Linux Format forums

Nobber · Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 11:00 am Post subject: GeForce Go / Pentium M

I'm looking into getting a new laptop, but before I riffle a wad of crisp notes under the nose of any hardware supplier (as it were), I'd like to know the answer to a couple of questions.

1. NVIDIA GeForce Go video chipsets. Do they work OK with NVIDIA's proprietary linux drivers? The GeForce Go is not mentioned on NVIDIA's supported products list, but there is evidence out there on the web that they can be made to work.

2. Pentium-M CPUs. If you had to give an AMD-style performance rating to the 1.7GHz Pentium-M, what would it be? (I'm looking to get CPU performance comparable to my current desktop system, which is based on an Athlon XP 2400+. Given that AMD's 3000+-rated chips operate at around 1.8GHz, I'm guessing that a 1.7GHz Pentium-M will be good enough.)

Your rough ideas, definitive answers, and off-topic rambling are welcome.

ollie · Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:37 pm Post subject: RE: GeForce Go / Pentium M

AMD ratings are equivalent to the Pentium speed - an Athlon 3000+ is the same as a Pentium 3.0 GHz. So a Pentium M 1.74 GHz is equivalent to an Athlon 1700+ when connected to power and with the power stepping when using batteries about 900 MHz. Getting equivalent performance from laptops is hard unless you go for the 4 - 5 kg monsters. These are usually referred to as desktop replacements - but they have relatively short battery lifes, so they need access to a power point most of the time.

You really need to decide if this laptop is for working on text type documents (text, html, C++, Perl, source code, etc) which is going to be compiled on your desktop system, doing graphical presentations, minor photo/video editing, etc. Don't forget that AMD also produce a laptop processor that is 64-bit so a performance boost is possible using these CPU.

Hope this helps you with your decision - laptops are always hard.

Nobber · Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:50 pm Post subject: Re: RE: GeForce Go / Pentium M

nelz

Bear in mind that for most laptops the I/O speed, both memory and disk, is slower than desktop hardware. even with an equivalent CPU, most tasks take longer.
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Nobber

Well, I've got a 1.2GHz Celeron laptop that compiles a kernel in 10 minutes. I'd like to halve that time, if poss, to approach the performance of my desktop. Roughly speaking, then, I need a 2.4GHz Celeron or above. And according to this, the Pentium-M 1.7GHz beats a 2.4GHz Celeron and is just slightly slower than an Athlon XP 2500+, so I should be happy.

Now, what about the GeForce Go? I would consider laptops with an ATI card - because there's more of them - but after looking into support for 3D acceleration (both open source and proprietary) on ATI cards, I'm inclined to give ATI a wide berth, especially on laptops.

nelz

Doubling the processor speed doesn't make everything twice as fast. Compiling a kernel involves shifting a lot of data from disk to memory and back again. Both of these processes are slower on laptops.

My XP2200+ desktop was significantly faster than my 2.4GHz Celeron laptop.
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Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

Nobber

drws · LXF regular Joined: Sat Aug 06, 2005 11:39 am Posts: 125

not exactly an answer to your question, but I have a Alienware laptop with WinXP on it, and the nvidia drivers don't work for the Nvidia Go card inside, I have to get the drivers from Alienware.
So, usually, if its that awkward for windows it'll probably be just as bad or worse for Linux.

Nobber

Nigel

My work laptop has the GeForce Go5600 chipset... unfortunately I have to run Windows on it.
The Ubuntu live CD works fine with the main screen using the nv driver, but isn't driving my secondary monitor properly (a 1280x1024 LCD panel - normally I run Windows with the desktop extended across both).
I presume that if I were to install Ubuntu and add the nVidia drivers I could get this to work with 3d etc, but I'm afraid this laptop is currently too vital to mess with (my main Windows development machine).

Under Windows the GeForce Go chipset is good because you can drive an external monitor at a different resolution & refresh rate from the laptop screen, and use the two as a twin-screen setup. Not all laptop graphics chipsets allow this - the ProSavage on my Linux laptop, for instance, just lets me duplicate my laptop screen to an external monitor at the same res & refresh rate.

Don't think this will be much help to you, but at least I do have something to say about the chipset Smile

Nobber

^We just need to find you a Live CD that comes with nVIDIA's proprietary drivers so you can test it on your laptop. Anyone know of one?

EDIT: This looks like and interesting LiveCD to try...

nelz

Doesn't PCLinuxOS come with nVidia drivers?
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Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

Nigel

wyliecoyoteuk

After using a few laptops:
I have a 2g p4 (ibm) laptop, and it is fine, uses ati rage gfx. Ran suse 9.3 and now 10.
In terms of speed, I would rate it on a par with my old athlon1700+ desktop(now sold to help finance my new athlon3200/64)
Avoid celerons at all costs, semprons work fine. Put as much memory in as you can.
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