[PD] [half OT] laptop processors for rt sound (32/64)

[sven]

>
>I saw this. This looks like one more reason to choose 32 bit. According to 
>what
>I read across the Internet about processors for notebooks, the Pentium M
>(centrino technology) looks very good for realtime audio. The AMD equivalent
>(Sempron) should be good too, but I didn't find much information about it;
>maybe someone here has a laptop with this type of cpu ?

I have a centrino and in comparison to desktop p4's it's much faster at the 
same clockspeed.
It's said that a 1.7GHz Pentium M (dothan) is faster than a 3.0GHz P4.
http://www.tecchannel.de/imgserver/bdb/341800/341851/C2E2D1F2D6C75DD830F7D60AF8878452_1000x700.jpg 

i've never noticed any denormal problems. and denormals are not a problem 
when using sse2
anyway. so if you have denormal probs you should try to force the compiler 
to use sse2 instructions.
closed source software which has denormal probs is just badly coded or 
improperly compiled.
(sorry, i'm not sure, if what i've wrote is perfectly true - but polemic is 
fun)
the only processors which are a little faster than the PM2.0Ghz are the P4 
3.8Gz
and the the Athlon 4000+. This small advantage of additional speed is 
outweighted
by the fact that these cpu are electricity-hungry 100watts monsters.
semprons suck as much as celerons.
The advantages of the Pentium M's relating wattage and thus battery running 
time and noise
are huge. it's so pleasant working on a silent computer, ahhhh... i love it.
everytime i have to work on a normal-loud desktop/laptop i'm wondering how 
i could stand that noise
over the years.

sven.