Techie question

Laptops and desktops

[Essex_boy]

Why is it that Laptops dont have processors in them as fast as Desktops?

(serious question)

[Leosghost]

because the faster the processor the more it does usually the hotter it runs the bigger the heat dissipation problem.. fans air flows and heat sinks etc ..

simplified for non techies

[oddsod]

They do have the same speed processors as desktops. But laptops are cut-down in other respects. The laptop 2.5" hard disks, for example, have always been slower than the 3.5" desktop ones. Motherboard chipsets etc make a difference to speed too.

Laptop processors are designed to generate less heat than desktop equivalents but most of them do work in standard ATX motherboards.

[Leosghost]

They do have the same speed processors as desktops

not where we live they don't ...:)( and he isn't too far away) average laptop on sale in France has only 60% of the speed of the desktop model ..and yeah i know they are optimised to lose their heat faster ..but they still get hotter ..remember the "hot rocks" thread here a while back ..your desktop never gets that hot ..in a laptop there just isn't the space for an efficient fan or heat sink system ..
Take apart any desktop and you can see how big they ( cpuheatsinkfan combo) have to be ..and laptops are getting thinner ..

they are getting better tho( for my money toshiba have the edge on speed for cpu for now ) ...with packard bell last in line ..

depends enormously on what kind of apps you run as to how hard / hot you are going to drive your laptop..

those that come with DVD burners are gonna get tres tres hot if you try to do 9 gigs

[Robin_reala]

Something that no-one's mentioned here is that Intel laptops generally run a different processor class to their desktops. Intel's desktops are mostly Pentium 4s, which are notorious for running hot and sucking power. This makes them suitable for laptops so Intel came up with the Pentium M (loosely based onthe old Pentium 3) which by nature of it's design is far more efficient. If you've got greater efficiency (in both heat/power and processing stakes) then you can run the chip at a slower speed to get the same amount of computation.

[Essex_boy]

OK thats that then