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Centrino vs. Dekstop Processor question

j0k3r

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 3, 2004
Messages
365
I just picked up a new laptop. It's a Dell Latitude D600 with a 1.8GHz 2MB L2 Centrino. It's the Pentium M 745. I have heard that the lower clocked Centrinos in some cases outperform the higher clocked desktop processors. Can someone hook me up with some more info on this? Thanks.
 
First off the Centrino isn't a processor. It's a platform. It requires Pentium M, the 855M chipset and the Intel Wireless Technology. All are designed to offer a low power solution.

The Pentium M (Banias and Dothan) are faster per clock cycle. So a 2.0GHz Pentium M is roughly equivalent to a desktop Pentium 4 3.0GHz.

That being said there are things the Pentium 4 is actually faster at even considering the higher IPC of the Pentium M. But generally speaking yes it is faster.
 
Thanks for clarifying. This is the first Intel processor I have owned since 1999, so it has been a while.
 
Well for Gaming AMD certainly is the fastest, but in the notebook category where lower power consumption is at least as important as performance the Pentium M is a great chip. It also runs alot cooler than most of the other processors you could have in a notebook. All in all it's a great choice.
 
the Pentium M is just about as fast as an A64 and if intel could pull there heads out of there markitings a** and make Dothan in to a desktop CPU thay could actly give AMD a run for there money btw id kill for a Shuttle that let you use a P-m in it make a killer HTPC with a X800XT AIW (if you can find one)
 
Well the problem is that they never seemed to think of that in advance. As a result they never designed a version of the Pentium M to be electrically compatible with LGA775. So until they do (which could take alot of time) that won't happen.
 
BossNoodleKaboodle said:
this is probably a dumbass question but why don't people build more of their machines on pentium M processors?
My desktop machine is built around a Pentium M 735, but the big reasons why it's less popular are:

1. Price. Motherboards are very expensive right now, because not that many of them are made for desktop form factors. I bought mine for $325 in July, and the cheapest desktop Pentium M motherboard I've seen is in the 200s. Even then, the available processors are all pretty expensive, especially for the 90 nm Dothans.

2. Awareness. Still not everybody knows about the existence of desktop Pentium M paraphernalia.

3. Lack of HyperThreading abilities, and for that matter, a lot of modern motherboard features like Serial ATA, IEEE-1394, wireless hardware, etc.
 
xonik said:
My desktop machine is built around a Pentium M 735, but the big reasons why it's less popular are:

1. Price. Motherboards are very expensive right now, because not that many of them are made for desktop form factors. I bought mine for $325 in July, and the cheapest desktop Pentium M motherboard I've seen is in the 200s. Even then, the available processors are all pretty expensive, especially for the 90 nm Dothans.

2. Awareness. Still not everybody knows about the existence of desktop Pentium M paraphernalia.

3. Lack of HyperThreading abilities, and for that matter, a lot of modern motherboard features like Serial ATA, IEEE-1394, wireless hardware, etc.

Pretty much. Look at it like this,

Pentium M has a 400MHz FSB and uses single channel DDR333 or PC2700 memory. It doesn't have SATA native to the 855 chipset and doesn't support RAID or anything like that. In fact I don't know that they even do AGP 8x. Although some of these features can be added to the motherboard, it drives costs way up. So a Pentium M motherboard can cost as much or more than a Asus P5AD2-E Premium and still has less features.

The Pentium 4 has a 533MHz, 800MHz or 1066MHz FSB and uses a dual channel DDR400 or DDR 2 533 memory and the i915P and i925X/XE chipsets support MAtrix RAID, SATA, PCI-Express and other things.

The Pentium M is expensive and the platform looks dated as hell comparitively. What's amazing is that the Pentium M kicks so much ass on that dated platform. But most people don't know that and as an overall platform there are still some features like those mentioned above you'll miss.

You also really have to overclock to unlock the full potential of Pentium M. Again something the masses are ignorant of.

Eventually Intel will make the transition to dual core Dothan based processors. But that's FAR off from now.
 
Well the new I915 chipset for P-M should help with dual channel ddr/ddr2 and PCI-E.
 
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