- Audio-DJ Control Panel.
- Weight: 2.3kg include 6-Cell Li-Ion Battery.
- One Year Lenovo Carry-In Warranty.
- FREE Lenovo Ready 2 Go Traveller Bag.
Vista Performance Index :
- Processor : 4.8 (same with Turion 2.0 GHz)
- RAM : 4.5 (both system has 2 GB of Ram, using DDR2 667)
- Graphics : 3.5 (clearly X3100 chipset inferior to GeForce7000M chipset)
- Gaming Graphics : 3.5 (Score better than Geforce 7000M)
- Hard Disk : 5.2 (seem intel base chipset handle hard disk better)
URL : Solarose Official Page (Download + Register + Play)
As you could see, my last post in this blog : 28 March 2008. Since then, I actively involve with solarose thingy. Yeah, hosting private game server with buggy code emulator really make my life hectic, espcially when my wife gonna deliver my very first baby girl early June. But, it kinda fun to host a game server despite all the headache come from server hardware, OS, emulator and player. Ouch.
Currently having 2299 characters and progressively growing. This stats is not include character in beta database which we clean wipe when solarose server enter mature phase. But no more wipe after this as everything is tightly control, unless act of God. (gulp)
But honestly man, hosting Rose Private Server is pain in the arse. The server code, revision 80 is sooooo outdated compare to current client version, for example 1.55. If you freshly download the server emulator software and host it right away, expect skill not working, cant learn skill, cant buy skills, zuly not drop and the list goes on and on. Graviti, the maker of Rose Online clearly hate private server (obviously lol) and make significant change on their game files every 2 weeks, which will cause never ending headache to any private server game admin. Example, is the latest one. I work hard to make 95% of the skills work perfectly (with the exception, resuraction, gem cutting and valkerie charm) with the client version 1.55. And now, with the latest patch which is version 1.60, kaboom, skill table change again. Even the name of the skills. Oh dear, double headache.
And, some of you might wondering, what do I get by spending so much time on this thing. Well, I get nothing but satisfaction. That is all. Same mechanic when certain people play online game, play game, racing or even fishing. You waste time, you waste money and got nothing (well, fishing got fish 
).
But, sometime, the attitude of the players and GM really piss me off. Most of the time, I have to close my PC monitor, get out from my computer room and take a very long shower to cool my head. They seem not appreciate your hardwork at all even they play it for free. So bro and sis, before you wanna host any game server, ask yourself first…are you high tempered or not
Some more, some of the GM are really annoying. I almost got high blood pressure because of them. Having affair with player, giving free stats to player, or his another character, leaking items, and the list goes on and on. When you do database checking and clean up…you will have OMG…WTF face. Certain player has 81 peridots grade 7 gem. Trace back…heh, one GM leak it. Immediate permanent ban.
