I have found that the same case run on my laptop runs significantly faster than my desktop, even though the processors are approximately equivalent (1.8 GHz). Generally, the laptop runs about 30% faster, but for one transient case the speed-up factor was 300% !!! The deshtop has a Pentium P4 processor, whereas the laptop has an AMD Athlon processor.

Has anyone noticed anything similar ? Has anyone got an explanation ? Are AMD Athlons always better ?

I have found that the most important factor in the end is hard drive speed and the speed of the RAM and the front side bus. (When CPU's are about the same)

I have a nice P4 desktop, with a fast hard drive, fast RD RAM and a fast bus to drive the whole thing.

My laptop has a faster CPU but everthing else is slower that the deskop. At least for me the desktop wins every time.

Leon