Question

I have been doing some research to buy a laptop for software development. I have been told by one of my co-worker that having a processor over 2.2 GHz with 7200 RPM HDD makes no sesne. He said that since HDD is 7200 (fastest as of now in laptop), it won't make any difference if your processor is faster than 2.2 GHz.
Do you guys agree??? If not then why not??? I'm trying to get a fast laptop with light weight. Thank a bunch in advance.

Answer 1

From one of Google's presentations:

L1 Cache reference........................................... 0.5 ns
Branch mispredict.............................................. 5 ns
L2 Cache reference........................................... 7 ns
Mutex lock/unlock............................................... 25 ns
Main memory reference..................................... 100 ns
Send 2K bytes over 1 Gbps network.................. 20,000 ns
Read 1MB sequentially from memory ................ 250,000 ns
Round trip within same datacenter .................... 500,000 ns
Disk seek........................................................... 10,000,000 ns
Read 1MB sequentially from disk ...................... 20,000,000 ns
Send packet CA->Netherlands->CA .................. 150,000,000 ns

Now, look how fast is your disk read to compare it with CPU operations?

Answer 2

You should buy a laptop with the fastest processor you can. It should also have a discrete graphics with it's own memory.

Don't worry about the harddrive as you can easily buy replacements pretty much anywhere, newegg, frys, bestbuy, or whatever computer store is near you.

SSD is quickly replacing normal hard drives in laptops and every year they are faster and more reliable.

You mentioned using the laptop for development. Dev tools do a LOT of things that are not hard drive dependent. A faster processor will definitely be felt. Further, some dev tools, like Visual Studio for example, benefit from a discrete graphics card. Especially when that card has it's own memory and isn't stealing from the laptops normal ram.

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When I buy laptops, I get the fastest processor with discrete graphics. I order them with the least amount of memory and slowest hard drive possible. Then I buy replacement ram and a hard drive from somewhere like newegg. The reason is that laptop manufacturers are going to use the cheapest stuff they can get away with; further they charge an arm and a leg for those upgrades and it is ALWAYS cheaper to just pick up those parts elsewhere.

Answer 3

Whilst for many operations, disk I/O is the weakest link as far as speed is concerned, There are many activities you do on your machine that are not hard drive related - and the faster your CPU, the faster these tasks will complete.

Anyway, That aside, you can always upgrade your hard drive to a SSD later where as upgrading your CPU is always much trickier and harder - and not usually financially worth it.

Answer 4

chris, Can you recommend a good laptop specs for VS. I'm currently using vs.net 2005 but will be using vs.net 2008 and vs.net 2010 (sometime in future). I"ll be doing a lot of WPF development therefore having a good graphic card would be great as well. Thanks