N850 vs N660

[bpoilspill]

I have the N850 in my DV7-4171us, and it's performance is lacking, so I'm looking for an upgrade.

N850 specs

Series AMD Phenom II X3
Codename Champlain
Clock Rate 2200 MHz
Front Side Bus 3600 MHz
Level 1 Cache 384 KB
Level 2 Cache 1536 KB
Number of Cores / Threads 3 / 3
Max. Power Consumption (TDP = Thermal Design Power) 35 Watt
Manufacturing Technology 45 nm
Socket S1 (S1g4)
Features MMX(+), 3DNow!(+), SSE(1,2,3,4A), x86-64, AMD-V, DDR3-1333 memory controller
64 Bit 64 Bit support

N660 specs

Series AMD Phenom II X2
Codename Champlain
Clock Rate 3000 MHz
Front Side Bus 3600 MHz
Level 1 Cache 256 KB
Level 2 Cache 2048 KB
Number of Cores / Threads 2 / 2
Max. Power Consumption (TDP = Thermal Design Power) 35 Watt
Manufacturing Technology 45 nm
Socket S1
Features DDR3 memory controller, HyperTransport 3.0, SSE4A, AMD64, Enhanced Virus Protection, Vurtualization
64 Bit 64 Bit support
Hardware Virtualization AMD-V

I'd be losing a core, but gaining much needed MHz for single threaded applications. What do you guys think? The N660 can be had for $98.

 

[RGone]

The N660 benched in Passmark is ranked lower than the N850, so it seems the dual core is n0t an increase in performance.

 

[bpoilspill]

The N660 benched in Passmark is ranked lower than the N850, so it seems the dual core is n0t an increase in performance.

In what aspect though? Single-threaded or Multi-threaded benchmark? Obviously if it's Multi-threaded the n850 will win.

EDIT: This is what I've been looking for : http://www.cpu-world.com/benchmarks/socket_S1g4_single.html

 

[rescuetoaster]

I would think an SSD would be a better investment if you want to boost overall performance. Are you gaming on this laptop or what?

 

[bpoilspill]

I would think an SSD would be a better investment if you want to boost overall performance. Are you gaming on this laptop or what?

I do some gaming on it, but I notice some slowness with it just having multiple tabs up on Firefox. It's not a slow laptop by any means, I'm just used to my desktop speed(3.2GHz core 2 quad, 4GB(ddr2), 7200rpm.

The HDD in my laptop is actually quicker than in my desktop. This laptop also has DDR3. Only thing really lacking is the CPU.

 

[rescuetoaster]

What do you have for a GPU? Firefox has hardware acceleration that actually works really well, so you may want to ensure that it's enabled. But that aside, my girlfriend's Toshiba Satellite only has a dual core Athlon II at 2.2 Ghz and it's ridiculously fast for general computing tasks, so I'm just shocked you have any sort of hiccups.

 

[bpoilspill]

What do you have for a GPU? Firefox has hardware acceleration that actually works really well, so you may want to ensure that it's enabled. But that aside, my girlfriend's Toshiba Satellite only has a dual core Athlon II at 2.2 Ghz and it's ridiculously fast for general computing tasks, so I'm just shocked you have any sort of hiccups.

ATI HD5470, Firefox is running hardware accel. Like I said, the computer's not that slow, it's just my standards are raised coming from my desktop. However, I'm just not sure whether I should get a N660, with higher MHz, which blows away the N850 in single-threaded apps, and isn't too far behind in multi-threaded.

 

[bpoilspill]

bump

 

[rescuetoaster]

My short answer: Stick with the triple core. Either one of these should have MORE than enough processing overhead to handle simple internet browsing.

What is your HDD activity like when you switch between tabs/notice it being lagier than you would expect? I've had a number of laptops in the past (I'm looking at you Tecra M2) that have had issues with the HDD controller crapping out slowly, and would cause it to thrash either constantly, or cause a hang when switching tasks. Just an idea.

 

[bpoilspill]

I did a benchmark with AIDA64, I attached a benchmark log, and also a png of hard drive read suite test.

I do notice a big lag when loading hi-res images also with windows image viewer, compared to my desktop.