danico4not said:
I'm in the market to buy a new laptop computer to record and edit my music on. I've heard the new AMD processors are much faster than the Intel ones.
Does this matter much? If I buy an AMD will there be compatibility issues with my programs? (soundforge, acid, sonar) I want my computer to be the best option for the price. I'm looking to spend about $1500- 1700. Any ideas? Should I stay away from certain models (gateway, compaq), or does it matter? I'm leaning towards a PC rather than a mac. Please help I'd like to make an informed decision.
Asking a question like this will surely result in somewhat biased opinions from people who like or dislike certain brands/types of computers.
There are intel haters and amd haters all over this forum. You have to make the choice. At this moment in time, AMD seems to be the best bet, being the most efficient workwise and heatwise (although intels Pentium M is even more effficient with heat output but falls flat when it comes to multimedia or bandwidth intensive ops). This was not always the case, but AMD seems to be the best choice now as far as desktops are concerned. There will not be AMD compatibility problems, per se, but there may be chipset compatibility issues (such as the VIA chipset issues mentioned before). Stick with an nVidia chipset for now on an AMD platform, or if you do decide to get an intel, stick with the 915 or 925 LGA chipsets if you are looking at a desktop (you will need to get DDR2 ram and a PCIexpress card if you decide to go intel... i wont get into the pros and cons of both..) or stick with the Pentium M (centrino package alternatively) for laptops.
As far as manufacturers go,
Gateway makes stripped down laptops that have little to no crapware installed on them and they are fairly fast, assuming you get the ones with the Pentium M CPUs and a fair amount of RAM (go no lower than 512MB)
Compaq (HP) makes craptops with a ton of crapware on them that slows them down immensely. I would stay away from these unless you get a sweet-ass deal, then i would reformat with just windows and the neccesary drivers.
Sony makes very good computers (as far as multimedia is concerned), but they come with a good bit of crapware too... at least construction (from what i have dealt with) beats HP and compaq all around... especially the LCDs.
Dell: ugh. stay away from proprietary crap. end of story.
thats all i have the patience for typing right now...
