Laptop Processors Buying Guide

Detailed purchasing advice, valuable tips and recommendations for laptop processors.

What is the current buzz on processors?

Today’s laptop processors are more powerful than ever thanks to multi-processor designs, advancements in computer manufacturing technologies, shifts in processor industry trends, software demands for faster processing, and well the list goes on.

The main highlight and performance enhancement in laptop processors today is multiple processing cores. In simple terms, any multi-core processor is basically one that has at least two or more processors in one. Today a dual-core processor is the norm, but 3-core, 4-core, and processors with yet more cores do exist.

One of the main benefits to having a multi-core processor is the increased overall system responsiveness when you work with multiple applications simultaneously. For example you can be performing a virus scan while working on your favorite application at the same time with a minimal performance hit.

Besides more responsive multitasking, many individual applications can take advantage of each core at the same time.

These specially coded applications can theoretically run twice as fast. 
Currently most programs do not fully take advantage of a multi-core processor even today, but expect more and more applications to do so in the future.

Besides being extremely powerful laptop processors today are also very efficient when it comes to energy usage. 

This is especially true for current Intel based processors, and their Intel Core 2 line of processors are simply amazing in our opinion for the performance to power consumption ratio is astonishing.

Laptop processors today have what’s called a lower Thermal Design Power, or TDP. We are not going to get too technical, but in layman's terms having a lower TDP means laptops can be thinner and lighter thanks to smaller cooling solution requirements. Older processors in comparison required bulkier cooling solutions in order to handle their heat demands.

Besides bringing thinner and lighter laptops to the table, a lower TDP also contributes to longer overall battery run time. In fact it’s not uncommon today to see laptops rated for over 5 hours of battery life.

In our opinion current day laptop processors are simply amazing, and we’ve honestly barely touched base on their overall feature set. But now that you know a bit more regarding current laptop processors, let’s move on to the recommendations, shall we?


What laptop processors are recommended?

For new laptops we currently recommend an Intel Core 2 Duo processor at any speed.

Intel Core 2 Duo processors currently offer the best performance and features right now in our opinion period. 

Many fairly cheap new laptops even come with Intel Core 2 Duo processors so flexibility is yet another reason we recommend Intel at the moment.

If you are in the market for a used or slightly older laptop we wouldn't go for anything less than the slightly older Intel Core Duo processor unless maybe you are on a super tight budget.  

We say this because there are plenty of older Intel Core Duo laptops out there for great prices so a single core processor just doesn’t make much sense in our opinion and the benefits of a dual core processor are definitely worth it in the long run, especially if you want to future proof your investment.

If you are however on a budget a Core Solo processor based notebook may be a decent option, but honestly we’d still look for an older Core Duo instead. For those of you on a very tight budget we advise against purchasing anything slower than a very fast Intel Pentium-M.

Because Intel's competitor Advance Micro Devices is trailing in the CPU department currently, we don't recommend AMD over Intel unless maybe you find an absolute bargain on an AMD based laptop. 

We’d personally go no less than an AMD Turion 64 X2 based laptop if you do go this route. While maybe not the top performer, we are still impressed with the Turion X2 notebooks so don’t think you will be screwing yourself by going with AMD. We just feel Intel right now is the better option.


Is there anything else to consider?

Other things to consider in laptop processors include their internal clock speed, external bus speed, and cache size among other things. As a general rule of thumb, bigger is usually better when comparing modern day processors.

Clock speed is the actual speed at which the processor runs inside and it is measured in (MHz) megahertz or (GHz) gigahertz.

Bus speed is the speed at which the processor communicates with the rest of the computer system, and is is also measured in megahertz or gigahertz.

Finally cache is basically a small chuck of memory located near the processing core that stores instructions or data and then feeds the internal processing unit these instructions to keep the laptop processors computational unit running efficiently by having a constant stream of data.

Do keep in mind that comparing AMD to Intel is like comparing apples to oranges. Because their internal logic is constructed differently the aforementioned features aren’t an accurate gauge of performance in this situation.

On the other hand if you are comparing laptop processors from the same processor family like an Intel Core 2 to say another Intel Core 2, remembering that bigger is better is honestly a good way to determine the faster of the two.

Remember that speed isn't everything though, for balance is the key because while a small bump in clock speed is in fact faster, the price premium for this tiny performance increase may not be worth the extra cash.

For the basic or even average user we feel paying attention to technical details isn’t as important as it was in the past when processors used to be more focused on raw clock speed, but regardless it still doesn’t hurt to know a little bit about these features. And if you didn’t know before, you at least do now.

To clarify things a little further, we don’t really stress the technical details for the average user because we personally feel modern day Intel Core 2 or AMD Turion X2 laptop processors will likely handle their demands and then some.

For you power users on the other hand our opinion is different. Because you guys will need ultimate performance, we advise you to pay close attention to the technical jargon. A 2MB cache increase and 200MHz bump in clock speed may just shave a few minutes or more off your video encode. For your line of work we like to go with the bigger is better approach to be honest. Time is money after all.

Best of luck and happy purchasing!

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