upgrade - Is my laptop good enough to support my development needs?
2014-07
KodeSeeker
I have an ASUS Pentium-R Dual Core CPU running at 2.20Ghz. It has 4 gb of built in ram, currently running a 64 bit Windows 7 . I just started graduate school and Im wondering whether I should go in for a new laptop or just repair the nagging battery on my current one. My requirements include - -Ability to support IDE's - I may end up running Eclipse, Visual Studio's and the like to help with my work. - Ability to run multiple VM's (not concurrently). Im currently running a Ubuntu 12 and 9 as VM's (not sure if this is overloading the system) - I'm a non gamer so I really dont care about a minor glitch caused by running a uber heavy game. -In addition I will have heavy use of Office Application Software and will be using my computer to watch movies and stream media.
Looking forward to your replies and suggestions!
Green
In short, yes, though it may be painful. 4GB of RAM is a tight tolerance to run an OS, (?several) IDEs and several VMs concurrently. When I had 4GB in my MacBook Pro, there was a very real performance hit when I had more than one VM open at a time and I was trying to dev work. If you can upgrade your RAM further, max it out. RAM is cheap.
Another problem you may run into is disk IO. If you're doing a large/long compile and your VMs are doing some heavy disk IO, your laptop is going to slow to a crawl. Laptops aren't known for their disk throughput. An SSD will help a lot in alleviating this problem.
CPU isn't so much of a problem. More cores is better though, especially with lots of VMs.
Matt Dawdy
So, the FSB and cache specs are what confuse me.
Intel® Pentium™ Dual Core T4300 (2.1GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache)
as opposed to paying $200 more for:
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8700 (2.53GHz/1066Mhz FSB/3MB cache)
Would that be worth it? I'm a .Net developer, I listen to music, I do NOT watch movies, I don't do much else. Basically, Visual Studio, Firefox, and SQL Server Management Studio.
is an extra 2 MB and 266 Mhz on the cache and FSB respectively worth it?
PS -- I'm throwing around terms like I know what they mean. I really don't. I mean, I know what a cache is, and I know FSB means Front Side Bus, and I've read about them in wikipedia, but that really REALLY didn't help me translate this into something I can use and understand.
divegeek
Either machine will do the job. The larger cache will mean the CPU will more often be able to get the data it's working on from cache, rather than having to reach out to slower RAM. How much difference will that make? That depends on the programs you run, but it's unlikely to make a huge difference on average. The faster FSB means that when the CPU does have to reach out to RAM, it gets the data a little quicker. How much difference will that make? That depends on the programs you run, but it's unlikely to make a huge difference on average. The clock speed difference makes a more predictable performance difference, at least if you're running CPU-bound tasks.
All in all, I'd say the two are pretty much equivalent for most uses. If you were doing large calculations that consume 100% of the CPU for long periods of time, or which couldn't quite fit in 1MB of cache but fit in 3MB or... then it would matter. As it is, spending the extra $200 isn't going to make much difference at all. Honestly, if you're going to spend some extra money, I'd focus on spending it on better physical build quality, getting a machine that is durable and reliable.
If the machines don't have enough RAM, that's another place where it might be worth putting a few more dollars.
Beaner
In the simplest terms a higher speed on the FSB move bits of data more quickly. The larger cache allows more data to be moved into a position where it can be accessed most readily by the CPU when the CPU is carrying out instructions that take longer than accessing data. The $200 is about going faster. If you can easily afford it, go for it. If you have other things you need to spend the money on, like eating for the rest of the week, and can live with a minor decrease in speed, the get the cheaper system. Also you probably want to take into account how long you expect to own this system before replacing it. If you plan to keep this for several years, getting the most speed you can now will better hedge you against processing demands later.
TheSmurf
I have a laptop with a T4300 and 4GB of RAM in it and I use it basically for the same things that you do (a Dell Inspiron 1545, if you're interested - crappy screen resolution; otherwise excellent machine). The specs on the Pentium are perfectly adequate. I see no difference, for development and productivity tasks, between that machine and my Core 2 Quad workstation (similarly specced to that P8700, but with two more cores).
One thing that MAY matter to you as a developer is that the Pentiums do not have the extra hardware virtualization bits that the beefier Core 2 chips do. That means, no Virtual PC on Windows 7, and VM performance in other software (VirtualBox) will be somewhat more sluggish.
If that doesn't matter to you, and you won't be doing any heavy tasks with the machine or trying to game with it, keep the $200.