For my work, I'm looking for a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo
processor. It will be used mainly as a mobile replacement of a desktop
system for scientific research (image processing, programming,...). So
it's not intended to be used for gaming. (I also want to be able to use
the laptop for office and multimedia applications (playing DVD and other
videos, pictures,...) at home, but that is not the primary task.)

Most of the laptops I found, have one of these graphics cards:

Intel GMA 950
nVidia GeForce Go 7300/7600
ATI Mobility Radeon X1300/X1400/X1600

Dell also offers an nVidia Quadro NVS 110M/120M card, but I don't know
anything about the (dis)advantages of this type of graphics cards.

How do they perform, compared to each other? And how is there linux support?

Jef Driesen wrote:
> For my work, I'm looking for a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo
> processor. It will be used mainly as a mobile replacement of a desktop
> system for scientific research (image processing, programming,...). So
> it's not intended to be used for gaming. (I also want to be able to use
> the laptop for office and multimedia applications (playing DVD and other
> videos, pictures,...) at home, but that is not the primary task.)
>
> Most of the laptops I found, have one of these graphics cards:
>
> Intel GMA 950
> nVidia GeForce Go 7300/7600
> ATI Mobility Radeon X1300/X1400/X1600

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Compari...rds.130.0.html

Class 2: OK for newest games
ATi X1600
nVidia Go7600
Class 3: Ok for new games, but with low detail
ATi X1400
Class 4: Not current games
ATi X1300
nVidia Go7300
Class 5: Older games, ok
Intel GMA 950


> Dell also offers an nVidia Quadro NVS 110M/120M card, but I don't know
> anything about the (dis)advantages of this type of graphics cards.

Not sure about 110M/120M, but Dell has used 1500M which is of top class, as
the numbers are lower, the 110M/120M may be something of a midrange, maybe
something like the Go7300.


> How do they perform, compared to each other? And how is there linux
> support?

Yes, and there are different levels of support.

OpenSource:
All of them works with VESA driver, part of Xorg.
The nv driver should support the G70 cards, but provides only 2D support.
Intel provides a driver at their homepage
The "radeon" and "i810" drivers that are part of Xorg don't support any of
the cards listed by you.

Closed source:
nVidia has a driver that supports all the current cards, this one can be
downloaded from their homepage, requires kernel source installed.
ATi has a driver that supports most of their current cards, this one can be
downloaded from their homepage.


Intel Driver: http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/download.html
nVidia Driver: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
ATi Driver: http://ati.de/support/drivers/linux/linux-firegl.html
ATi x86_64bit: http://ati.de/support/drivers/linux6...64-firegl.html


--

//Aho

J.O. Aho wrote:
> Jef Driesen wrote:
>> For my work, I'm looking for a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo
>> processor. It will be used mainly as a mobile replacement of a desktop
>> system for scientific research (image processing, programming,...). So
>> it's not intended to be used for gaming. (I also want to be able to use
>> the laptop for office and multimedia applications (playing DVD and other
>> videos, pictures,...) at home, but that is not the primary task.)
>>
>> Most of the laptops I found, have one of these graphics cards:
>>
>> Intel GMA 950
>> nVidia GeForce Go 7300/7600
>> ATI Mobility Radeon X1300/X1400/X1600
>
> http://www.notebookcheck.net/Compari...rds.130.0.html
>
> Class 2: OK for newest games
> ATi X1600
> nVidia Go7600
> Class 3: Ok for new games, but with low detail
> ATi X1400
> Class 4: Not current games
> ATi X1300
> nVidia Go7300
> Class 5: Older games, ok
> Intel GMA 950

Thanks for the link to that website for the comparison.

>> Dell also offers an nVidia Quadro NVS 110M/120M card, but I don't know
>> anything about the (dis)advantages of this type of graphics cards.
>
> Not sure about 110M/120M, but Dell has used 1500M which is of top class, as
> the numbers are lower, the 110M/120M may be something of a midrange, maybe
> something like the Go7300.

According to the above website, they are both class 4.

>> How do they perform, compared to each other? And how is there linux
>> support?
>
> Yes, and there are different levels of support.
>
> OpenSource:
> All of them works with VESA driver, part of Xorg.
> The nv driver should support the G70 cards, but provides only 2D support.
> Intel provides a driver at their homepage
> The "radeon" and "i810" drivers that are part of Xorg don't support any of
> the cards listed by you.

That makes the intel card probably the best choice for use with an open
source driver.

> Closed source:
> nVidia has a driver that supports all the current cards, this one can be
> downloaded from their homepage, requires kernel source installed.
> ATi has a driver that supports most of their current cards, this one can be
> downloaded from their homepage.

How is the quality and performance of the ATI driver compared to the one
from nVidia? I have used the nVidia drivers before (both windows and
linux), but I never had an ATI card. A few years ago, when I bought my
desktop system, the nVidia Linux drivers where no match for ATI (at
least thats what I concluded from the information on the web). Has this
changed in the meantime?

Jef Driesen wrote:
> J.O. Aho wrote:

>> Closed source:
>> nVidia has a driver that supports all the current cards, this one
>> can be downloaded from their homepage, requires kernel source installed.
>> ATi has a driver that supports most of their current cards, this
>> one can be downloaded from their homepage.
>
> How is the quality and performance of the ATI driver compared to the one
> from nVidia?
> I have used the nVidia drivers before (both windows and
> linux), but I never had an ATI card. A few years ago, when I bought my
> desktop system, the nVidia Linux drivers where no match for ATI (at
> least thats what I concluded from the information on the web). Has this
> changed in the meantime?

Not completely, the ATi driver still have the trouble to be more difficult to
install and the driver don't get all out of the graphics card, but the driver
is getting better with each version and the release rate has increased since
AMD took over ATi (the handful soul Linux department has grown in size, maybe
not as large as nVidias). There seems to be some bugs in the latest driver
that hasn't been fixed even if they been around for long.
Of the closed source drivers, the nVidia one is still the king.

--

//Aho

On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:43:56 +0100, J.O. Aho wrote:
...
> Of the closed source drivers, the nVidia one is still the king.

Ditto. I always go with nvidia, since they have a single driver file you
install that generally works (is supposed to) with most to all of their
nvidia cards. Nvidia supports linux quite well.

On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:03:40 +0100, Jef Driesen wrote:

> For my work, I'm looking for a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo
> processor. It will be used mainly as a mobile replacement of a desktop
> system for scientific research (image processing, programming,...). So
> it's not intended to be used for gaming. (I also want to be able to use
> the laptop for office and multimedia applications (playing DVD and other
> videos, pictures,...) at home, but that is not the primary task.)
>
> Most of the laptops I found, have one of these graphics cards:
>
> Intel GMA 950
> nVidia GeForce Go 7300/7600
> ATI Mobility Radeon X1300/X1400/X1600
>
> Dell also offers an nVidia Quadro NVS 110M/120M card, but I don't know
> anything about the (dis)advantages of this type of graphics cards.
>
> How do they perform, compared to each other? And how is there linux support?

It seems that the intel driver is simply an interface to the video bios -
very simple minded.

Jef Driesen wrote:
> For my work, I'm looking for a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo
> processor. It will be used mainly as a mobile replacement of a desktop
> system for scientific research (image processing, programming,...). So
> it's not intended to be used for gaming. (I also want to be able to use
> the laptop for office and multimedia applications (playing DVD and other
> videos, pictures,...) at home, but that is not the primary task.)
>
> Most of the laptops I found, have one of these graphics cards:
>
> Intel GMA 950
> nVidia GeForce Go 7300/7600
> ATI Mobility Radeon X1300/X1400/X1600
>
> Dell also offers an nVidia Quadro NVS 110M/120M card, but I don't know
> anything about the (dis)advantages of this type of graphics cards.
>
> How do they perform, compared to each other? And how is there linux
> support?
I've always stuck with nVidia on my Linux boxes and I've had no
insurmountable problems to date. Support is good and the drivers "just
work" most of the time. Certainly in my humble oppinion this is the way
to go if you want good fast 3D support.

That said, I have a server with an Intel graphics card in it which works
really well (no 3D required here) and my new Dell Laptop (Intel core 2
duo, 2GB RAM etc etc running SuSE 10.2) has an Intel extreme graphics
card and it works with 3D acceleration in native 1920x1200 resolution
right out the box!! So this is very good indeed :)

Jef Driesen wrote:
> For my work, I'm looking for a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo
> processor. It will be used mainly as a mobile replacement of a desktop
> system for scientific research (image processing, programming,...). So
> it's not intended to be used for gaming. (I also want to be able to use
> the laptop for office and multimedia applications (playing DVD and other
> videos, pictures,...) at home, but that is not the primary task.)

I narrowed down my search to only three candidates, based on other
features than the graphics card. But now I don't know which one too
choose. (The prices are almost the same.)

Lenovo ThinkPad R60
- Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 1.83 GHz
- 15" TFT 1400 x 1050 (SXGA+)
- ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 128 MB

I read everywhere that the ThinkPad line has a very good reputation and
a very solid construction. That could be important because the laptop
has to travel a lot between home and work (by bike and train). But the
other features are less compared to the next two.

Lenovo 3000 N100
- Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 1.83 GHz
- 15.4" TFT 1680 x 1050 (WSXGA+)
- NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 TurboCache 128 MB

This is a very similar system to the ThinkPad, but does not seem to have
the same construction advantage (or am I wrong here?). On the other side
it has an nVidia card (which is slightly lower rated, but I'm a little
bit biased towards nVidia) and a widescreen TFT.

HP Compaq Business Notebook nx9420
- Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2 GHz
- 17" TFT 1680 x 1050 (WSXGA+)
- ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 256 MB

This one also looks interesting (fastest processor and fastest graphics
of the three), but has an ATI card. I'm not so sure about the 17" TFT.
I've never worked with a laptop before, but I can imagine the 17" screen
and the numeric keypad are nice to have for daily work. But its larger
size makes transportation more difficult I guess.

Jef Driesen wrote:

> I narrowed down my search to only three candidates, based on other
> features than the graphics card. But now I don't know which one too
> choose. (The prices are almost the same.)

I know, I had kind of the same trouble myself, and did sadly choose the wrong
machine, on paper it was a lot better than in reality (crappy hardware in
those HP Pavilions).

Things I think are important to look at are
- Battery time
- TFT resolution
- Memory*
- Hard drive size*

* Of course you can add/change this later on, but you usually pay more for
things and you have a hard time to sell the old parts.

A 15/15.4" Laptop is smaller and easier to carry with you than a 17".
The WSXGA+ screen allows you to have more applications with visible windows on
the desktop at the same time than the SXGA+.
As you use the computer in work, I assume you will be mobile and be on the
move, then the battery time is important, you don't want the computer to die
for you run out of battery.

If you had asked the same thing a couple of months ago, then I had given you
another answer, but sent my HP to repair twice and it's been on service more
days than I have been able to use it. I'm on my third motherboard and set of
CPU when I get it back next time (I suspect it's made at a factory in China
that the Chinese government closed last week, as they made bad quality
hardware, they made laptops to quite many "big brands", among others HP and
Toshiba).
I would suggest the Lenovo 3000 N100, see to get as large hard drive as
possible and at least 1GB Ram, maybe two as the graphics card can use system
memory to increase graphics memory.


> This one also looks interesting (fastest processor and fastest graphics
> of the three), but has an ATI card. I'm not so sure about the 17" TFT.
> I've never worked with a laptop before, but I can imagine the 17" screen
> and the numeric keypad are nice to have for daily work. But its larger
> size makes transportation more difficult I guess.

Higher MHz on CPU and more advanced graphics card drains more battery, and I
can say as a 17" owner that it's not at all as nice as a small laptop when you
have to transport it, really a 12" had been better from transporting point of
view (if you are lucky, you still can get hold of a 12" iBook G4, you will
have trouble to find a laptop that beats it's battery time and you get OSX
instead of microsoft, which I'm sure you would like if you aren't all too
depending on special microsoft programs and on top of that you still be able
to install GNU/Linux).


--

//Aho

So anyway, it was like, 19:24 CET Jan 17 2007, you know? Oh, and, yeah,
Jef Driesen was all like, "Dude,

> HP Compaq Business Notebook nx9420
> - Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2 GHz
> - 17" TFT 1680 x 1050 (WSXGA+)
> - ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 256 MB
>
> This one also looks interesting (fastest processor and fastest
> graphics of the three), but has an ATI card. I'm not so sure about
> the 17" TFT. I've never worked with a laptop before, but I can
> imagine the 17" screen and the numeric keypad are nice to have for
> daily work. But its larger size makes transportation more difficult
> I guess.

The nc8430 is similar but comes with a 15" 1680x1050 screen. A nice
piece of kit imo, but with an unfortunately loud fan, at least
compared to previous Hompaq models like the nx8220. Can be dealt with
through ACPI, but I'm unsure how healthy it is for the duo-core to
manually step down the cooling in this manner.

--
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Perth ---> *
11:14:23 up 70 days, 8:55, 5 users, load average: 0.13, 0.12, 0.15
Linux 2.6.18.1 x86_64 GNU/Linux Registered Linux user #261729

J.O. Aho wrote:
> Jef Driesen wrote:
>
>> I narrowed down my search to only three candidates, based on other
>> features than the graphics card. But now I don't know which one too
>> choose. (The prices are almost the same.)
>
> I know, I had kind of the same trouble myself, and did sadly choose the wrong
> machine, on paper it was a lot better than in reality (crappy hardware in
> those HP Pavilions).
>
> Things I think are important to look at are
> - Battery time
> - TFT resolution
> - Memory*
> - Hard drive size*
>
> * Of course you can add/change this later on, but you usually pay more for
> things and you have a hard time to sell the old parts.

Memory and hard drive size are the same for all three systems. The
battery times are:

Lenovo ThinkPad R60: 5.2 hours
Lenovo 3000 N100: 2.66 hours
HP Compaq Business Notebook nx9420: 4 hours

These numbers come from the website of the shop. I'm surprised there is
a large difference between both Lenovos. But the specs for the N100 at
the Lenovo/IBM website are better: up to 3.30h (six-cell) and 4.95h
(nine-cell).

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...cid=MIGR-63445
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...cid=MIGR-64199

> A 15/15.4" Laptop is smaller and easier to carry with you than a 17".
> The WSXGA+ screen allows you to have more applications with visible windows on
> the desktop at the same time than the SXGA+.
> As you use the computer in work, I assume you will be mobile and be on the
> move, then the battery time is important, you don't want the computer to die
> for you run out of battery.

The laptop will be most of the time on a desk (at work or at home). Real
traveling is only occasionally.

> If you had asked the same thing a couple of months ago, then I had given you
> another answer, but sent my HP to repair twice and it's been on service more
> days than I have been able to use it. I'm on my third motherboard and set of
> CPU when I get it back next time (I suspect it's made at a factory in China
> that the Chinese government closed last week, as they made bad quality
> hardware, they made laptops to quite many "big brands", among others HP and
> Toshiba).

Lenovo is also Chinese if I'm correct...

> I would suggest the Lenovo 3000 N100, see to get as large hard drive as
> possible and at least 1GB Ram, maybe two as the graphics card can use system
> memory to increase graphics memory.

That one is also my favorite at the moment. It's screen is a good
compromise, not too large (for transport) and not too small (for daily
work). The only downside is the smaller battery lifetime. It is missing
some of the features of the ThinkPad but since I didn't had them before,
I'll not miss them that much I think.

>> This one also looks interesting (fastest processor and fastest graphics
>> of the three), but has an ATI card. I'm not so sure about the 17" TFT.
>> I've never worked with a laptop before, but I can imagine the 17" screen
>> and the numeric keypad are nice to have for daily work. But its larger
>> size makes transportation more difficult I guess.
>
> Higher MHz on CPU and more advanced graphics card drains more battery, and I
> can say as a 17" owner that it's not at all as nice as a small laptop when you
> have to transport it, really a 12" had been better from transporting point of
> view (if you are lucky, you still can get hold of a 12" iBook G4, you will
> have trouble to find a laptop that beats it's battery time and you get OSX
> instead of microsoft, which I'm sure you would like if you aren't all too
> depending on special microsoft programs and on top of that you still be able
> to install GNU/Linux).

I'm going to stay with Windows and Linux. So a Mac is not an option.

Richard Asbridge wrote:
> Jef Driesen wrote:
>> For my work, I'm looking for a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo
>> processor. It will be used mainly as a mobile replacement of a desktop
>> system for scientific research (image processing, programming,...). So
>> it's not intended to be used for gaming. (I also want to be able to use
>> the laptop for office and multimedia applications (playing DVD and other
>> videos, pictures,...) at home, but that is not the primary task.)
>>
>> Most of the laptops I found, have one of these graphics cards:
>>
>> Intel GMA 950
>> nVidia GeForce Go 7300/7600
>> ATI Mobility Radeon X1300/X1400/X1600
>>
>> Dell also offers an nVidia Quadro NVS 110M/120M card, but I don't know
>> anything about the (dis)advantages of this type of graphics cards.
>>
>> How do they perform, compared to each other? And how is there linux
>> support?
> I've always stuck with nVidia on my Linux boxes and I've had no
> insurmountable problems to date. Support is good and the drivers "just
> work" most of the time. Certainly in my humble oppinion this is the way
> to go if you want good fast 3D support.

That is also my personal experience.

> That said, I have a server with an Intel graphics card in it which works
> really well (no 3D required here) and my new Dell Laptop (Intel core 2
> duo, 2GB RAM etc etc running SuSE 10.2) has an Intel extreme graphics
> card and it works with 3D acceleration in native 1920x1200 resolution
> right out the box!! So this is very good indeed :)

How is the hardware acceleration of the Intel card for normal desktop
usage (especially video, but no games). I would like to try out some of
the new eye candy like compiz.

Jef Driesen wrote:

>> If you had asked the same thing a couple of months ago, then I had
>> given you another answer, but sent my HP to repair twice and it's been
>> on service more days than I have been able to use it. I'm on my third
>> motherboard and set of CPU when I get it back next time (I suspect
>> it's made at a factory in China that the Chinese government closed
>> last week, as they made bad quality hardware, they made laptops to
>> quite many "big brands", among others HP and Toshiba).
>
> Lenovo is also Chinese if I'm correct...

Today almost all hardware is made in China, there are a handful different
companies who makes those notebooks for the big brands and many time more than
one brand in the same factory.

Lenovo is supposed to be IBM's cheap stuff.


>> I would suggest the Lenovo 3000 N100, see to get as large hard drive
>> as possible and at least 1GB Ram, maybe two as the graphics card can
>> use system memory to increase graphics memory.
>
> That one is also my favorite at the moment. It's screen is a good
> compromise, not too large (for transport) and not too small (for daily
> work). The only downside is the smaller battery lifetime. It is missing
> some of the features of the ThinkPad but since I didn't had them before,
> I'll not miss them that much I think.

You can always buy a new 12-cell battery, should be something like US$150-250
(just my guess based on other batteries in this "size" I have seen).


>>> This one also looks interesting (fastest processor and fastest
>>> graphics of the three), but has an ATI card. I'm not so sure about
>>> the 17" TFT. I've never worked with a laptop before, but I can
>>> imagine the 17" screen and the numeric keypad are nice to have for
>>> daily work. But its larger size makes transportation more difficult I
>>> guess.
>>
>> Higher MHz on CPU and more advanced graphics card drains more battery,
>> and I can say as a 17" owner that it's not at all as nice as a small
>> laptop when you have to transport it, really a 12" had been better
>> from transporting point of view (if you are lucky, you still can get
>> hold of a 12" iBook G4, you will have trouble to find a laptop that
>> beats it's battery time and you get OSX instead of microsoft, which
>> I'm sure you would like if you aren't all too depending on special
>> microsoft programs and on top of that you still be able to install
>> GNU/Linux).
>
> I'm going to stay with Windows and Linux. So a Mac is not an option.

The new Macs has Intel Dual Core CPUs, you could install OSx86, GNU/Linux and
microsoft on them, but of course the price tag is a bit higher than for the
same machine sold under another brand than Apple and you would still be able
to install a pirate version of OSx86.


--

//Aho

Jef Driesen wrote:
> Richard Asbridge wrote:

>> That said, I have a server with an Intel graphics card in it which
>> works really well (no 3D required here) and my new Dell Laptop (Intel
>> core 2 duo, 2GB RAM etc etc running SuSE 10.2) has an Intel extreme
>> graphics card and it works with 3D acceleration in native 1920x1200
>> resolution right out the box!! So this is very good indeed :)
>
> How is the hardware acceleration of the Intel card for normal desktop
> usage (especially video, but no games). I would like to try out some of
> the new eye candy like compiz.

With the CPU power that the laptop would have, video isn't any problem without
any kind of hardware acceleration for the graphics card.

--

//Aho

On Fri, 19 Jan 2007 14:47:22 +0000, Jef Driesen wrote:

<snip />
>
> How is the hardware acceleration of the Intel card for normal desktop
> usage (especially video, but no games). I would like to try out some of
> the new eye candy like compiz.

I havn't run up compiz or beryl yet on the notebook (intel card), but the
rest of KDE is running well. I use the machine mostly for writing
documents and code on so I havn't bothered setting up the eye-candy yet.
The regular performance of the card is great, no trouble at all.

If you want eye candy, I'd go nvidia though just because they "just work" :)