Sager Music Laptop.. nice :-) my p4 choice

[Rayne]

I like many have searched far and wide for a laptop portable music production station ::

Well I have found one that I find works very well. I have purchased a Sager 5680. This is the same machine as many alien ware, justnot branded with an alien

Specs:
P4HT 3.06Ghz (NOT p4M, real full P4)
w/ full 800Mhz FrontSide Bus
1 gig Dual DDR400 RAM
60 gig 5400 internal drive
Dual video display
Mobility Radeon 9600 w/ 128MB
firewire
usb2
internal wireless (i wish i could get rid of it, but what ya gonna do)

an extra bay::: it can hold a swappable battery, or a dvd burner or an extra HD. Could be very useful.

The machine has got plenty of screen space, including a front side CD player. The Comp doesn't need to get turned on, but as long as it has power,it can function as a regualr CD. Very useful if you just need to show a quick something to a director or collaberator and have it already burned to CD.


All in all, it's a rather snappy system. I haven't had any stability problems, but it is still very new, I don't expect any problems.




It doesn't get too dradfully hot. I've had it steaming 10 tracks from a 200 gig USB drive, and it was fine. The fan isn't too loud untill you start really working. Multi-tracking will kick up the fan speed (and loudness) but with a machine as powerful as workhorse desktop production stations ::: who would be recording a quiet passage in the same room as thier recording rig anyway!?


The next piece that I need to buy is the Motu Traveller. 4 pre's and all the i/o of the MKii . That would really make this the perfect remote rig for my work.
I decided to sacrifice battery life (1.5 hours on a full battery!!) because I will always be near a power outlet. And with a swappable battery 3 hours is comperable to most other products operating at 1/2 this speed.




There was a big choice between a Dothan (centrino) or a true P4. . . I chose to go with the P4, because it is still better at large number crunching. ( like real-time effects and mastering) I not only do recording and squecning, but I have itmes when I have to use alot of effects in real time to create the sound that I need for a production, or a true master that I need to squeeze alittle more out of. I decided that to have this laptop replace my DAW and my full work time computer. A centrino would be better if you need battery life, and still have some sort of power for sequencing. As a note it operates at almost 1/2 speed when it's on battery. So a 1.5gz centrino would be like a 750 piii on batteries. . Centrinos are more effective at doing lotsof small tasks ( having word open, while surfing the net, listening to mp3s, checkings mail while talking on aim) .. it's made to allow multiple programs access better :: the P4 is still better at single intensive tasks. ( like running cubase) The P4 also has a better (IMO) predictive executing ablity. (that isn't the name, simply how I understand it from my research) both processor store variables so it executes less times when a program is running a loop. the P4 sounds like it would be more accurate more of the time in prediting when the application would chage it's loop pattern to allow it to execute the change faster.




Well anyway :: hopefully this will help someone who is looking to get a new portable DAW like i was.

 

[Guenon]

Heh, if it's about helping people who are looking for a new portable DAW, I'd like to offer an alternative view on this

P4 is still better at single intensive tasks. ( like running cubase)

It's good to remember that in situations requiring mainly intensive FPU performance, the Dothan lineup actually performs more efficiently when compared clock per clock.

Also note that a modern DAW session actually consists of multiple programs running simultaneously instead of being a "single intensive task." The plugin/rewire based architecture we are used to today is all about running multiple programs (the sequencer and the individual VSTi/rewired software units) at the same time, and any design characteristics of the CPU that gear it towards performing a lot of smaller intertwining tasks in realtime are actually benefits in such work, not hinderances. Indeed, the large L2 cache size of the Pentium M processors has made them such well-performing chips in the audio world. This can also be observed in "multimedia content creation" oriented benchmarking like the one I'm quoting below.

Of course, as P4 processors generally still run at considerably higher clockspeeds, the P4 architecture offers an edge in performance - not to mention the higher bus speeds. However, advising that a Dothan is good for "having word open while surfing the net, listening to mp3s, checkings mail while talking on aim" is in any case quite an understatement.

Also, when operating on battery power, the 1/2 clockspeed is only the default setting. The Advanced SpeedStep functionality allows the user to always specify full clockspeed if needed. Even when having the clock frequency halved, the performance is something completely different from an old P3 with the same clockspeed, so it's not quite making this elegant chip justice to say "a 1.5GHz Centrino would be like a 750 P3 on batteries"

Here are benchmark graphs from different intensive use benchmarks. Keep in mind the difference in clock frequency and also the vast difference in power consumption, 1/4th to 1/5th of the high end P4 desktop processors in the case of Dothan, resulting in drastically less heat while providing you with this kind of computational power:

(From Anandtech. Dothans marked in red.)

Multimedia Content Creation benchmark, test runs including for example Photoshop, Premiere, LightWave and Wavelab:

Video encoding:

3D Rendering:

All in all, a P4 workstation is more efficient with its higher clock frequency and faster bus design. You can see this particularly well in the last two benchmarks. However, when it's strictly about mobile systems, I've come to think the power consumption of P4, hence also the need for a lot heftier cooling solution, is too much of a compromise considering the percentage of additional performance to be gained - especially as the Dothan shines in the content creation department.