How fast are Pentium M processors?

[PotatoSandWitch]

I can get either a Dell 9100 desktop or a 9300 notebook with similar specs for around 1300 including tax and shipping.
Both have a gig of RAM and equally powerful 6800 vid card. The notebook would have an 80 gig hard drive instead of 160 for the desktop.
The notebook is a really good deal (using a 40% off coupon), but I was wondering how fast the Pentium M 1.6 would be. I could get a 1.73 for 80 bucks more, but would that make a difference? If I compare the M 1.6 to the Pentium 4 2.8 I'm using now, would it seem slow? And, will the pimp vid card result in a much shorter battery life?

 

[BlackBeardThe3rd]

lol, "pimp video card" curse you MTV!

no a 1.6P-M wont feel any slower than your 2.8 P4
you probably wont be able to tell the dif between the 1.6 and 1.73

edit: check out this article. it's closer to a 3.2GHz P4 prescott than your 2.8

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/

 

[PotatoSandWitch]

Originally posted by: BlackBeardThe3rd
lol, "pimp video card" curse you MTV!

no a 1.6P-M wont feel any slower than your 2.8 P4
you probably wont be able to tell the dif between the 1.6 and 1.73

edit: check out this article. it's closer to a 3.2GHz P4 prescott than your 2.8

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/

Eh, I don't watch TV, don't even remember what channel MTV is 🙂

 

[phaxmohdem]

Hehe Anand should run an article series on this site called "Pimp my Rig" That would be freaking awesome.

AS for P-M performance, I tested a Pentium M 1.4GHz against my AthlonXP Mobile 2400+ (1.8GHz barton) and the P-M hung with it or beat it nearly every time.

http://www.auctionspice.com/misc/lapcomp.xls

 

[piasabird]

This is an interesting article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050621/index.html

The main draw for a P4-M is the low power draw. Amazingly it has good performance compared to a 2.8 Gig 800Mhz P4. They cost quite a bit for the high end but so does everything else.

 

[fbrdphreak]

For $80, I would not upgrade the CPU from 1.6 to 1.73; that's a big price jump for a not big performance jump. Besides, in terms of gaming, all your games will be GPU limited on that machine.

A general rule of thumb is that a Pentium M's equivalent clock speed performance is ABOUT 1.75 times that of a Pentium 4. Example:
1.6 Pentium M--> 1.6*1.75=2.8
Thus, a 1.6GHz P-M is approx equal to a 2.8GHz P4.

Keep in mind that 2.8 P4 will still have performance advantages in heavy number crunching scenarios, like video/audio encoding, etc. Check out AT's last Pentium M article for a good breakdown on performance

 

[vegetation]

Save your money. Most of the time the cpu will be at 600mhz anyways, for power and heat saving purposes.

 

[ShellGuy]

I wager piasabird was refering to the P-M processor not the P4-M.


Will G.