Dual core or quad core

[Krupinski]

Laptops do not have a real 6850 in them. It's a neutered mobile version that draws a fraction of the power and delivers a fraction of the performance.

Battery life is 2.25hrs, I leave my computer plugged in 85% of the time so it's not a big problem for me.

[Krusty]

Battery life is 2.25hrs, I leave my computer plugged in 85% of the time so it's not a big problem for me.

I think he means the entire mobile series of chips, not your battery. The entire line for laptops is dulled down and has lower power and lower consumption. It's an overall design issue relating to heat and power use. Laptops have to skimp in both areas, so the same CPU will run slower and cooler than a desktop CPU.

[Krupinski]

I think he means the entire mobile series of chips, not your battery. The entire line for laptops is dulled down and has lower power and lower consumption. It's an overall design issue relating to heat and power use. Laptops have to skimp in both areas, so the same CPU will run slower and cooler than a desktop CPU.

I know, was responding to icepac's comment and never edited that out...

It's a mobility 6850m.. hence the m at the end of it, it'll still do the job though.  

[SectorNine50]

Cool.........guess I didn't check the ati graphics processor wiki before I posted that.

I'm sure it will be fine for AHII since it runs sweet on a asus 4a785-m (integrated ati hd4200)with phenom II black edition 555. (unlocked the other 2 cores but running now on 2 because I haven't needed them as of yet).

The only "game" I have run into that really benefits from more than 2 cores is FSX and it seems FSX is more about the general processor itself than the GPU (assuming GPU is of any decent performance).

FSX could really care less if you have more than 2 cores, and that's an improvement compared to before the first Service Pack (had basically no multi-core support before the service pack).  When I'm playing FSX the game is only using 1.5 out of 4 cores (doesn't seem to utilize the second core fully).

Where FSX sees the most performance gains is in memory bandwidth, which is why the i7's are some of the fastest FSX rigs out there, their memory bandwidth is absolutely absurd.  The GPU is basically useless in FSX, my 5770 doesn't register hardly any utilization when playing FSX...  In fact, one cool thing I've found about this is that you can turn AA and AF on in your graphics card and leave it off in FSX and see no performance loss.  However, if you turn AA on in the FSX settings, the CPU sees the added load.