Basic Q: 1.0 v 1.2 GHz mobile p3?

I am about to buy a Dell 8100 laptop, and I am curious... is there any real differnece between the 1.0 and 1.2 GHz processors? the machine will be running XP pro (since you can't get win2k w/ the 64MB ATi vid card... grrrr). I am using it for developing web apps, so I'll have IIS running with VS .NET and MM Flash. I don't do much heavy graphics stuff, so I won't be rendering video or anything.

It's a $180 difference. I'm inclined to believe the performance difference is negligible, and getting the 1.2 is more of a marketing scam... am I right?

thanks,
tim

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Originally posted by 13kft
I am about to buy a Dell 8100 laptop, and I am curious... is there any real differnece between the 1.0 and 1.2 GHz processors? the machine will be running XP pro (since you can't get win2k w/ the 64MB ATi vid card... grrrr). I am using it for developing web apps, so I'll have IIS running with VS .NET and MM Flash. I don't do much heavy graphics stuff, so I won't be rendering video or anything.

It's a $180 difference. I'm inclined to believe the performance difference is negligible, and getting the 1.2 is more of a marketing scam... am I right?

thanks,
tim

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It's simple tech world facts. You will have to shed top dollar for top tech. Is 1mhz worth a buck for you? Probably not.
There are two kind of people in these forums.

Ones with extra cash to burn, which would go for the 1.2.
And those who try to make the most of their money. Who would probably go for the 1ghz.

I personnaly made the mistake of going high end when I bought my machine. I regret it, because it was high-end for such a small while. Save the 180$, and in a few months, upgrade something worthwhile :)

I wouldn't say it's a marketing scam. In apps that are assisted by more processing power 1.2 will scale nicely over 1.0. But there are other ways to spend $180 that make more sense for daily use of most desktop apps (that run just fine on a P3-500 with 128MB of SDRAM.)

A "for example" would be a system where I replaced a Duron at 1G with a Duron at 1.2G. (BTW the system uses a Radeon 64DDR video card as well)

Most games run a little faster at the resolutions I play them at. about 5fps on the low end. Meaning if a game's framerate bottomed out at 15-20fps on the 1.0 it will do 20-25fps now.

Doing something that ties up the machine (like crunching a video into an mpeg4) takes about 15% less time.

However if there had been a $180 price premium for choosing the 1.2 over the 1.0 I would have purchased another 1.0 as the machine isn't much more than a video/mp3 jukebox/fileserver;)

Save your cash, or go for the 1133 option for only $70 you get 66% of the performance for 47% of the price.

Thanks for the replies. I went for the 1.0 for the reasons you guys posted. The $180 went towards a wireless LAN. :)